I ticked off on my quivering fingers the vital items that were left.

Guns. Clothes. Passport. Anything else?

Yes. The locket. I had to get the locket back.

I checked to make sure. Yes, I still had it in my pocket. I couldn't quite figure out how to give it back, unsuspected. If I died in this desperate venture, I still wanted a few tears on my grave.

I went up the tunnel. I entered my secret room.

Guns. I opened my gun case. I looked them over. I liked the looks of one. It was an FIE double-barrelled 12-gauge called "The Brute." It looked it. I had had the barrel sawed off to twenty-two inches. It had no hammer to catch on anything. I had had it fitted with a sling. One glance down those twin tunnels would scare a man to death. I was going to ride shotgun on a gold shipment, and I had better do it in style. So "The Brute" was the baby. No Wells Fargo guard had ever had a more impressive weapon. Nor bandits like I had, for that matter.

I got out two shoulder bandoliers and filled the loops with assorted types of shotgun shells.

I then laid out six blasticks. To them I added a Ruger Blackhawk single-action revolver with.30-caliber carbine chambers. I had.30-caliber armor-piercing bullets for it and, using what were actually rifle cartridges, it could outrange and outhit any other handgun I had. And this revolver wouldn't jam in the extreme cold I was about to court. I got out a tan, hand-tooled holster and cartridge belt and filled the loops with the.30-caliber carbine shells.

Thoughtfully, I added half a dozen maximum-damage Fleet Marine grenades. Then I loaded an ankle gun-an Undercover Colt.38 Special-using explosive bullets and laid out its ankle holster.

A very flat Voltar police slash blastgun-that could cut a man in half at a thousand yards if you waved it right-would serve as a pocket weapon, and I added it to the pile.

So far so good.

Now for clothes. I went through the secret door into my bedroom. I started going through the boxes of new clothes. An electrically heated ski suit! Hey! It was a beautiful black silk. It also had fur-lined, electrically heated boots. I was so glad to have it. A space pressure suit gives me absolute fits! You can't draw fast enough in them and they always smell. So I filled up the battery chambers and made a test. Great. I put the outfit on. It looked deadly! And it would look more deadly still with two shotgun bandoliers crossing the front of it and a handgun holster's leather and sinister brass around the waist. Formidable!

Passports next. Risky as it was to use my own valid Earth identity of Sultan Bey, I was going to do just that. Pretty bold and adventurous when you consider the state of police on this planet, and all the more so in the light that every credit-card company checked not just every movement but every slightest twitch of a cardholder, a fact I had just learned to my dismay. Battle the police? Yes. Even casually contact a credit card's computer? No! Emphatically, NO!

But there had to be no question as to who owned this gold. I was doing all this in such a way that nobody would be able to touch the resultant mountain of money-not even come near it.

My passport was in order; its health card was up-to-date right down to the smallpox vaccination and bubonic plague shot.

I still had not yet worked out how to return the locket: it left a loose end dangling.

I remembered, then, I had not eaten. I buzzed for breakfast: as it was midmorning by now they couldn't complain I was disturbing their sleep. But Karagoz and the waiter were very, very slow. When the food arrived in the dining room, the kahve was cool, the eggs nicely chilled and the melon warm. They explained it was a raw and windy day.

I vowed, oh, there're going to be some changes around here shortly! You just wait!

My meal was disturbed by noise. Above the howl of the winter wind, the small voices of boys made the day hideous. I looked out the window. There they were, laughing and shouting, the two of them making enough noise to disturb the Devils themselves.

The idiots were trying to fly a kite! It was some kind of a Japanese kite, a fancy-looking bat, obviously a present Utanc had bought for them in the most expensive available toy store and, of course, with a credit card. The thought of it enraged me.

Then inspiration struck again! A brilliant idea flashed down from the blue, just like that!

I buckled on the Ruger Blackhawk-you don't go around little boys unarmed. I made sure I had the locket in my pocket.

I stalked outside.

The idiots were trying to keep the kite from diving into the trees and, by luck, of course, were succeeding.

They had their backs to me and were too engrossed. I was able to creep up on them, by stealth, undetected.

Suddenly I stretched out a hand hardened with karate practice. I struck! Right, left!

As my stance and balance were absolutely textbook, I could not fail to hit.

WHAP! One little boy flying to the right.

WHAP! One little boy flying to the left.

RIP! One kite straight down into the tree.

With calculated cunning, I had not knocked either boy out. I wanted the resultant screams.

They screamed exactly according to plan.

One was pitched on his head on a gravel walk. The other was tangled up with a leafless shrub.

The result was as planned.

Utanc came out of her room like a shot!

Both boys were pointing at their kite, now a shattered, flapping ruin. They were screaming to high Heavens.

The blood in Utanc's eye, however, would shortly turn to beams of pleasure.

I produced the locket and held it up. I said to her in tones of outrage, "Look what I found these two little Devils playing with!"

Righteously scowling, I handed her the locket.

She took it. She looked at it very closely. Then she looked at me.

"The boys?" she said, and I did not like her tone. "They can't get in my jewel case. It's locked! And that only means one thing! You took it, you (bleepard)!"

She whirled to the two little boys. "Did this brute slap you?"

"He wrecked our kite!" they both howled together.

Utanc went straight to the path. She stooped. I cleverly divined her intention and was halfway to the first corner of the house before she threw the first deadly handful of gravel.

Fast, I was almost into cover before the two little boys began to add their gravel to the barrage.

The volume was high but their aim was bad. I had adequate cover to peek back around. I was out of range. The shells were falling short.

After a few more handfuls of gravel, thrown just for spite, the three of them desisted.

"He wrecked our kite," "James Cagney" was blub­bering.

"It was a beautiful kite," "Rudolph Valentine" was sobbing.

Both of them were lying. You can't fly a frail kite in a high-velocity winter wind. It was their fault. Kites are only for spring.

Utanc didn't seem to be paying too much attention to them. She was studying the locket now. Then she did the most amazing thing.

She knelt down and pulled them over to her. "Here, you can have this. Do what you want with it, darlings."

"Really?" they chorused together, blinking at it.

"Of course," said Utanc. "It's only the paste replica of the real one in my safe. One has these copies to wear as a substitute when one is liable to be mugged. Put it on the dog or something. It's a fake and a rather bad one at that."

Watching her indulgent pats on their heads, I snarled to myself, oh, but there're going to be some changes made. You just wait until I am wallowing in all that MONEY!

Aside from such minor hitches as the locket, my plan was going smoothly enough.

I went back down to check on the construction workers. All was going right along.