He wondered if he was going to die again.

He turned on his flux fields. Ozone crackled around him. A faint St. Elmo's aura danced before his eyes. Insubstantial, he melted through the floor.

The first thing the android saw was a television set. Its tube had imploded. An unstrung coat hanger was wired in place of one of the broken rabbit ears.

There was a camp bed in the middle of the floor. The mattress was wrapped in plastic. There were no sheets. Cheap furniture choked the rest of the room.

The android became substantial and hung suspended in the middle of the room. He heard voices in the back room. His weaponry swung toward the sound and locked into position.

"Something broke all the glass." The voice was fast, fervid, weirdly intense. "Something strange is going on."

"Maybe a sonic boom." Another voice, deeper. Certainly calmer.

"The cups on the shelves?" The voice was very insistent, talking so fast the words crowded on one another. "Something broke the cups on the shelves. Sonic booms don't do that. Not in New York. Something else must've done that." The man wouldn't let the subject alone.

Modular Man hovered to the doorway. Two men stood in the apartment's tiny kitchen, bent to peer into a small refrigerator. Milk and orange juice dripped from its sill.

The nearest man was young, dark-haired, movie-star handsome. He was dressed in blue jeans and a Levi's jacket. He had a piece of a broken juice container in his hand.

The other was a thin, pale, nervous man with pink eyes. "Which one of you is Croyd Crenson?" asked the android. The pink-eyed man turned and gave a shriek. "You blew up!" he shouted, and in a blur of speed he reached for a gun under his Levi's jacket.

Modular Man concluded this sure enough sounded like a guilty conscience. The ceiling was too low for him to maneuver over the first man, so he pushed out with an arm as he moved forward, intending to knock him into the refrigerator and get next to the albino.

The second man didn't move when the android shoved him. He didn't even shift his stance, partly stooped by the refrigerator. Modular Man stopped dead. He pushed harder. The man straightened and smiled and didn't move.

The presumed Croyd fired his automatic. The sound thundered in the small room. The first wild round missed, the second gouged plastic skin from the android's shoulder, the third and fourth shots hit Croyd's companion.

The man still didn't react, not even after being shot. The bullets didn't ricochet or flatten on impact, just dropped to the scarred linoleum.

Bullets don't work, the android thought. Scratch the cannon.

Modular Man backed up, dropped to the floor, fired a straight punch to the young man's chest. The man still didn't move, didn't even flinch. Croyd's bullets cracked as they cut the air. A couple of them hit his friend, none hit the android. The android punched again, full force. Same result.

The young man struck out, the return punch unnaturally fast. His fist caught Modular Man and knocked him back, out of the kitchen. The android drove through the old tin paneling of the far wall and partway through the slats on the other side. Paint flecks a dozen layers thick dropped like gray snow from the ancient walls. Red damage lights came alive in the android's mind.

Modular Man levered himself out of the wall-the long tube of the cannon got caught and required a wrench of the android's shoulders to free it. He saw the albino charging with superhuman speed, the refrigerator raised high. The android tried to get out of the way, but the wall hampered him and Croyd was moving very fast. The refrigerator drove Modular Man back through the wall again, widening the hole. Orange juice sloshed in the refrigerator's interior.

Modular Man cut in his flight generators and flew straight forward, seizing the refrigerator and using it as a battering ram. Croyd was caught off center and spun into the front room, arms flailing, before the camp bed caught the back of his knees and he crashed to the floor. The android kept going, driving the refrigerator full force into Croyd's companion.

The man still didn't move. St. Elmo's fire filled the hallway as the android's generators went to full power. The man still didn't move.

The hell with it. Go for Croyd.

The android let go of the refrigerator and altered his flight pattern to head for the albino, Very quickly, before he could move more than a few inches, the young man struck out with the other arm, a forearm slam against the top of the refrigerator.

Modular Man went through the wall again, across someone's apartment, into a fifteen-gallon fish tank, then into the exterior wall. Bits of the android's consciousness fragmented with shock. A green flood poured across the carpet. Tropical fish began to die.

A moment of time throbbed endlessly in his mind. He could not remember his purpose, could not recognize the scatter of bright scales that flapped helplessly before his gaze. Automatic systems slowly rerouted his memory.

The day and its long advent of despair returned. He pried himself from the wall. His energies needed replenishment. He couldn't go insubstantial for a while, and he shouldn't fly. The 20mm cannon hung bent over one shoulder. The laser seemed intact.

The apartment was decorated with care, featuring abstract prints, an Oriental carpet, more fish tanks. A mobile jangled near the ceiling. Its tenant seemed not to be home. Distantly he heard the sound of arriving police. The android stepped through the hole into Croyd's apartment, saw that the albino and his companion had left, and walked up the stairs to Travnicek's. On the way his consciousness disappeared twice, for half-second intervals. When he regained it, he moved faster.

He heard the heavy footsteps of police below.

Travnicek opened the door to his knock. Both his feet were bare, and all the toes had gone. Something blue and hairy was beginning to grow from each wound.

"Fucking coffee maker," said Travnicek.

The android knew it wasn't going to get any better.

"Croyd wasn't so much a problem as this other person." The android had his jumpsuit off, was repairing the gouge in his synthetic flesh. The cannon lay on a table. He would have to get a replacement from the army munitions depot where he'd found the first one.

Travnicek was laboring over broken components. He'd told the police that he'd heard shots but had been afraid to go downstairs to phone for help. They'd accepted his explanation without comment and never came into the apartment where the android had been hiding in a locker.

"Nothing's really badly damaged, toaster," Travnicek said. "Field monitor jarred loose. That's why you kept losing consciousness. I'll strap the bastard down this time. Otherwise, just a few dings here and there."

He straightened. His eyes glazed over. "Renormalization function switch damaged," he said. "Replace at once." He shook his head, frowned a moment, then turned to the android. "Open your chest again. I just remembered something." Travnicek was scratching one of his hands near the finger joints. He looked down, realized what he was doing, and stopped. He seemed a little pale.

"After I get you fixed up," he said, "get on the goddamn streets. That Croyd guy is gonna be using his power to transform more people. That'll give you a fix on his location. I want you to be looking for him."

"Yes, sir." The android's chest opened. He noticed that his creator's neck was beginning to swell, and that his flesh now had a distinct blue cast.

He decided not to mention it.

The android patrolled all that night, searching the streets for familiar figures. His internal radio receiver was tuned to any alert, on both police and National Guard bands. From a early edition of the Times stolen from a pile near a closed newsstand, he found out that there had been a half dozen cases of wild card in the two hours following his battle with Croyd. Three of the cases had been in Jokertown, and the other three were people traveling together on a northbound number 4 Lexington Avenue express. Croyd and his companion had taken the subway at least as far as the Forty-second Street stop.