"Hey!" Jack yelled. He dropped to the floor of the tunnel and the epinephrines took over. Now it was all instinctual. All the pent tension of the long day, the frustration of his search, his intermittent desire to kill something, flashed into critical mass. Also he was hungry. Very hungry.

"Bastard. Get away from me! You die!" The dark figure drew down with the pistol. Another shot. Jack saw the sparks where the bullet hit a steel stanchion.

"What the hell you doin'?" Jack cried. "Aaaaaahhh!" said the reptile brain, flooded with welcomed hormones. Jack felt his body elongate, the vestigial tail extending and swelling, clothing ripping, his snout springing forth before his eyes. The rows of teeth sprang up faster than anything sowed by Cadmus.

His claws scrabbled for purchase on the hardpacked earthen floor. He bissed with anticipation.

Hungry; he thought. There was anger, too. But mostly hunger.

The man with the pistol backed into the corner of the dogleg. He held something shiny in his other hand. He stared unbelievingly at the alligator. "Get the fuck away!"

Jaws scissoring open wide, the alligator lunged forward. Brief thunder rolled as the pistol flashed and a bullet nicked the creature's armored hide above one front leg. The jaws slammed closed with incredible force as the man screamed and thrust his hands out in a hopeless attempt to fend off the beast. The pistol skittered away, lost in the darkness. The plasticwrapped package went into the alligator's mouth. Along with the hand that held it. Along with part of an arm, the man's shoulder, and his face. His bubbling screams stopped in a matter of seconds.

Glass shattered as the monocle spun away and smashed against the tunnel wall.

The alligator wrenched his jaws away from the remains of the corpse. There was no chewing. The food went down his gullet where the powerful enzymes would take care of assuaging his hunger. He opened his jaws again to roar a challenge. No one and nothing answered him. The alligator swung his head heavily from one side of the corridor to the other. On some deep level, he remembered that food was not his only priority this day.

He started forward into the darkness. There was something he had to do.

"A cab?" Water Lily said. "I thought we were in a hurry."

"It'll get the job done," Fortunato said. "We don't want any grandstand moves. Not today."

The cab pulled over and they got in. "Empire State Building," Fortunato told the driver. He leaned back in the seat. "We don't need to make targets of ourselves."

"It's the Astronomer; isn't it?"

"He just killed Kid Dinosaur. Tore him to pieces. He would have killed Demise, but Demise was tougher than anybody knew. You probably heard about the Howler. So it's…"

He broke it off. Jane had stopped listening somewhere in the middle. "Kid Dinosaur?" she said.

Fortunato nodded.

"Jesus." She stared straight ahead. Water-not tearsbeaded up on her cheeks. Fortunato couldn't tell if she was going to cry for real or start ripping up the cab's upholstery.

Finally she said, "All right." The words came out small and strangled. She tried again. "All right. Count me in. Where do we start?"

This isn't working, Fortunato thought. She's not going to go weak and helpless on you. She's gotten too tough for that. What do you do when they don't want your protection?

"Um," he said. "How about a bodyguard assignment?"

"What, are you serious? Guarding who?"

"I was thinking of Hiram Worchester."

"Oh. That fat guy?"

"He identified the Astronomer's coins. He could be in danger too."

"Oh, all right," she said. "For now."

An establishment as celebrated and unique as Aces High drew its share of trouble, and Hiram had long ago resigned himself to the unfortunate necessity of security, but he insisted that it be discreet. Peter Chou's men (and women) were quick, efficient, highly skilled, and very unobtrusive. When it came to dealing with drunks, holdup men, and leapers, no one was better. But the Astronomer was more than they'd been trained to handle.

Modular Man was about as unobtrusive as a joker in Idaho. The android had a certain male-model handsomeness, although his prefab features were without either character lines or hair. He wore a skullcap to conceal the radar dome built into his head. Twin grenade launchers were mounted on rotating pivots set in the synthetic flesh of his shoulders.

The shoulder modules popped right out, and normally Hiram insisted that Modular Man check his armament at the door. But today was not the day for normalcy. When the android landed on the balcony and was ushered into his office, Hiram asked him straight out what sort of weaponry he was equipped with.

"The left module fires tear-gas canisters, and the right is loaded with smoke bombs," Mod Man said. "The smoke will not affect my radar, of course, but will blind any potential adversary. The tear gas-"

"I know what tear gas does," Hiram said curtly. "Your creator is assuming the Astronomer has to breathe. Let's hope he's correct. "

"I could exchange the grenade launcher for an armor piercing 20mm cannon," Modular Man said cheerfully. Hiram made a choking sound. "If you even think about firing a cannon inside my restaurant, you'll never set foot in here again."

"It's more like a large machine gun, actually."

"Nonetheless," Hiram said firmly.

"Would you like me to patrol the perimeter?"

"I'd like you to sit at the end of the bar and stav out of the way," Hiram told him. "There's still a great deal of work to be done. The guests will begin arriving around seven for cocktails."

"If anything's going to happen, it should happen well before that."

He escorted the android out to the bar and left him in the company of a bottle of single-malt Scotch. On the way to his office, Curtis accosted him. "The lobster was the only thing they bothered to destroy," he reported. "Some of Gills's employees are cleaning up the damage. The ones who didn't run away. Gills was taken to the Jokertown clinic."

"Find out who's in charge, and tell them I want the tuna," Hiram said. "As much as he has. We'll do blackened tuna tonight instead of lobster."

"Paul will not be amused," Curtis said.

Hiram paused at the door to his office. "Let him scream. Then let him cook. If he refuses, I'll do it myself. I'm not unfamiliar with Cajun cuisine." He paused thoughtfully. "Alligator has an interesting taste. You don't suppose that Gills might have… no, that's too much to ask. Oh, and offer a premium price for that tuna. If I hadn't interfered this morning, none of this would have happened."

"You shouldn't blame yourself," Curtis said.

"Why not?" Hirain asked. He snorted. "I remember when I was first diagnosed, back in 1971. After Tachyon assured me that I wasn't going to die, that I'd been gifted with extraordi nary powers instead, I determined that I must use those powers for the public good. Absurd, I know, but it was the tenor of the times. I tell you, Curtis, heroism is a ludicrous career choice, although not half so ludicrous as I was in my costume." He paused thoughtfully, and flicked a piece of lint off the swell of his vest. "It was well-tailored," he said, "but ludicrous nonetheless. At any rate, my physique was distinctive, masked or no, and my abortive experiment in semiprofessional adventuring ended abruptly when a gossip columnist accurately divined my identity. I'm not a modest man, Curtis, but food is what I'm best at. Gills would be a lot better off if I'd remembered that this morning." He turned away before Curtis could reply, and shut the office door behind him.

His lunch was waiting on his desk: three thick-cut pork chops grilled with onion and basil, a side of pasta salad, steamed broccoli with grated romano cheese, and a piece of the famous Aces High cheesecake. Hiram sat down and contemplated it.