Blade tested the skill and alertness of his guards three more times in the next two days. After that he decided to make his move for real the next time. Any more tests and the guards might become suspicious enough to call for more reinforcements than he could handle.

The clock was striking the fifteenth period of Kanan's twenty-period day. Outside it would be nearly dark. He'd have the cover of night for the first stage of his travels, and that could make a difference. The Kananites certainly had the technology to track down fugitives and criminals but they had very little crime. The human skills for using the equipment might be more than a little rusty.

The food machines would produce anything Blade wanted. He dialed for three loaves of bread, a slab of cheese, and a two-foot length of sausage. When they appeared he popped them into a pillowcase, added two pairs of socks and a spare shirt from the wardrobe in the bedroom, then tied everything into a bundle. He stepped up to the living room wall, the door opened, and he was out in the hallway.

Ten steps, and a solitary guard appeared around the bend. Blade hurled his bundle with all the strength in his right arm, striking the guard in the face before he could take another step. Blade closed, twisted the hurd-ray out of the man's hand as he drew, and punched him in the jaw. Kananite men were almost as slender as the women and Blade had to pull the punch not to knock the man's head off his shoulders. The guard flew across the hallway, thudded into the wall, and slumped limply to the floor.

Blade retrieved his bundle and raised the pistol just as the second guard hurried around the bend. She trotted right into the hurd-ray from Blade's pistol, set low to stun rather than kill. Her own pistol skidded across the floor in one direction while her unconscious body skidded in another. Blade scooped up the fallen pistol without missing a step, then broke into a run.

Beyond the bend Blade found a small room, furnished with a sofa, a couple of chairs, and a small green console. A gray-haired woman sat at the console, watching the display of lights. On the sofa a young man was sound asleep.

Blade came around the bend as the woman rose from her chair and said sharply:

«Durnann, wake up! Something's-«She broke off as she saw Blade, then started to draw her gun. Blade stunned her and she collapsed on top of the young man. He woke up, saw Blade, and stared.

«Which way out?» said Blade.

The man's mouth opened as wide as his eyes, then he got himself under control enough to point to a shallow archway on the right. Blade put one pistol on a high setting and blew up the green console. Smoke swirled as he walked over to the archway and a door opened in front of him. Outside was darkness, cool night air, and a landing platform with a small dark blue flyer parked near the edge. Blade felt like cheering.

«Thank you,» he said to the young man, who still lay rigid on the couch, the woman on top of him. Blade stepped through the door and it slid shut behind him. He fused one edge of it with the hurd-ray to make sure it would stay shut. With no communications and no door, the people inside would have a little trouble spreading the word of his escape.

Then he hurried to the flyer. It was the same model that Riyannah had taught him to fly, and the gauges showed the power cells were fully charged. Behind the pack seat he found a box of hiking gear, including two canteens and some packages of concentrated food. He also found a hurd-ray rifle with a computerized laser sight and half a dozen extra power cells, obviously a military or police weapon. His luck seemed to be getting better and better.

He tossed his pillowcase full of food and spare clothing on top of the other gear, then sat down. He cut in the power, adjusted the anti-gravity, and started the propeller. The little machine shot off the landing platform and out into the night. Blade climbed until he could see the ranked towers of Mestar spread out below him, marching away into the night. Each tower blazed with lights in gold and green, purple and red, silver and blue, some dancing and twinkling, others shining steadily like the stars overhead. Blade turned the nose of the flyer toward where the ranks of towers faded away into the darkness of the wilderness. Then he increased the power and the whine of the propeller swelled.

The power cells couldn't last very long at this rate, but Blade didn't need the flyer very long either. An hour later and a hundred and fifty miles from his starting place, he buzzed a summer cabin by a small lake. Firing the rifle through the flyer's open window he knocked the top off the cabin's chimney. Lights were just coming on inside as Blade sped off a few feet above the treetops.

Now a clearing opened below him. He landed, set the automatic pilot, and dropped to the ground with all his gear as the flyer began to rise again. It rose above the treetops, then went humming off back toward the cabin. It had another half hour's power in its cells and with luck any pursuers would chase it, not him, for at least that long.

Blade wondered when those pursuers would be showing up. Sooner or later someone would notice he was missing and take whatever the Kananites considered drastic action. He wondered what that would be and how long it would take them to catch him.

He hoped it would be quite a while. He'd made a good start with his escape, but nothing more. He'd have to stay on the loose and do a good deal more before it became completely impossible for the Kananites to ignore him.

The flyer was out of sight now. Blade slung his rifle and headed into the forest. This is where I came in, he thought. Alone in the forest, on a strange world.

Blade's escape from Mestar did everything he'd hoped it would and a good deal more besides. He not only got the government of Kanan moving, he got himself into Kanan's history books for the next century.

He even had his adventures made into a popular comedy, Blade in the Forest. One of the planet's leading playwrights wrote it, and it was performed at least once a year for the next fifty years.

It was not performed in Mestar, though. When it was performed in other cities, it was always possible to tell who in the audience came from Mestar. They were the ones who weren't laughing. Blade succeeded in his plan, and also in making Mestar and its people look like bungling idiots. They managed to forgive him, but they were never able to forget the affair enough to laugh at themselves over it.

Blade roamed through the farms, the resorts, and the wilderness around Mestar for eleven days. He left behind him a trail of irritating minor damage and of thoroughly embarrassed Mestarians. Except for the people he'd knocked out making his escape not one man, woman, or child picked up so much as a bruise from Blade's work. On the other hand, none of the people who ran into him found him easy to forget.

There was the time he came on a party of six people holding a quiet little orgy in a secluded forest clearing. From two hundred yards away he carefully burned all their clothes to ashes with the rifle. Then he vanished like the smoke from the fires, leaving the six people to climb into their flyers and head for home stark naked.

There was the time he climbed to the roof of a cottage equipped with an old-fashioned woodburning fireplace and blocked the chimney. Smoke promptly started rolling out the doors and windows, followed by half a dozen furiously coughing Kananites.

There was the time he slipped on to a farm where they raised riding animals, opened the barn door, and let all the stock out. The freed animals scattered in all directions and fell on the neighbors' vegetable gardens like a plague of locusts. The farmer had to retrieve all of his stock and face the indignation of his neighbors as well.