Doc sensed rather than saw the explosive lines of gunfire converging on him. He dived away—hurled his body under an adjacent table and past it, rolled beneath a third. The bullets sought him out, but he lashed out with a boot and toppled the table, making a shield of its top.

He saw the table shudder under the impact of gunfire. This was bad, very bad. His people had handguns, the enemy had autoguns, and the odds were more than two to one against him. He had to divert the invaders until Alastair and Jean-Pierre could get to their heavy artillery.

For speed, rely on simplicity. Was that a memory of his father’s voice, or of his own voice when he taught? He didn’t know. He set the gun down and found the small box of matches in his pocket. Out of his sight, men were shouting, firing, maybe advancing.

There was no time to figure out links of contagion; therefore, it had to be similarity. He struck the match. He breathed the smoke and felt the life of the fire ­beneath it; then he tossed the match over the shuddering tabletop, toward his enemies. Go, little fire. Find your kin.

For a brief moment, he was with the match as it flew, the fire atop it precariously alive. Hungry to feed, it sought out the food Doc had promised it. It flew past the startled face of a gunman, sensed the burner on the table ­beyond, and with the last of its vitality reached the simple scientific device.

The knob on the burner twisted and bright new fire a half-dozen feet high leaped into the air. The red-suited gunman nearest the table edged away from the sudden eruption of heat.

Doc struck another match. Now, big fire, do as your little brother does. He touched the flickering flame to the skin on his arm.

Harris saw the Bunsen burner on the table flare up in spontaneous combustion and saw Doc burn himself with the match. It made no sense.

But the flame from the burner bent as though it were hinged and struck one of the gunmen in the back, igniting his suit coat. The man yelled, spun around to confront his tormenter, and the wash of living fire struck him across his face; he screamed again as his hair and hat ignited.

It was a moment’s distraction for the battery of men firing against Doc’s associates; they glanced at their burning comrade, their faces angry, confused.

Doc popped up from behind his table and fired twice with that big pistol. One of the red-suited men jerked and fell, spraying more gunfire into the floor as he collapsed. Another staggered back, the deeper red of blood staining the arm of his coat. And all the while, the living fire reached out, hungrily straining to touch another of the red-suited men.

Harris spotted Alastair crouching beside one of the wall cabinets. The doctor had gotten it open; inside hung pistols, a sword that looked like an ornate fencing weapon, and a submachine gun much like the ones the red-suited men carried. Alastair, daring, reached up to grab the big gun. Bullets plowed into the case around him but he snatched the weapon down.

Jean-Pierre and Noriko were nowhere to be seen.

Then he saw the woman; on the far side of the attacking men, she popped up from behind a table like a lightning-fast jack-in-the-box. She held a sword in a two-handed grip, the blade back over her shoulder, and lunged at the nearest man, whose back was to her. She swung the blade at him, blindingly fast, but missed; she immediately ducked out of sight again.

No—she didn’t miss. Harris saw a thin red line appear on the man’s neck. The red-suited man fell over. Impossibly, horribly, his head separated from his body and the two parts seemed to fall in slow motion. Arterial spray from the neck hit the ceiling as if fired from a water-sprinkler, then tracked down the wall as the body hit the floor. The head hit, rolled a few yards, and fetched up against a stool.

Most of the men were fanning out and away from the aggressive burner flame but concentrating their fire on Doc, keeping him pinned down. Two were hosing down another, distant, toppled table, perhaps where Jean-Pierre was. But one, armed with a revolver instead of a sub­machine gun, seemed to be intent on an object he held in one hand; it looked like an old-fashioned volt-meter with a black plastic case. He waved it around, then pointed it more or less in Harris’ direction . . . and looked straight at Harris. He smiled.

The man trotted toward him, ignoring the gunfire as though it were a light rain. Another gunman, this one carrying a submachine gun, followed.

Harris sank down and retreated, scooting on his stomach to slide back under the sofa he’d lain on a few minutes before.

Just in time. The two men skidded as they reached the television set. They opened fire on the space behind it before they even saw it. Harris saw bullets explode into the floor where he had crouched just a moment ago; he felt splinters tear at his face.

Harris bellowed his fear and anger. He heaved up on the sofa, shoved it at the two men, rising and uncoiling behind it. The heavy piece of furniture slammed into them, knocking the second man down and sending his submachine gun skidding away, driving the first man backwards an off-balance step. The sofa crashed down on the man who’d fallen.

Follow through. Throw combinations. Harris drove forward at the man who still stood. The impact with the sofa had driven the man’s gun hand up; the brassy-­colored revolver was pointed at the ceiling but starting to come down again.

Harris grabbed the gunman’s wrist with his left hand and struck him with his right, a palm strike that smashed his nose. Harris followed through, continuing to crowd the gunman, slipping his right arm over his enemy’s gun arm and folding his elbow across the man’s joint, pinning the limb; then he rotated the man’s wrist down and back, bending the arm in a direction it wasn’t meant to go.

The cracking noise surprised him; adrenaline must have given him strength he hadn’t counted on. He watched the man’s elbow break and felt the forearm freewheel, no longer supported by bone. The man’s pistol fell to the floorboards. The gunman followed it down, unconscious from the pain.

Harris spun and went after the submachine gunner. The man was still down but already scrambling toward his weapon. Harris’ kick took him in the solar plexus and folded him double. Harris dropped, following him down, and used his momentum and an open-palm blow to drive the man’s head into the floorboards. There was a sharp crack and this gunman went limp, too.

Leaving Harris out in the open. He stayed down and scuttled sideways to get under another table.

But no one was paying him any attention. In fact, fewer men were firing. One was Alastair, opening up with short, carefully measured bursts of gunfire. The attackers who weren’t already down had taken cover. Harris saw one of them pop up from behind a table to spray the room—then he stiffened as the point of Noriko’s sword emerged from his chest. He looked stupidly at the blade as it ­retracted. Then he collapsed out of sight.

A dozen yards away, Jean-Pierre rose so that he was partially exposed; he held a long-barrelled revolver in his right hand and what looked like a carved crystal paper­weight in his left hand. He heaved the paperweight ­behind another toppled table. As it hit, he shouted, “Stick­bomb!”

The red-suited man behind the table didn’t wait to see. He dove away from his cover. Jean-Pierre’s shot took him in the side and he lay still. The crystal paperweight did not explode.

There was a brief lull in the gunfire. Doc, his tone dry, finished his statement: “— or my associates and I will be forced to defend ourselves.”

No answer. Then one of the gunmen dropped his weapon over the side of his table and raised his hands in the air. A moment later two others did the same.

It was too late for the rest.