Abruptly he slammed the trunk, circled the car to get in.

I was where I wanted to be. My long shadow pointed straight at the car. I charged.

He looked up as I started. He looked straight at me, and then his eyes swept the curve of forest, taking their time. He bent to get into the car, and then he saw me. But his gun hand was in the car, and I was close enough. The dots on his goggles had covered more than CY Aquarii. They'd covered my approach.

My shoulder knorked him spinning away from the car, and I heard a metal tick. He got up fast, empty-handed. No gun. He'd dropped it. I turned to look in the car, fully expecting to find it on the floor or on the seat. It was nowhere to be seen. I looked back in time to duck, and his other hand caught me and knocked me away. I rolled with it and came to my feet.

He was standing in a relaxed boxer stance between me and the car.

«I'm going to break you, Bey.»

«So you can't find the gun, either.»

«I don't need it. Any normal ten-year-old could break you in two.»

«Then come on.» I dropped into boxer stance, thanking Finagle that he didn't know karate or ju-whatsis or any of the other illegal killing methods. Hundreds of years had passed since the usual laws against carrying a concealed weapon were extended to cover special fighting methods, but Bellamy had had hundreds of years to learn. I'd come up lucky.

He came toward me, moving lightly and confidently, a flatlander in prime condition. He must have felt perfectly safe. What could he have to fear from an attenuated weakling, a man born and raised in We Made It's point six gee? He grinned when he was almost in range, and I hit him in the mouth.

My range was longer than his.

He danced back, and I danced forward and hit him in the nose before he got his guard up. He'd have to get used to the extra reach of my arms. But his guard was up now, and I saw no point in punching his forearms.

«You're a praying mantis,» he said. «An insect. Overspecialized.» And he moved in.

I moved back, punching lightly, staying out of his reach. He'd have to get used to that, too. His legs were too short. If he tried to move forward as fast as I could backpedal, he wouldn't be able to keep his guard up.

He tried anyway. I caught him one below the ribs, and his head jerked up in surprise. I wasn't hurting him much … but he'd been expecting love pats. Four years in Earth's one point oh gee had put muscle on me, muscle that didn't show along my long bones. He tried crowding me, and I caught him twice in the right eye. He tried keeping his guard intact, and that was suicide because he couldn't reach me at all.

I caught that eye a third time. He bellowed, lowered his head, and charged.

I ran like a thief.

I'd led him in a half circle. He never had a chance to catch me. He reached the car just as I slammed the door in his face and locked it.

By the time he reached the left-hand door, I had that locked, too, and all the windows up. He was banging a rock on a window when I turned on the lift units and departed the field of battle.

He'd have to get used to my methods of fighting, too.

As I took the car up, I saw him running back toward the hunting camp.

No radio. No com laser. The base was a third of the way around the planet, and I'd have to go myself.

I set the autopilot to take me a thousand miles north of the base, flying low. Bellamy was bound to come after me with a car, and I didn't want to be found.

Come to that, did he have a car? I hadn't seen one.

Maybe he'd use –

But that didn't bear thinking about, so I didn't.

A glove compartment held a small bar. Emil and I hadn't depleted it much on the way out. I ordered something simple and sat sipping it,

The forest disappeared behind me. I watched the endless plain of fern grass whipping underneath. Mach four is drifting with the breeze if you're a spaceman, but try it in a car with the altitude set for fifty yards. It wasn't frightening; it was hypnotic.

The sun had been setting. Now it stayed just where it was, on the horizon, a little to my left. The ground was a blur; the sky was a frozen sphere. It was as if time stopped.

I thought of Margo.

What an actress she would have made! The confusion she'd shown after the kidnapping. She hadn't remembered the cargo mass meter; oh, no! She hadn't even known Lloobee was one of her passengers! Sure she hadn't.

She'd taken me for a fool.

I had no wish to harm her. When I told the MPs about Bellamy, she would not be mentioned. But she'd know that I knew.

I wondered what had brought her into this.

Come to that, what had brought Bellamy? He couldn't need the money that badly. Simple kicks? Had he wanted to strike at human-alien relationships? The races of known space are vastly richer for the interstellar trade. But Bellamy had lived through at least three human-kzinti wars; he'd read of things that looked like Lloobee in his children's books.

He was a man displaced in time. I remembered the way he'd said «stark naked.» I'd used a nudist's license myself on Earth, not because I believed the incredible claims for nudism's health-giving properties but because I was with friends who did. Come to that, I was nude now. (Would I have to buy a license when I reached the base?) But Bellamy had laughed when he'd said it. Nudism was funny.

I remembered the archaisms in his speech.

Bellamy. He'd done nothing seriously wrong, not until he had decided to kill Emil and me. We could have been friends. Now it was too late. I finished my drink and crumpled the cup; it evaporated.

A black streak on my goggles at the edge of my right eye.

… Much too late. The black blotch of Bellamy's fusion flame was far to the north, passing me. He'd done it. He'd brought the Drunkard's Walk.

Had he seen me?

The ship curved around toward the sun, slowed, and stopped in my path. It came down my throat. I swerved; Bellamy swerved to meet me.

He flashed by overhead, and my car, moving at Mach four, bucked under the lash of the sonic boom. The crash field gripped me for an instant, then went off.

He turned and came from behind.

Slam! And he was disappearing into the blue and green and orange sunset. What was he playing at? He must know that one touch of fusion flame would finish me.

He could end me any time he pleased. The Drunkard's Walk was moving at twice my speed, and Bellamy moved it about like an extension of his fingers. He was playing with me.

Again he turned, and again the hypersonic boom slapped me down. The blur of veldt came up at me, then receded. Another such might slap me into the fern grass at Mach four.

He wasn't playing. He was trying to force me to land. My corpse was to carry no evidence of murder.

Slam! And again the black blotch shrank against the sunset.

It was no playboy's yacht he was flying. Such an expensive toy would have been long and slender, with a superfluous needle nose and low maneuverability due to its heavy angular movement. The Drunkard's Walk was short, with big attitude jets showing like nostrils in the stubby nose. I should have known when I saw the landing legs. Big and wide and heavy, folded now into the hull, but when they were down, they were comically splay-footed, with a wide reach to hold the ship on almost any terrain.

The playboy's flashy paint job was indirection only. The ship …

The ship made a wide loop ahead of me and came slashing back.

I pulled back hard on the wheel.

The blood left my head, and then the crash field took hold. I was in a cushioned shell, and the crash field held my shape like an exoskeleton. As I curved up to meet him Bellamy came down my throat.

Give him a taste of his own medicine!

If I hadn't been half-loaded, I'd never have done it.

A crash now was the last thing Bellamy wanted. It would leave evidence not only on the car but on the Drunkard's Walk. But space pilots crack up more cars. They can't get used to the idea that in the atmosphere of a planet Mach four is fast. He must have been doing Mach eight himself.