DEADLY DECOY

"Thank you for permitting me to come to your office," said the Damakoi, very politely.

"Sit down," I said, and glanced at the instruments on my hidden desk panel. With a member of the most fanatically dangerous race in the Galaxy sitting across from me, I didn't feel like taking chances.

Every non-radiating detector we had was focussed on the blue-skinned being before me, and every meter showed that the alien was harmless. Which didn't necessarily mean anything, of course—Holdreth Khain of Damak could easily have had something else up his sleeve. It was my job to make sure that whatever it might be, it wouldn't work.

Deadly enemies, they drank to each other's damnation.

"I realize that you don't trust me," the Damakoi said. "But I have come here merely to warn you. If you have time to listen to my story—"

He left the sentence hanging, as though waiting for a rebuke from me. But I'd had my orders.

"It's not that, Holdreth Khain," I said, keeping my voice smooth; "We realize that a high percentage of your race are loyal to the Galactic Federation. You are all fanatical in your beliefs, of course, but that is merely a racial psychological trait. There are as many of the Damakoi for us as against us. The trouble is, we can never know which is which."

It wasn't quite true. There were many more of the Damakoi against us than for us. At least seventy percent of the beings from the planet Damak hated the principles that the Galactic Federation stood for. If this alien was against us, I was in one devil of a jam.

"My people have acquired a very unsavory reputation throughout the Galaxy," the Damakoi said. "But I am not the assassin type, myself." He waved a four-fingered blue hand in a deprecative gesture. "I am in complete disagreement with the anti-Federation beliefs which are widely held on my planet."

I nodded and tried to keep my face pleasant. I had little enough love for the Damakoi—they were mostly hotheads whose suicide assassins had done too much already to wreck Galactic amity. I trusted Holdreth Khain about as far as I could throw a chimney by the smoke.

"And why did you wish to see me, Holdreth Khain?" I asked.

He seemed terribly tired and sad, as if the many sins of his countrymen all weighed heavily on his shoulders. He put a hand up to his face and brushed across it, as if to brush away his own fears and worries.

"I'll come straight to the point, Mr. Cameron. One of my fellow Damakoi—a man named Zorvash Pedrik—is on this planet. He landed in an indetectable one-man spaceship, carrying a theta bomb."

I nodded, and I could feel my jaw muscles tightening. If a Damakoi assassin could get inside the Galactic Capitol building carrying a theta bomb, the whole Council would die of radiation. A theta bomb doesn't explode; it flares. The resulting hellish radiation kills everything within half a mile of the radiation center. It consists of two little spheres of ditherium—one positive, the other negative. When they get within a few inches of each other— poof !

"How is he carrying it?" I asked. "A theta bomb has to be heavily shielded; even when they're several feet apart, the radiation is enough to kill whoever's carrying it unless they're pretty heavily shielded."

The Damakoi spread his hands in a shrug. "I do not know; all I can tell you is that I know the assassin personally. I can recognize him."

It sounded good, but I still didn't trust the being. His kind were too treacherous and fanatic. Even the ones on the side of the Galactic government were a hotheaded bunch.

Holdreth Khain said bitterly: "It will be the ghastliest outrage ever committed by a Damakoi—and that covers a lot of territory. The explosion flare will wipe out the delegates from hundreds of worlds."

"I take it you don't approve?"

Khain looked up. "My people—many of them—oppose the Multiworld Charter and the Galactic government. They will take any steps necessary to destroy the government. And in doing so, they have left a trail of blood throughout space.

"I have long disagreed—sometimes violently—with this bloody policy of assassination, I have personally removed fourteen of the attempted killers."

I tried to keep a grim smile off my face. This bird was a true Damakoi; he hated the killer policy, but saw nothing strange in the fact that he had wiped out fourteen of them himself. If he had.

"Luckily," he continued, "I happened to find out what Zorvash Pedrik intended to do. I could not kill him personally, but I have been able to get here in time to head him off. I want you to find him—before he succeeds."

I nodded slowly. "I understand, Holdreth Khain. It is a noble and honorable thing that you are doing. I'll see to it that you get a proper reward for this information."

"No reward will be necessary," the Damakoi said. "The failure and death of Zorvash Pedrik will be reward enough for me."

"All right," I said, "let's see what we can figure out."

I was sitting right on top of a powder keg, and I knew it—but what could I do but see it through?

The Galactic Capitol is a great, airy pile of a building that soars a full three hundred stories into the air. It rears up from the heart of Central City, jutting into the sky like the man-made mountain that it is. Around it, the hundreds of floodlights cast a shower of brilliant radiance over its sparkling, milk-white walls.

I had stationed armed guards at each of the ten entrances, the fastest and most quick-witted men in the Service. It would be almost impossible for a Damakoi to get inside undetected.

But "almost" isn't good enough. My nerves were tighter than violin strings, and they felt as though they were vibrating at high pitch.

I was in a hell of a touchy position. If all the Damakoi had been against us, it would have been easy—just blast every one that got within half a light year of the Capitol. Unfortunately, about three out of ten Damakoi were allies, and their insidious inside work on their own planet kept the dangerous fanatics badly crippled. We couldn't afford to kill three innocent Damakoi for every seven guilty.

I was pretty sure I knew where Holdreth Khain stood, but I couldn't take any chances.

I knew he wasn't carrying a theta bomb on him; the detectors would have picked up the radiation from the two spheres. Even if he'd had it concealed inside his body, there would be no way of putting enough lead around it to conceal it. I wished there was some way I could X-ray him, but X-rays are deadly to the Damakoi. Unlike human beings, the Damakoi can't even stand a little bit of hard radiation; they die if they're even X-rayed.

The two of us approached the immense bulk of the Grand Capitol. I was saying, "Damakoi have been upsetting the social equilibrium for over a century. It almost seems as though your people get some sort of unholy joy out of wrecking everything that other beings build, work, and strive for." It was a thinly-veiled insult, and it was meant that way; I wanted to get his reaction.

He looked at me oddly for a moment, but he said nothing.

"Come along," I said. "Let's go around and meet the guards. I want to make sure they know you. I wouldn't want to have you killed unnecessarily."

I took Holdreth Khain from gate to gate, exhibiting him to my men. At each entrance, I saw the men's eyes fill with suspicion while their manners remained polite.

"All right," I said, after we had been to all ten gates, "now the guards will recognize you. Let's start looking for Zorvash Pedrik—before he causes trouble."

Holdreth Khain nodded grimly. "Let's go."

Somewhere in the city was a killer with a theta bomb—if Holdreth Khain wasn't lying. And I had a hunch he was telling the truth about Zorvash Pedrik.

There were eight Damakoi legitimately in the city. All of them were known to be pro-Galactic men with the possible exception of a Damakoi by the name of Jedon Onomondo, who was still suspected of having anti-Government sentiments in spite of the fact that he had helped us in one or two minor matters.

But Jedon Onomondo had been in the city for three months or so; we'd had him tailed all that time. He couldn't have come to Earth in the last week in an indetectable spaceship.

Nevertheless, I ordered a double watch kept on him.

The next stop was to comb the city for radiation sources.

Ditherium is funny stuff. There are two kinds: positive and negative. When one kind gets near the other, the radiation given out increases as the distance between them decreases. At ten feet from each other, they give out easily detectable X-rays. Within a few inches, they flare violently in the hard gamma.

I knew that no Damakoi could carry them around unless they were encased in heavy lead; the radiation would kill him.

Even so, I started looking for radiation in the city. I had an odd hunch I'd find something.

It took several hours to go over the whole city. The normal sources, such as the power pile on Four Hundredth Street East, were quickly spotted and ruled out. But eventually we located a center of neutrino radiation in the Hotel Grenada, up on Skyline Drive.

"He's in the Hotel Grenada," I told Holdreth Khain. "Let's surprise him before he has a chance to set off that bomb."

The Hotel Grenada was a huge, ancient structure that had been built just after the atomic bombs had blasted the city during the Final War, and it showed every century of its age. It had once been an imposing structure, but its chromium trim had begun to peel, and the aluminum siding was whitely pitted with oxide.

I walked into the lobby and flashed my identity bracelet at the bored-looking clerk. "Do you have any Damakoi registered here?"

The clerk looked a little bewildered. "Gosh, mister, I wouldn't know a Damakoi if I saw one. We got lots of aliens registered, though."

"I am a Damakoi," said Holdreth Khain. There was a touch of pride in his voice, and I felt my nerves tighten a little more.

The clerk looked at him. "Oh, yeah! Sure. Guy checked in yesterday."

"Let's see the registration," I said.

The clerk pulled out the book and flipped it open. There was the name, big, bold, and firm.

Zorvash Pedrik. Room 706A.

I left one of my men at the desk to make sure that no one warned Room 706A, and headed for the lift tube. Holdreth Khain and I went up to the seventieth floor and looked for 6A.

I took out the key which the clerk had given me and carefully slid it into the lock, trying not to make a sound. I really didn't think anything would happen here. The Damakoi wouldn't set off the bomb this far away from the Grand Capitol; fanatics don't waste their lives on nobodies like me—not when they're out after much bigger game.

The key engaged, and as the door slid open, I stepped inside, my blaster held at the ready.

The room was empty.

The bed was made, the ash-trays were clean, the windows were closed. Zorvash Pedrik might have registered for the room, but he hadn't spent much time in it.

He was on the loose—somewhere in the city—carrying around something which could kill everyone in the Grand Capitol if it were set off.

"No sign of him," said Holdreth Khain.

"Doesn't look that way." Then I spotted something. "Hold it—what's that?"

I crossed the room to the writing desk that stood against the far wall. There was a small box on it and it was weighting down a piece of paper.

I pulled out the piece of paper. It was a note—addressed to me.

"We'll have to pick up the trail somewhere else," I said. "We better get moving."

When we reached the lobby, I phoned Ned Dearborn, my second in command. His blocky features filled the screen and his three-dimensional representation looked inquisitively at me.

I said: "Ned, get up here to the Grenada and pick up a neutrino generator in Room 706A. It was sitting on a note to me. It's harmless, but it's what the boys picked up on the detectors."

Ned smiled grimly. "Just a dummy, eh? Okay; I'll send up a squad right away. Anything else?"

"Better alert the local police," I told him. "Pick up any Damakoi that isn't known to us. In case you pick him up, get him as far away from the city as you can. Take him out and dunk him in the lake if you have to. Get a plane ready and set up a robopilot.

"Watch him closely. If he's carrying anything at all, shoot first and ask questions later. Got that?"

"Got it, Chief." His face faded from the screen.

Holdreth Khain looked agitated. "You say that the box on the table was radioactive? I might have been exposed!"

I shook my head. "Neutrino radiation isn't dangerous, not even to a Damakoi. Don't worry about it."

"But how do you know it was a neutrino generator?"

"I know what those things look like," I told him. "They are expensive as hell, and no one would go to the expense of making one just to load it with ordinary radioactives."

"I hope you're right," said the Damakoi.

I drove Holdreth Khain back to the Capitol. "Look," I told him, "there are going to be plenty of trigger-happy policemen roaming around this town for a while. I want to get you to someplace where you'll be safe, but I've got to keep you near me. If we catch Zorvash Pedrik, I want you to identify him."

"Yes, I see," he said. "And, if you'll pardon me for thinking of my own miserable life, I am afraid that Zorvash Pedrik intends to kill me for betraying him." He thought for a minute. "I would be safe inside the Capitol," he said at last.

I suppose the expression on my face must have shown him what I thought of the idea of allowing any Damakoi inside the Grand Capitol, because he said, hurriedly: "Surely you must know that I am not carrying a theta bomb or any other kind of atomic bomb. Your radiation detectors would have spotted it, would they not?"

I had to admit that they would have spotted it if he were carrying anything that would fission.

"Very well, then. You will have me under guard, will you not? Your men can watch me. They wouldn't let me get away with anything odd."

It sounded logical, and I admitted it. "Okay," I said, "we'll put you in the basement of the Grand Capitol. You'll be safe there, and if we catch the killer, you'll be right there to identify him."

We pulled up in front of the Grand Capitol, and the Damakoi and I climbed out of the car. I'll admit that I still wasn't absolutely sure of my guess about Holdreth Khain, but since I knew he wouldn't be dangerous by himself, I felt I could take the chance.

The guards had the car surrounded by the time we got out. They took a good look at the Damakoi, and went over him again with detectors and searched him physically.

"You'll have to change your clothes completely," I told him. "We had one assassin who was wearing a special plastic suit that evaporated into a poisonous gas. It was rather nasty."

"Certainly," agreed Holdreth Khain. The guards led him away to the dressing room.

I went inside and got on the phone to the Special Supplies Warehouse. The supply officer faded into the screen.

"What is it, Mr. Cameron?"

"Do you happen to have a twelve by twelve foot piece of invisible plexisteel?" I asked.

"We can cut you one in a hurry," he said.

"Cut me two ," I ordered, "and get them over here to the Grand Capitol building fast—and I really mean fast ."

"We'll have them there in seven—no, six minutes."

"Right. And send along construction men with them. I'm building a trap for a killer who thinks he's clever." I didn't add I hope , but I thought it.

I was sure that there would be no slip-ups. I'd been picked for my ability to outguess and out-think anyone and everyone who might try to hurt the Galactic Government, and so far, I'd succeeded; the Government itself had withstood everything sent against it.

Still, there had been slip-ups before. The security network protecting President Deller had failed badly when a Damakoi assassin smuggled himself into the Golden Palace. A meeting of the Solar Subcouncil had been bombed two years before despite the most painstaking precautions. There was no way of being absolutely sure—I could only do my best. After all, the Damakoi weren't stupid—fanatic maniacs, yes, but not stupid.

I carefully checked the loading of my blaster, just in case I'd need it. Then I called Ned in and gave him his orders. Ned repeated them and then said: "I hope you're right, Chief."

"So do I," I agreed. "But it's the only way to handle the Damakoi."

"That planet's a plague spot," Ned said bitterly. "We ought to send the Galactic Fleet in there with a half-dozen good-sized planet wrecking bombs, and get rid of every damned one of them once and for all."

"You're being hasty, Ned," I said. "That would be genocide, the one thing that every race fears more than anything else. The Galactic Government would fall within a week after such an order was given."

"I know it; it was just wishful thinking."

"We'll get it under inter-planetary control," I told him. "That's the sort of thing the Grand Council is working on right now. Once the proper laws are passed, we'll have Damak under our thumb and force them to be law-abiding citizens. That's why they're so anxious to blow up the Capitol before anything definite is done."

"Yeah. Well, what do you want me to do after I've set up the plexisteel?"

"Nothing," I said. "We just wait. That's all we can do. Just wait."

We waited. Every cop in town was patrolling the streets, watching for a strange Damakoi. They had full, three-D photographs of the eight Damakoi known to be in the city; anyone who didn't match one of those photos would be picked up—or shot.

Before he could do anything, the assassin would have to get inside the Grand Capitol Building, and I was fairly sure he couldn't do that without my knowing it. But if I was wrong, the Galactic Government would be ruined.

I sat in my office for hours, smoking one cigarette after another and fortifying myself with coffee. The tension on my nerves was building up hour by hour until I could hardly sit down. I wanted to slug someone, to break open a Damakoi face with a fist and strangle the life out of his killer soul.

The phone chimed and I jumped a foot before I realized what it was. I forced myself to be calm and reached over to turn on the screen.

The sharp-nosed, blue-skinned face of a Damakoi resolved itself on the screen. I recognized him immediately. It was Jedon Onomondo. He wasn't known to be absolutely trustworthy, but he had been useful to us in the past by giving us information we couldn't get otherwise.

"Hello, Jedon Onomondo," I said. "What is it?"

"Hello, Mr. Cameron." His voice was excited. "Listen, I want to talk to you."

"Go ahead," I said.

"No, not over the phone. There might be a tap. Listen, my life is in danger. You've got to come over to my place right away. You know where it is. I want to tell you something I found out—it's hot."

And he hung up without another word. I headed for his place.

Fifteen minutes later, I was going up the lift tube of a middle-class apartment house, heading toward the ninth floor. I had a sneaking hunch that I already knew what Jedon Onomondo would have to say, but I wanted to be positive. I rapped on the door of his apartment. The door opened a crack; an eye peered out.

"Come in, Mr. Cameron," Jedon Onomondo said, swinging the door wide.

I didn't step in immediately; I took a quick look around the room, keeping my hand on my blaster butt. There was no one else in sight except the Damakoi.

I went on in and prowled around the room to satisfy myself that there was no one else present. Then I searched the rest of the apartment. The place was empty.

Jedon Onomondo was sitting in the middle of his living room, nervously smoking a Terran cigarette. The Damakoi are one of the few extraterrestrials who have taken up the use of tobacco. They looked ludicrous.

I didn't sit down. "All right; what's so all-fired important that it can't be told over the phone?"

The Damakoi blew out a long plume of smoke. "I understand you're looking for one of my countrymen who intends to set off a bomb inside the Grand Capitol Building," he said.

"How do you know?"

He looked pained. "Look, Mr. Cameron, just how dumb do you think I am? I have bits of inside information. I pick things up here and there. I put them together."

"All right," I said. "What about it?"

"You're looking all over the city for a guy by the name of Zorvash Pedrik. He's supposed to have a bomb on him—a theta bomb. Right?"

I nodded. "So?"

"Well, you're wrong on two counts."

"Wrong? How are we wrong?" I watched him carefully.

"Well, you're wrong in the first place in scouring the town for Zorvash Pedrik because you've got him locked up right now. He's masquerading under the name of Holdreth Khain!"

I felt my nerves tighten again. They couldn't stand much more of this.

"That's ridiculous," I said. "Holdreth Khain isn't carrying any theta bomb. We've checked him very carefully."

"I know," said Jedon Onomondo. "That's where you're wrong in the second place. Zorvash Pedrik isn't and never has been carrying a bomb. "

I was careful with my expression. "You mean he's going to use some other method to blow up the Grand Capitol? Or is there some other trick he's going to try?"

The Damakoi shook his head. "That isn't it. What I mean is that Zorvash Pedrik is a lunatic—he's absolutely insane!"

"Tell me more."

"Zorvash Pedrik is a madman," the Damakoi repeated. "He's been in neuropsychiatric hospitals more than once. He likes to think of himself as a great savior of the people—any people. On Damak, he has denounced more than one person falsely. He has denounced anti-Government and pro-Government men alike.

"He doesn't have any reason for it; he just likes to hog glory—any kind of glory."

"Wait a minute," I said. "This doesn't follow the pattern. I don't think that our Holdreth Khain is Zorvash Pedrik."

Jedon Onomondo looked blank. "Why not?"

"It doesn't fit," I said. "If what you say about Zorvash Pedrik is right, he would come to us under his own name and denounce someone else as a bomb carrier. That's the psychological pattern of these paranoids."

Jedon Onomondo just looked at me, frowning.

"I have a hunch that Holdreth Khain is telling the truth; Zorvash Pedrik is a looney, all right, but now he's going to be a big hero in the proper way. If he sets off a theta bomb in the Grand Capitol Building, two-thirds of the people of Damak will hail him as a hero. They'll forget about the silly things he's done before. Doesn't that follow the paranoid pattern better?"

The Damakoi nodded slowly. "You may be right. The trouble is that it doesn't jibe with the information I've received from pretty reliable sources."

"Have you ever seen Holdreth Khain?" I asked.

"No," Jedon Onomondo admitted, "but I've seen Zorvash Pedrik."

"What does that prove?"

Jedon Onomondo leaned forward earnestly. "Listen, Mr. Cameron; I'll admit that we Damakoi are—well, as you Earthmen say, fanatic. We know what we believe in, and we fight for it. If that's stupid, well, it's stupid. But that's the way we are."

He stopped and took a deep breath.

"I believe in the cause of the Galactic Government. I know that very few of my people do, but I do.

"Now, I don't think we have the right to take a chance. Either the man you're holding now is an anti-Government man or he isn't. If he isn't, I'll be glad to apologize or fight him to the death, whichever you or he prefer.

"But, I repeat, we can't take any chance. We've got to know.

"So, let me take a look at him. If he is Zorvash Pedrik, you can hold him and find out the truth. If he isn't, we can check on his story and find out where Zorvash Pedrik is."

I rubbed my chin, as though I were thinking my decision over, although I had already made up my mind. After a minute, I looked up at him and said: "In other words, you won't know whether this man is Zorvash Pedrik or not unless you see him?"

The Damakoi spread his hands. "How could I?"

I stood up. "Okay, Jedon Onomondo. Let's go. I'll get him out of the Grand Capitol, and we'll take a look at him."

"Fair enough," said the Damakoi. "Let's go."

By the time we got back to the Grand Capitol, things had happened. My assistant, Ned, was waiting for me by the main gate. When my car pulled up, he leaped aboard.

"Chief, something's happened. Nothing really serious, except that that Damakoi that you left here has been hit by a high-frequency guard beam."

"How did that happen?"

Ned shrugged. "One of the guards let him walk around. Somehow, he managed to get hit by a beam. We can't figure out how; none of the ways to the guard beams are open. A freakish occurrence.

"Holdreth Khain doesn't know what happened. Evidently, he dragged himself from where he was hit. We have him in the Special Room now."

I got out of the car.

"All's well so far," I told him. "We don't need to worry about the slight burns from a guard beam. They're hard ultra-violet. They won't even touch an Earthman, except after long exposure, and they won't disable a Damakoi very long."

"This is worse than that," Ned said. "His leg is pretty badly blistered, and he's unconscious. The doctor says they're definitely guard beam burns, all right, so we don't have to worry about hard radiation." He spread his hands. "The thing is, the doctor says we can't move him."

I think I must have stood there for a full thirty seconds, saying nothing. The last little piece of the puzzle had fallen into place.

Jedon Onomondo looked puzzled. "What is a guard beam?"

"It's a high-frequency ultra-violet ray," I told him. "It's projected across a hall or door. If anyone crosses it, an alarm rings. But in the section where we are keeping Holdreth Khain, they were all supposed to be shut off because you Damakoi are so sensitive to radiation." I turned to Ned again. "It looks as though there's not much else we can do except take Jedon Onomondo into the Grand Capitol to identify Holdreth Khain. We've got to see whether he's our killer or not."

"All right," Ned agreed. He turned to the Damakoi. "You'll have to come with me. We can't allow you down there without a complete examination."

The Damakoi went along complacently, while I went down below, into the lower level of the Capitol to see what had happened to Holdreth Khain.

He was lying on a couch in one of the big reception rooms, his eyes closed, and breathing heavily. His leg was bandaged, but I knew that underneath it, the skin was a mass of blisters that looked like a bad case of sunburn.

There was a doctor standing nearby, but he looked rather helpless.

"What's the matter, Doctor?" I asked.

He frowned. "The trouble is that I don't know very much about the alien body chemistry of the Damakoi. I'm as helpless as anyone else. He's in pretty bad shape—I think."

I leaned over the supine Damakoi.

"Holdreth Khain, can you hear me?"

His eyes opened, and he blinked a couple of times. Then he looked directly at me. "I can hear you. But my—my leg hurts." He smiled feebly. "Damn you Terrans and your hellish alarm systems."

He tried to make it sound like a joke, but there was more than a trace of bitterness in his voice.

"Holdreth Khain," I said, "I'm bringing in a man to see you—one of your fellow Damakoi. We've got a sneaking hunch that he may be Zorvash Pedrik. Do you think you're up to identifying him?"

He seemed to grow a little stronger almost immediately.

"Certainly," he said. "Bring him in."

"Will you be all right, do you think?" I asked. "The doctor has to attend to another patient."

It was an out-and-out lie, but I wanted to get the doctor out of the room. The physician started to say something in protest, but I silenced him with a glance.

"I'll be all right," said Holdreth Khain.

The doctor took the hint and got out.

I pointed at a door across the room. "I'm going to bring the man in through that door. I want you to take a good look at him—the way he walks, the way he acts—notice everything about him. I want to be absolutely sure of our identification."

"Very well," said the Damakoi. "I'll watch him carefully. If it's Zorvash Pedrik, I'll know him."

"Good. I'll get him now." I went for the alien.

Jedon Onomondo had been searched thoroughly, and his clothing had been completely changed. He was wiping the dampness of perspiration from his blue, four-fingered hands with a handkerchief when I walked in.

"How is he, Mr. Cameron?" he asked.

"He'll be all right for a while," I told him. "Are you ready to take a look at him?"

"Any time."

"Come along, then."

I led him down the corridor to a drop tube, and we went down to the door of the room where Holdreth Khain lay on a couch with two guards watching him. They had their instructions.

"He's in there," I told the Damakoi. I gestured at the door. "Now, don't get violent when you see him—if he's the man we want. I know you Damakoi are likely to lose your temper at the sight of an enemy, but we've got guards in there to stop you."

Jedon Onomondo's blue skin seemed to pale a little, but he said nothing. He nodded in agreement.

I opened the door. The Damakoi went in first, and I followed him, staying well behind.

Within a few seconds, I'd know whether my reasoning had been right.

Jedon Onomondo walked across the room. It was a long room, nearly forty feet from end to end. I stayed well behind, letting the Damakoi do as he pleased.

When he was about half-way across the room, he started to run.

Holdreth Khain had been watching the approach of the other Damakoi, and, at the same instant he started to run, Holdreth Khain leaped out of the couch and ran toward Jedon Onomondo.

When they were still ten feet apart, they slammed solidly into the pair of invisible plexisteel walls I had had set up across the room.

They both screamed in hatred, and tried to batter down the walls. Then they realized what they had done to themselves and stopped.

I wasn't quite prepared for the Damakoi on my side of the wall. Jedon Onomondo turned, mouthing an oath in Damakese, and jumped at me.

I didn't avoid it in time, and we went down, rolling over and over on the floor. His arm went around my throat, squeezing off my air.

I managed to get a finger on the Damakoi's hand. I grabbed and twisted, and the arm came from around my throat.

He turned a little, and landed a solid left to my temple which filled the room with bursting stars. I shook my head to clear it and fended off another blow with my arm.

His guard was down, and I saw my chance. My left drove into the pit of his stomach, and he doubled up, all the breath knocked out of him.

Then my right fist came up from somewhere around my knees and slammed into his jaw. The hard uppercut lifted him off his feet and slammed him back against the invisible wall.

He slumped to the floor, unconscious.

Good old one-two , I thought as I rubbed my knuckles.

The guards on the other side of the wall had finally managed to hold down Holdreth Khain. Ned Dearborn burst through the door behind me.

"You okay, Chief?"

"I'm all right," I told him, "but I think we have a couple of dying Damakoi on our hands."

Ned walked over and looked at the Damakoi I had just slugged. "How did they figure they'd get away with it?" he asked.

"Actually, it was a pretty good scheme," I told him. "They knew they couldn't get one man in here with a theta bomb; they'd never get past the guards and the detectors.

"So they planted a couple of spheres of ditherium in two men—a negative sphere in one and a positive sphere in the other. All they had to do was stand close to each other, and the bomb would go off."

"What was it that tipped you off?" Ned asked.

"Several things. That phony note at the Hotel Granada, for instance. It was a plant to prove to me that there really was such a person as 'Zorvash Pedrik'—which there isn't, of course.

"In order to find the phony note, they had to give us a clue as to where it was. So they used a harmless neutrino generator, which would be spotted by our detectors.

"But a real assassin who actually knew that Holdreth Khain was working with us would have used something less harmless. Why an expensive neutrino generator, when some cheap radioactive would do? Because he didn't want to kill Holdreth Khain!

"And that meant that our friendly Damakoi was a phony."

Ned shook his head. "What a screwy idea. Get two men in instead of one."

"Exactly," I said.

"But if they maneuvered it so that one of the Damakoi could get himself in my good graces and get himself into the building—our detectors couldn't pick up just one sphere of ditherium, of course—and then put him in a position where the other half of the bomb would have to be brought to him as a logical part of the investigation—"

"Then that's why Holdreth Khain burned himself!" Ned expostulated.

"Sure. He knew where those guard beams were. He burned himself so that we couldn't move him. That forced us to bring Jedon Onomondo to him."

Ned put his hand on the invisible wall. "We had to let them go through with it, just to see what happened. When they hit these walls, they were exactly ten feet apart."

I looked at the fallen Damakoi. "At that distance," I said, "the two spheres put out just enough radiation to kill the Damakoi without hurting us. I'm afraid they don't have much time left."

THE END