The woman with the child in her arms appeared before him as in a vision. Time had now almost ceased for Mathieu. In an altered state of consciousness he recognised Cona Dallen, understood that she could and would destroy him, that she had no option but to destroy him, and in that protracted, tortured instant the weapon he was hardly aware of carrying came up level and his finger worked the trigger. A conical storm of radiation, noiseless and invisible, engulfed the woman and child.

Even before they had time to collapse, Mathieu had passed them, silently flitting upwards like a great bat, and the incident was part of his past. He reached the fourth floor landing, opened the door and saw that the length of corridor separating him from the sanctuary of his office was empty. Concealing the gun in a fold of his jacket, he forced himself to walk at normal speed until the blue trapezoid of the office door loomed large enough Co receive him, then he turned the handle and went inside.

"It's not like murder," he whispered to the uncomprehending walls, again seeing Cona Dallen and her son go down before him, knowing with a bleak certainty that the scene would play itself behind his eyes forever in an endless loop of recrimination. "It's not a bit like murder."

Chapter 3

"I hate to tell you this, Carry, but it looks like we got a bandit in 1990 Street."

The voice from the transceiver in Dallen's ear came as an urgent, intimate whisper which shook him out of a reverie. Back on Orbitsville the idea of a three-year tour of duty on Earth had seemed valid, and not only because of the benefits to his promotion schedule. Earth, the home planet, had always had a romantic fascination for him, and working there was bound to give him a better opportunity to see it than any number of package tours. But the job was far from what he had expected, his wife was refusing to prolong her visit, and he had a yearning to be home again in Garamond City, breathing the diamond-pure air which rolled in from OrbitsviUe's endless savannahs. He was disconcerted by and ashamed of his homesickness, regarding it as an immature emotion, but it was with him all the time, only abating when something happened to break the daily routine…