There remained the official progress through Tau City. Dom would walk while the others rode, and would wear nothing but the lead and iron chain of office and seven invisible shields of various types, incorporated in the links. Most of the human worlds and one or two alien ones would have the route bugged, of course, and several had bribed Korodore. He ...

... leant forward. Someone had walked into the field of one pinhead and was looking at him. Korodore had an uneasy certainty that the man was laughing. He looked like a man who had laughed all his life.

Korodore thumbed through the guest list. Blue cloak, tall... the man was a minor official at the Board of Earth's agency in Tau City, newly-appointed...

The man in the screen had lifted one foot so that he was balancing on his right leg.

'Madern, get a focus on the guy in the blue cloak. No, better - Gralle, can you get a beam on him?'

'Got it, Ko. Shall I take him out?'

Korodore considered. Earth was still powerful. Standing on one leg wasn't a killing matter per se.

'Hold it.'

The figure had extended its left arm, pointing the first and fourth fingers directly towards, it appeared, the security room. He had closed one eye and was sighting along the extended arm like a weapon.

Let's see how you look without an optic nerve, thought Korodore.

The explosion knocked him sideways. He landed at the crouch, stripper levelled in a reflex action, and dived again as a second explosion and the beginning of a scream marked the weapon control console's transformation into a plume of incandescence.

The guests applauded politely. Dom, at his grandmother's nod, rose a few metres above the ground and said: 'I thank you all. And I ask that the spirit of holy Sadhim and the small gods of all races give me—give me—' he stopped.