Normal plastic softened when heated and hardened when cooled. This plastic worked the other way around. Thrust into boiling water, the belt and wrist bracers hardened until they were nearly as tough as steel and much lighter. Laid on a block of ice or immersed in cold water, the plastic softened until Blade could shape it between thumb and forefinger and then put it back on. Most of the plastic was still in the laboratories of the Project's Complex Two, being analyzed. Blade had kept enough for the specially designed belt and cuffs, which, when straightened out and hardened, became a spear and two daggers with sharp points. He could be wearing nothing but his bare skin and the innocent-looking plastic, and still hold a dozen men's lives in his hands. Cheeky wore a harness and belt of the same material.

Blade took off his wrist bracers, straightened them out, held each piece over the flame of a cigarette lighter, and watched them begin to harden. Suddenly Cheeky gave a soft yeeep of warning. Blade looked up, and saw that he and the feather-monkey were no longer alone.

Chapter 3

A number of dark-skinned men were climbing down the slope of the far bank of the river, moving sure-footedly from the cover of one boulder to another. They were closing in on both sides of the mouth of a canyon that opened on the riverbank. The canyon's floor was level but it twisted so sharply that Blade could see barely fifty yards into it. From somewhere up the canyon a cloud of dust rose.

Blade counted at least twenty men. Fortunately all their attention seemed to be on the mouth of the canyon. Blade's camouflage coveralls were also doing a good job of hiding him against the dark gravel of the riverbank. He easily found cover for himself and Cheeky before the men reached the bank of the river.