lungs. With a two-hour cycle, the window display would have changed three times since his morning visit. By now the Heinlein should have been rotated ninety degrees and a tape cassette should be resting against the Dickens. But the cassette wasn't there; the display was still in its two o'clock position. Someone forgot, was his first hopeful thought; but it emerged stillborn. There was only one explanation, and he knew it.

Sometime in the past four hours, the bookstore had been raided.

The possibility of such a thing had always been there, of course, but it had never before happened this close to him and the shock was numbing. In the absence of conscious control his training took over, walking him past the bookstore without any visible hesitation, and by the time his brain began to clear he was two blocks away and safe.

Safe. But for how long? If the government had been watching the bookstore they knew he'd been there four times in the past two weeks. Even if they didn't yet attach any significance to that they would eventually find out about him. Surely at least one of the four Resistance leaders had been there when the Security forces came, and was probably even now undergoing verifin or neurotrace interrogation. Caine had to escape... but to where? The Resistance had established numerous boltholes, but none of them could be trusted now. Kratochvil and the others had had the best psychor training available, but even that wouldn't hold against a neurotrace reader for very long. Eventually, they would break... and when they did the government would be able to hunt him down anywhere on Earth.

It took a second for that to sink in; and as it did so Caine became aware of the thick packet in his inside coat pocket. Rienzi's ID, a small supply of money... and a round-trip ticket to Plinry. Clearly, if Kratochvil had been captured, the