Heads turned when Avon entered the crowded lounge. He smiled faintly at the glances, a mixture of the envy and respect usually afforded to an Alpha grade: he had nearly forgotten what it felt like to be one of Earth's privileged class, and the reminder was far from unwelcome.

His demeanor one of practiced arrogance, he crossed to the Alpha section of the darkened lounge and slipped unobtrusively into a chair. The four other Alphas in the section took no notice of him; theirs had not been among the appraising eyes. Ignoring them in turn, Avon ordered Volarian cognac from the Delta grade cocktail waitress, then folded his hands before him on the polished table and waited.

Appearance of indifference notwithstanding, he had not failed to notice the waitress' backward glance, or the flicker of interest in her otherwise dull eyes. That too was something he had forgotten. It had been too long...

His eyes strayed to the mirrored wall behind the railed Alpha level, and silently approved of what he saw there; a man with the cultivated air of superiority bred into his class, a man wearing expensive and well-tailored clothing, deep blue, as also befitted his status.

Without appearing to do so, he studied the smoky room in the same mirror, taking in the cluster of green-clad Gammas at the bar, the grey Beta classes seated nearest his own section, and the sizeable, noisy crowd of Deltas nearest the door. They were a jumble of dirty brown tunics, many obviously feeling the effects of too many ales, a few already sprawled under tables, feeling nothing at all.

His cognac arrived, and Avon paid the waitress, deliberately oblivious to the overt invitation in her eyes. When she had gone, he wrapped a hand around the glass, not drinking but watching the door beyond the crowded bar. At the table just below him, three Beta freighter crewmen and a stunning Alpha pilot, obviously slumming, traded bawdy stories. The spacers' crude laughter sometimes drowned even the Deltas' clamor.

Avon's eyes narrowed cagily. He had chosen this table for a reason. The spacers would draw attention away from the scene about to be played out at his table.

"Drinking alone?"

The question took Avon by surprise, but if he had been startled, he did not show it. He looked up at Vila, clipboard in hand, wearing crisp Beta grey and an insipid grin. Inwardly, Avon cringed. Crossing the grade-class barriers was not prohibited, but a dim-witted Beta attracting any attention whatever in the Alpha section was the last thing they needed. Particularly since he was a counterfeit Beta.

"Sit down, you imbecile." Avon kicked at the opposing chair, annoyed that Vila had thought to come in by the back door.

Grin fading, Vila slid into the chair, casting furtive glances around him. "Sorry," he muttered under a new burst of guffaws from the nearby spacers.

Avon's near-black eyes dismissed the apology. "Don't waste my time," he said icily. "Just tell me what you've found."

"Well, nothing actually." At Avon's look, Vila hastily amended that to, "Nothing wrong, I mean. Standard magno-locks, all of them. Couldn't be easier. We ought to be home and dry."

Avon scowled at the thief's eternal optimism. "Nothing is that easy," he said. "I want to know the weak points, Vila. All of them."

Vila stiffened, affronted, and tried to look Avon in the eye, but he wilted under the impact. "I know my job," he told the tabletop. The strains of an inebriated ballad floated over from the Delta section, and Vila stole an envious look in that direction. "I said I'd hold up my end and I will," he went on. "You just worry about your part with the computers, genius. After all, it isn't every day you get a second chance at the crime of the century, is it?"

Avon favored him with a glacial stare. "Nothing must go wrong this time, Vila. The Federation Banking Cartel is going to be more than impoverished -- it will collapse altogether. A major blow for our fearless leader's celebrated cause."

Vila ignored the snide reference to Blake and passed the clipboard across the table. "Well, the locks won't be a problem. As long as you come up with the computer entry codes, I can handle the magno circuitry with no problem."

"No problem there either," Avon said. "Orac has already determined the codes; all I have to do is call the primary banking computer and verify them."

"Won't that be detected?"

"Not the way I plan to do it."

Vila slumped in his chair as another burst of laughter came from the table below. "I'm not sure I like this," he complained.

"You just finished saying that there wouldn't be any problem."

"I don't mean that. I mean Liberator going off and leaving us alone down here. Forty-eight hours is a long time to be stranded. What if something goes wrong? What if somebody recognizes us? What do we do then?"

"I'll tell you what to do now. Keep your head down and your mouth closed. That way our chances of succeeding might be considerably greater."

Vila scowled. "My chances would be greater still with a ready chance of teleporting out of here."

Avon passed the clipboard back to him, smiling crookedly. "Skirting Earth's defenses under the detector shield to drop us off was risk enough. Blake will be back on station by the time we need him. Or...don 't you trust our vaunted 'commander' to keep his word?"

Glowering, Vila suppressed the obvious retort. More than I trust you. Aloud, all he said was, "I still don't like it."

"How remarkably astute."

"It was all Blake's idea."

"Isn't it always?"

"I didn't volunteer."

"You never do."

Vila's intended rejoinder faded mid-word as his eyes caught the mirror's reflection of two Federation troopers joining the Gamma grades at the bar. He went rigid, narrowly resisting the urge to turn and make certain they were really there.

Avon, having noticed the uniforms some time before, quelled Vila's effort to rise with a warning glare.

"Leave now, and you definitely will attract their attention."

Nervously, Vila settled back into his chair. "Are we just going to sit here, then?"

"You are." Avon rose slowly, dropping a single coin beside the untouched glass of cognac. "I'll meet you outside central bank headquarters in one hour. And Vila..."

The thief jumped, still watching the troopers in the mirror. "What?"

"Come alone."

Ignoring Vila's glare, he turned and strode toward the back door. When he had disappeared from sight, Vila snatched the glass and downed the drink in one swallow.

"Very funny," he grumbled, barely stifling a hiccup. "I could get you a booking in Space City. Psychotic Embezzler's Revue. Probably fold within ten minutes..."

The narrow alley behind the bar smelled of lime and damp concrete. Avon followed it north, deliberately away from his destination and further into the cramped, sequestered ghettos that made up the Delta sector of the city.

He had not travelled far when he became certain that someone had indeed followed him from the cocktail lounge. A shadow, indistinct but definitely there, vanished back into the night each time he turned. Cursing, Avon hoped that his 'tail' would turn out to be something simple -- an ambitious Delta grade hunting for an Alpha's purse, for example. Anything but a Federation guard.

One hour to lose him... or her. Avon quickened his pace, slipping artfully round several corners in succession. Crumbling brick walls surrounded him; black puddles splashed underfoot. His sense of direction blurred with the sixth or seventh turn. Ironic to lose oneself in the process of attempting to lose another. And his pursuer undoubtedly had the advantage of local knowledge.

Another corner, and another. Avon broke abruptly into glaring light and halted, blinking in momentary confusion. Street light. He had stumbled onto a main thoroughfare, or whatever passed for it round here. Shabby storefronts glowed a sickly yellow under the sparsely-placed lamp posts. No one was about. Avon turned left, for lack of a better direction, and continued at a brisk pace, still not certain where he was or whether he had lost his companion.

Artificial stars glittered brightly in the overhead dome. Too brightly, he thought sardonically. No atmosphere would have admitted that much light....

Brighter lights flashed in sequence up ahead, and Avon smiled to himself. A theatre. The oscillating marquis touted a tri-dee feature unimaginatively titled "Pollux Playmates." He paid the eight-credit entry fee without bothering to glance at the android vendor, and found his way through a lobby full of battered food dispensers to the far aisle door.

No one had come into thc building after him.

Pausing to make sure of that, he moved on into the auditorium, pausing once again to allow his eyes to adjust to the darkness. He made his way down the aisle then, never once glancing at the glowing cube of the tri-dee screen, where something or someone was engaged in what sounded like a deep-breathing exercise.

A guttering neon arrow marked an exit at the front of the amphitheatre. Avon shoved aside a musty velvet curtain and emerged into another alley, even damper and filthier than the others he'd travelled this evening. He checked his chronometer, squinting at it in the murky light. Forty minutes left...

Which direction was which? He had nothing to navigate by, and no familiar landmarks. And to ask someone would be a risk, not to mention embarrassing. Undecided, he chose a direction and walked. And though he saw no more shadows, heard no indications of pursuit, the sixth sense impression that someone continued to trail him remained. He tried to dismiss it -- a last minute case of nerves -- but the feeling stubbornly refused to succumb to his logic, and persisted.

He stopped abruptly, and listened. Something had moved in the concrete corridor ahead of him. Avon froze, squinting until he made out a human figure, entering the alley from a door. It weaved drunkenly, fell, got up again.

Dreamhead... or an overzealous soma patron.

The man staggered toward Avon and moved on past him, oblivious. Avon waited until his scraping footsteps had faded. Then, inspiration having struck, he approached the door the man had come from, turned the grimy knob, and slipped inside.

"And what is your pleasure, sir?"

Avon nearly jumped at the abrupt address. The soma hostess, an enticing assembly of feminine attributes, wore nothing but an obligatory smile. His eyes appraised her once, quickly, before he pressed a coin into her outstretched hand. He wondered fleetingly where she would put the money.

"Your vidphone," he said flatly. Then, on an afterthought, he added a second coin to the first. "And a glass of your best adrenalin and soma."

She nodded. "Adrenalin and soma it is, sir."

Music, or what Avon supposed was meant to be music, literally shook the dirty brick walls. Smoke, and an incredible tangle of human bodies, some moving, some not, jammed the interior. The hostess raised a hand, signalling a compatriot somewhere in the bar-well central to the room. The hand came back to beckon Avon forward.

"The vidphone is this way."

She led him through the haze, around -- and in some cases over -- clustered patrons in various stages of both intoxication and undress. Avon carefully masked his disgust, and kept his eyes on the back of the hostess' head.

They reached an alcove on the far side of the room, where an ancient and well-scarred vidphone sat forlornly in residence, and Avon caught her arm before she could leave him. A ten-credit note suddenly joined the two coins in her palm.

"That," be said close to her ear, "is for the location of your third exit."

When denial loomed in her eyes, he promptly matched the ten-credit note with another. "And... a direction. South."

Her eyes travelled over his clothing then, as though seeing him for the first time, then came to rest on the notes, suspicion warring with greed.

"I'm not with the Administration," he assured her. "In fact, I suspect I am probably trying to elude them. I need an unwatched exit. And you have one."

The suspicion never quite left her brown eyes. An Alpha defying the Administration was even more uncommon than Alphas slumming in soma dens. Loyalty and respectability were supposed to be bred into them, after all. And here, obviously, was some sort of genetic throwback, devoid of the finer virtues. That, or a very foolhardy Federation spy...

Another unclad female delivered a smudged glass of adrenalin and soma to the hostess. She handed it to Avon.

"Make your call," she said. "Enjoy your drink. When you're ready, I'll be here."

Avon met her eyes, non-verbally sealing the agreement, then silently watched her melt back into the smoke. Placing the drink on the vidphone's ring-stained counter, he slid into the bench, fished another coin from his pocket, and fed the meter. In moments, he had utilized Orac's access codes to reach the central banking computer, verify the door-entry sequence, and destroy all trace of the inquiry. A very useful gadget, was Orac. He wished sullenly that the little perspex computer had been around three years ago, when he had tried this scheme for the first time. How different his life might have been...

He sipped idly at the drink, grimaced, and left it on the counter to go in search of the hostess.

Federation Banking's monolith looked just the same as he remembered it: a towering syntheglass monument to Alpha technology and egotism stretching nearly to the dome's false sky. Avon approached it with apprehension, still nagged with the uncomfortable sixth sense of being watched.

But there was no one. He'd made certain of that, hadn't he? As certain as he could be. Nerves. That's all it was. That, and the anticipation of finally completing what he had begun here three short years ago. For once, Blake's crusade and his own could ably coincide, even if Avon's motivations were admittedly a shade less altruistic.

He smiled, tight-lipped, and amended the thought. All right, not altruistic at all. He cared nothing for Blake's bleeding-heart campaign to free the oppressed masses. Nor did he want anything of Blake's empire-toppling, though he would enjoy seeing the Federation brought low. Oddly enough, he didn't even want the money -- this time. Avon's reasons for embracing this scheme were personal, and singularly simplistic. Though the faceless Federation bureaucracy would never know why, he wanted them to pay, for the betrayals, for his own arrest, interrogation and humiliation. And for Anna.

Especially for Anna.

The sight of FBS's black tower, a glittering mirror of false starlight, brought Anna all too vividly to mind. The last time he had been here....

Avon forced the memory away, concentrating instead on a final reconnaissance for his phantom pursuer. But he found nothing, saw no-one. It was ten minutes past time for his meeting with Vila.

"You're late!"

The thief's sharp whisper startled Avon as he approached their appointed rendezvous position at the rear of the imposing tower.

"I was detained," Avon said curtly. "Temporarily. Did you bring your tools?"

Vila's eyes narrowed, his expression becoming a near-smirk. "Do I look stupid?" He rushed to curtail Avon's snide response with another question. "Did you verify the access codes?"

Avon's grin came easily, ice-hard and totally without humor. "Of course."

"Well, would you mind getting on with it, then? All this hanging about is giving me high blood pressure! Not that you'd care..."

Avon turned towards the inset door and its computer-controlled access panel. "So long as it doesn't affect your fingers," he said drolly, and began coding Orac's stolen sequences into the lighted keypad.

The inner halls, though deserted at this hour, were all the same well-populated with spectres from Avon's past. Tynus, Anna... himself an age younger and in so many ways naive. He banished them with an effort, concentrating instead on making certain that Orac's codes had effectively rendered the surveillance cameras inoperative.

Still more codes gained them access to a service lift and the twelfth level, where signs warned smugly that alarms would sound if visitors were not cleared by computer security prior to entry. Avon's tampering at the security console promptly deflated the threat.

"Aren't there any human watchmen?" Vila wondered in a loud whisper.

"That's the trouble with relying entirely on computers," Avon replied. "In the right hands, they can be remarkably stupid."

Vila's expertise got them through the final door. The magno-lock on the access to Computer Control surrendered to his deft persuasion in less than four minutes. Once inside, the thief carefully reactivated the lock -- to discourage any unannounced company -- while Avon slipped into a chair before a quite-familiar console and set about bringing the primary computer on-line.

In a moment, a crisp feminine voice had informed him that its systems were all functioning at 100% efficiency. A trifle amused at the boast, Avon said, "Thank you, Io." Then, straight to business, he added, "Activate visual display and scroll Access Control List for program ALCOR."

Vila wandered to peer over Avon's shoulder as Io obligingly turned on her monitors, and names began marching from top to bottom in rapid succession. Avon patiently scanned each of them, waiting for one that he recognized. Surely, after only two years, there would still be someone...

"Hold," he said sharply, and the crawl froze in place on the screen. He remembered Tala Furn, but she was probably too intelligent to be of use in this instance. He let the names scroll once more, and again stopped them.

There. Emil Gaven ought to do nicely. He was precisely the variety of gold-bricking sycophant that a scheme like this needed to succeed.

"Cancel ACL," he told the computer. "Confirm that Emil Gaven has editing clearance for ALCOR file."

Io's unenthusiastic voice replied, "Confirmed."

"He can amend and revise the accounts?"

The merest shade of annoyance seemed to tinge the response. "Affirmative."

"Good." Avon's smile was utterly predatory. "Open new file," he ordered. "Name it... the Trojan Horse."

Behind him, Vila's brow furrowed. "The what horse?"

"Trojan," Avon repeated without turning, and his fingers began moving rapidly over Io's keyboard. "A ploy from a forbidden history text with which the Federation is about to become intimately familiar."

Vila snorted. "I don't see how a horse is going to topple the whole banking system."

Avon's hands never stopped moving, almost caressing the keys. "Not a horse," he said wryly. "An ass. When Emil Gaven comes to work tomorrow, he will discover a new text-edit file in the computer with his name on it, left by an anonymous benefactor. When he opens it, he will also unwittingly open a rider file -- Trojan Horse. And that..."

He trailed off, and was immediately lost in the creation of the rider program. For him, the rest of the room disappeared.

Vila, losing interest in the Trojan whatever-it-was, wandered away to explore the computer room for anything potentially more engaging. A wall of service lockers captured his attention almost immediately. While Avon went on coaxing computer miracles from Io, Vila set to a little enthusiastic coaxing of his own.

The first lock surrendered to his talented touch as swiftly as Io had yielded to Avon's. Nothing much of interest inside, though. Why bother to lock up a lab coat, two books and a day-old protein bar? Then again...

The food bar disappeared into an inner pocket, scarcely settled before the next locker was open. This one offered sheafs of paper, goggles, a pair of old shoes and a small silver-plated flask filled with real whiskey. Privileged characters, these Alpha-grade bankers. He slipped the flask into an unoccupied pouch on his utility belt and went on.

He found little of interest in the next five compartments, though a ring, two checkbooks and several credit notes found their way into his various pockets. The sixth compartment contained a thin-barrelled handgun of a type Vila remembered having seen before. He disliked guns as a rule, but Blake bad forbidden the Liberator handguns on this mission, as they were too conspicuous. And suddenly Vila had found that he was more vulnerable than ever without one.

The gun in the locker was small but lethal, designed for maximum high-powered range with minimum bulk. It fired heavy-gauge 9 mm projectiles, a box of which lay beside it in the locker. Vila appropriated both. He'd just tucked them into another pocket when abruptly an alarm began screaming overhead.

Avon's hands froze over Io's console. "What the....? Vila, what did you do?"

"Nothing! I did nothing! I thought you did something!"

Swearing, Avon went back to programming the computer, fingers moving with renewed urgency.

Panicked, Vila scuttled to his side. "Avon! We've got to get out of here!"

Avon answered him stiffly, his attention elsewhere. "It isn't ready yet."

"Well I am! Forget the rest -- let's go before somebody comes!"

"You go. I intend to finish this."

Vila shifted feet nervously, casting anxious glances at the door. "Avon, don't be an idiot. Someone must have tailed one of us from the bar. They're on to us -- we've got to get out!"

"Then go!" The words were spat at him so vehemently that Vila jumped and side-stepped rapidly to the door.

"Avon..."

His final plea ignored, Vila abandoned all semblance of loyalty and fled, careening through a mad maze of corridors until he found an outside door. Its lock gave up the ghost in a record fifteen seconds, and with the alarms still howling in his ears, he burst out into the night air and sprinted for all he was worth.

Conscience caught up with him two blocks later. Conscience, and the realization that something had been very odd about all this. There hadn't been any guards. No-one in the streets. No-one outside. No Federation troops at all.

Something was very wrong here...

Breathing hard, Vila peered out of a doorway alcove at the deserted street. It was disturbingly quiet. The FBS monolith stood two blocks behind him, seemingly unchanged. No lights had come on. Vila could no longer hear the alarm.

He fumbled in his utility belt for his teleport bracelet, and holding it in unsteady fingers, thumbed the communications control.

"Avon... Avon, are you there?"

No-one answered.

Vila started to try it again, but the belated thought that his transmission would undoubtedly be picked up by the Federation made him tuck the bracelet hastily away instead.

He stepped cautiously out of hiding, intending to go after Avon, but he was forced immediately back again by a sudden burst of light and sound. The noise was deafening -- a roar like the afterblast of a ship's launch. Blinding light flashed once over the street beyond him, raced away and returned to search again. The beam -- and the sounds -- had come from the heights of the FBS tower. From the roof. While Vila stole a measured view around the corner of his alcove, something lifted from that roof and rose noisily 'sky'-ward, pulling the search beam with it like a glowing tether. Its roar became a loud hollow whistle as it banked and slewed away from the building to begin slow, determined circles around its perimeter.

Vila slumped against the concrete wall and gave in to a shudder. Long ago, in the warrens where he'd grown up, he had seen craft like this used to hunt down escaped prisoners and dissidents. The Deltas had called the flyers 'wasps.' An apt, if not terribly original description.

No wonder there hadn't been any guards. Why pay for human troops when a machine could do the job as well? A machine undoubtedly piloted by mutoids. That thought made Vila shudder, too, and he wondered frantically whether to risk the communicator again, or...

Light swept past him as the flyer shrieked overhead, and Vila melted into a corner, willing himself invisible. He had to get out of here, had to find somewhere he could go to ground until Liberator was back in teleport range. But where? He didn't know this city as Avon did, and with the wasp up there floodlighting the streets at every turn...

Floodlighting the streets. The lower ground. If he went up...

Finally abandoning his cubbyhole, Vila ran again, hugging the building as though it might somehow allow him to blend with its concrete indifference. He slipped around two corners, and dived into hiding behind a rubbish bin when the flyer passed once more overhead, its engines keening like some hideous, wounded alien. Vila was up again almost immediately, hunting for the access panel he'd known would be somewhere in the rear. There! That would be it. The yellow door with the Gamma engineering symbol. There would be a crawlway, and a ladder to the roof.

Even in the dark, the lock was child's play. Vila was promptly on his way up the narrow chute, glad for the fact that this building wasn't a forty-story megalith. Typically, the service grades were provided with only a ladder to access the various levels. What did repairmen need with lifts, anyway? The chute was humid, though, and smelled of silicon lubricant. Nine levels later, gasping for air, Vila had reached the roof.

The wasp flew in agitated circles nearby, its beam scouring the streets. It wasn't until he had crawled to the edge of the roof to peer over that Vila realized that it had spotted something -- someone -- running full tilt for the Delta sector.

Heedless now of any risk, Vila wrestled the teleport bracelet back out of its pocket and frantically thumbed the control.

"Avon... Avon!"

Panicked, he altered frequencies and tried again. "Blake! Come in, Liberator, we need emergency teleport, now!"

Neither channel responded.

The figure illuminated by the search beam darted between buildings, but the wasp moved inexorably after, narrow alleys no deterrent to its probing light.

"Avon, you incredible idiot! Don't you know anything but the inside of a computer circuit?"

Vila scrabbled up from the rock surface and stealthily made his way to the catwalk that led between buildings. He had somehow to make his way over there, to get to Avon before... Well, it ought to be easier inside the Delta sector. The buildings were closer together and nearly all of the same height. This still didn't help on the catwalks, though. Vila Restal had never been terribly fond of high places.

He lost sight of Avon during his scramble over rooftops. The wasp, however, had not. When Vila had crept as close as he dared, it was to see the insectoid hovereraft sweep low into one of the broader Delta streets, steam jetting from its dorsal vents as it hurtled after its quarry, whistling in mechanical rage.

Avon was still running, but Vila could see his strength flagging. He'd moved in a wide arc, doubled back, tried to throw off the wasp with a number of maneuvers, none of which had worked. Now he was charging toward the building from which Vila watched, and Armageddon wasn't far behind him.

Stretched out on his stomach, Vila flattened himself into a depression on the roof, scarcely daring to breathe, let alone peer over at the drama being played out below him.

"Well, now you're here, Vila," he muttered dismally to himself, "what the hell do you do now?"

He saw Avon stumble and fall. Like an enormous bird of prey, the wasp bore down on him, energy bolts spewing from its gun turrets.. The plasticrete street erupted into flames inches from where Avon lay. He was up and running once more before the hovereraft could fire again, but it was nearly on top of him now. Closing for the kill. Vila watched in horror as it herded Avon, with sporadic laser bursts, directly towards the thief's vantage point, drowning him in the blinding light of the search beam until it had driven him against the cinderblock wall of the neighboring building. His attempts to move in either direction were met with further warning shots.

Oddly, the wasp backed away now, the scream of its retro engines pulling it upward and back, so near to Vila's hiding place that the energy backwash ruffled his hair. He ducked again, safe in his shadowy cradle as the thing roared past, still moving upward.

What was it playing at?

Avon, apparently as puzzled by this action as Vila had been, began cautiously to move again. But the wasp was far from finished with him, and spat another gout of blue flame at the pavement near his feet, forcing him back to the confining wall. Vila heard a horrible grinding sound begin to emanate from the hovering machine, and wondered sickly if it had finally tired of the cat and mouse game and decided to dispense with its trapped victim. There had to be something he could do...

Belatedly, he remembered the gun, and with trembling fingers extracted it from his pocket. He had to roll over to get at the ammunition, which he'd stowed in a different pocket. While he clumsily loaded the weapon, he saw something long and threadlike begin to flow from beneath the wasp's gun turrets. Whatever it was streaked at Avon, who dodged wisely out of the first volley's path. The filaments struck the wall and slithered harmlessly to the ground. The shiny strands glittered strangely in the harsh glare of the searchlight. Vila's question at that was answered as he slammed the last of his cartridges into place, and the wasp fired another set of glistening fibers at Avon, driving him in the other direction along the wall. These also missed, but Vila could see that the filaments were fitted at intervals with small 'starbursts' -- clusters of thin, razor-sharp needles, in all probability drug-tipped. Whether or not the poison would be lethal would depend on the Federation's whim -- and whether the prisoner had been determined to have any value as a live captive.

Vila fought to steady his hands and aim the gun. If he could somehow hit the bloody thing's fuel supply...

More strands tore from the wasp's underside as Vila squeezed the trigger. His first shot missed, but he saw that the filaments had not. Almost like live things, they had twined themselves around Avon and immediately tightened, tripping him. He fell sidelong, in an ungraceful heap, and his struggling seemed only to tighten the bonding further. In a moment, he had ceased to fight it and lay still, whether unconscious, dead or simply resigned Vila had no way to tell.

He took aim with the gun once more as the wasp ceased its grinding noise and began to descend to street level, presumably to collect its now-acquiescent prize. Vila tried again to hit the fuel tank. This time his shot glanced harmlessly off the thing's metal-plated side. He followed it with two more rounds, still to no avail.

The wasp let out an ear-piercing scream, aware now that it had been attacked, and halted its descent. Retros fired, spinning it round to face Vila, and lifted it once more, the pooling light-beam coming along to rake the rooftops in a frenzied search. In a moment, the entire smoking, screaming mass was bearing directly down on Vila.

Forcing back the almost-uncontrollable urge to run, Vila kept the gun steady and continued to fire, not sure what he would do when the last of the cartridges was spent.

There'd be no time to reload, and he had already seen that there was almost no way to escape this monster once it had you in its sights.

Laser bursts pounded the rooftop, burning a pathway to his hiding place. Vila was forced to roll out of the way as the craft came level with his roof, spewing its blue death. Praying that his weapon was not empty yet, he took aim at the underbelly as it drew overhead, and squeezed the trigger yet again.

He couldn't hear the shot in the din of the engines, and for a terrible moment he was sure that the gun had been empty after all. But the wasp's fuel tank suddenly blossomed a hideous crimson-orange, and bellowing, it overfiew the roof to begin a mad, careening spin toward the ghetto beyond.

Vlta cringed against a concrete pillar as the machine dropped out of view. Seconds later, the explosion of its impact rocked the building beneath him. Greasy smoke belched in ugly clouds toward the sky and blotted out the artificial stars.

Vila refused to ponder how many Delta lives his action might just have cost. He struggled unsteadily to his feet and hunted for a hatch that would lead down to the street. He had to reach Avon before the backup troops were called in to take over.

The computer expert was conscious when Vila reached him, but he was already flushed and perspiring from whatever drug had tipped the fiber needles. Vila severed the tensile bindings in several places with a laser knife from his kit, and, careful not to touch the starbursts, hastily pulled the strands away. Avon gasped as the penetrating barbs were extracted, and began to mutter something.

"Quiet!" Vila whispered urgently. "There'll be patrols here any minute. Don't make any noise."

As he cut and pulled the last of the filaments, Avon said weakly, "Vila?" as though he hadn't recognized his rescuer until then. Vila didn't answer. He was preoccupied with wondering how to get them under cover before the patrols arrived -- somewhere safe enough to wait out the remaining hours until Liberator returned.

Sirens warbled shrilly in the distance, and Vila could already hear anguished cries from the site of the inferno a few short blocks away. He closed his mind to that, and concentrated on maneuvering Avon into a sitting position.

"Come on, now. On your feet. We've got to move and you're going to have to walk."

Feebly, Avon fought the thief's hands away. "I... can't, Vila."

"Oh fine. Just lie down there and die then, will you? After all the trouble I've gone to? In case it escaped your notice, genius, I just saved your over-educated Alpha arse."

Avon's eyelids drooped, and Vila narrowly prevented his effort to collapse back onto the pavement. "Oh no you don't!" Fear crept back into his voice then. "Oh, please Avon. Wake up!"

He shook the other man's shoulders until the dark eyes fluttered open again, then slipped his arms under Avon's and hauled him forcibly to his feet, half-dragging him towards the nearest alley.

"Walk, damn you." He'd almost sobbed the words, his own terror mounting as the sirens -- and the backup patrols -- drew nearer. Choosing a direction away from the crash site, he turned in at the alley's first intersection and pulled Avon after. They wouldn't be able to get far at this rate. Avon's feet scarcely moved at all, and his weight on Vila's shoulder was increasing with every labored step.

Desperately, the thief searched the alley walls for a door, any door. There were none along this passage, only steel-barred windows too far above ground level to reach. He rounded yet another corner, and spied what he'd hoped to find, not far down the way -- a cellar door, with steps leading down.

Manhandling Avon to the doorway, he left him on the steps just long enough to coax the lock open. Then they were inside, a cool, pitch-black place, and the heavy door had thudded shut on the chaos they had left in their wake.

The silence and total darkness was disconcerting after the ordeal of light and sound, but Vila welcomed it. He huddled in the gloom beside Avon for several moments, waiting for any signs of pursuit outside the door. When none came, he risked the dim light of his pocket torch to examine their surroundings.

Oily brick walls... storage crates... ancient plumbing that dripped somewhere with a hollow, pinging echo. The acrid odor of lime assailed Vila's nostrils. His own breathing sounded thunderously loud. Something squeaked, and a plump rat skittered out of the path of the torch beam, eyes flashing blood-jewel red.

Avon's soft moan brought the light around to face him. Vila gingerly lifted an eyelid, found the pupils contracted and unresponsive to light. He wished he knew what the hell that meant. He wished Cally were here. Then he decided that wishing was useless and shook Avon by the shoulders again.

"Come on, Avon. Don't die on me now. Who would I swap insults with then? Avon, wake up!"

It wasn't working. If he'd only had some water, or... wait a moment. He dug into one of his utility pouches, produced the stolen silver flask and hastily unscrewed the cap. Avon coughed and started choking on the potent liquor, giving Vila the fleeting fear that his brainstorm had backfired and merely dealt the death blow. But the coughing fit subsided and blearily Avon's eyes came open, until they were almost focused on him.

"Where..."

Vila set the penlight, still glowing, on the floor between them. "How the hell do I know? Someone's damp smelly cellar by the look of it, and not even a decent wine keg in the lot. We almost got killed back there you know, no thanks to you."

Avon tried to look around him, but promptly abandoned the effort and brought his unsure gaze back to Vila. "Liberator," he said faintly.

"Still several hours away," Vila told him, wishing that it weren't so. "If we're lucky, the crash will keep the stormtroopers busy long enough to delay the search for us. If we're not lucky..." He shuddered and refused to complete that bleak line of thought. No point in it.

Avon was muttering again, a string of half-intelligible phrases about the computer and the program not being complete.

"What difference does that make now?" Vila demanded.

Avon seemed to rally at that. The dark eyes blazed. "All the difference, Vila," he said through clenched teeth. "All the difference in the world. I have to go back... long enough to finish the program."

Vila's mouth dropped open. "You're raving," he accused hotly. "I had to carry you in here. If you think I'm going to carry you back to that place you're even more insane than I am. Forget it!"

Avon's determination held. "Then you go," he said.

"Me? Look, Avon, forget about it. I'm a thief, not a computer programmer, and besides,
walking back into Federation traps is against my religion. When it comes to escaping or dying, I'm a devout believer in running away!"

"You don't have to program," Avon persisted. His words were growing thick again. "Just implement what part is there. Mutoids... stormed the building before I could finish. The codes are in my pocket. Please, Vila."

"I'm telling you I don't know how!" Vila protested. Avon resorting to pleading with him was even more rattling than Avon believing he could manage such a thing. "And why would I want to anyway? It's suicide going back there!"

"...won't be looking for us there," Avon argued. "Three words, Vila. Tell Io... 'Run Trojan
Horse'. A partial program can still damage them enough to..."

His voice failed him, and he slumped against the wall, breathing hard against the soporific effect of the drug. It won the battle scant seconds later, and his chin fell forward to his chest.

Inexpertly, Vila checked for vital signs, and satisfied that Avon merely slept, maneuvered him gently into a more comfortable, lying-down position. He treated himself to a healthy dose of the flask's contents then, and glowered at Avon before fishing the codes from his pockets. Avon owing him a favor had a certain appeal. Still...

"Now I know why I never wanted to be a hero," he grumbled. "Raving loonies, the lot of you. Defect in the Alpha gene stock, probably."

He took another long pull from the flask, then gazed at it before timidly tucking it under Avon's hands, resting on his chest. He did the same with the pilfered protein bar, then rose, leaving the pocket torch glowing on the floor. The gun he kept (friendly was one thing, foolhardy was another), and cursing himself for ten kinds of idiot, he went to find his way back to the FBS tower.

A sound woke Avon. Something muffled... a tinny, musical tone. He blinked, aware that daylight was filtering hazily into the cellar from a high window somewhere. He tried to read his wrist chronometer. The numbers blurred together. He tried to sit up and failed that, too. Something... two somethings... slid from beneath his hands and thumped to the damp concrete floor. Some sort of flask... Vila had had that. Where was Vila? Too hard to think... to remember. His head hurt.

The sound came again, three times in succession. It was close. Very close. At the next persistent series of chimes, he fumbled open one of the pouches on his utility belt and drew out the signalling teleport bracelet. He'd no sooner touched the communications stud than Blake's concerned voice said, "Avon, Vila! Respond please, are you there?"

Before Avon could formulate an answer, Vila's voice cut in from somewhere else. "Where the hell else would I be?" He sounded out of breath, panting.

"Vila!" That was Blake again. "Are you all right? Where's Avon? We've got two separate readings..."

"Will you cut the chatter and just bring us up -- please?" Vila entreated. "There's a squadron of distinctly unfriendly persons on my tail and they aren't..."

The teleport effect interrupted the thief mid-word, and Avon promptly found himself in the somewhat compromising position of lying supine in Liberator's teleport bay with a panting, armed Vila standing poised beside him.

"What happened down there?" Blake's urgent demand came the moment they were solid again.

Vila, still gasping, eased the gun -- and himself -- to the floor. He drew in a deep breath and said, "Do you mind if I talk about it later? I'm in the middle of having a nervous breakdown just now."

'Later' turned out to be little more than two hours. Avon, still disoriented but recovering, sat on the flight deck couch and listened to an incredulous Jenna question Vila.

"You shot it down? An A-14 'wasp' reconnaissance flyer, and you shot it down?"

"Surely," Cally added, "if it were that easy, everyone would have done it?"

"Whoever said it was easy?" Affronted, Vila sat with his arms crossed and his chest puffed out. "One person in a million could have done what I did!"

"And you're forgetting," Avon informed them quietly, "that the Federation are accustomed to dealing with a suppressant-dosed population. One that can normally be depended on not to fight back."

"There you are," Vila said triumphantly. "Came up against more than they could handle when they took me on, I can tell you!"

Avon beamed a rare smile in Vila's direction. "Quite," he said.

Jenna and Cally exchanged puzzled looks. Avon complimenting Vila was a phenomenon for which no-one had prepared them.

"Orac's got the data now." Blake, who had been standing apart from the group on the couches, called their attention to Liberator's main viewscreen, where a series of numerical columns had appeared and begun to travel upward. Avon studied the figures intently while Orac's operating whine continued in the background.

"Orac," Blake said. "Summarize status of Federation banking assets. What precisely does all that activity mean?"

*I should think,* the computer replied snappishly, *that would be obvious.*

Rubbing the back of his neck wearily, Blake cast a sidelong look at the rest of his assembled crew. "To you and Avon, perhaps," he rasped. "Would you care to enlighten the rest of us?"

*I fail to understand why you must continually misuse my considerable capabilities for activities which do not--*

Orac's protest died with a decelerating whimper when Avon, coming up off the couch, snatched out the key. The figures promptly vanished along with Orac's power hum. "What this self-inflated electronic pain is trying to say," Avon told them, "is that the currency base on fourteen major Federation worlds has just dissolved into thin air. Not quite the 'blow for freedom' we had planned, but..."

"But it will do." Blake was grinning. "We may not have defeated them yet, but we've hurt them where it counts -- in the pocket."

Avon went back to the couch, Orac's key still in his hand, and studiously avoided meeting the cagey look in Vila's eyes.

Blake leaned on the communications console, his grin still intact. "Well done, Avon."

"Yes," Vila chirped smugly. "I'd say it was. Very well done."

Avon, reveling in the baffled looks this unaccustomed interplay evoked from the others, looked knowingly at the thief.

That's one I owe you, he thought.

But aloud, all he said was, "Thank you, Vila."
 
 

--End--