"So we blow 'em?"

Ryan grinned wolfishly. "Clean out the nest, Jak. What we're good at."

It was close to Bin amber when Ryan and Jak finally arrived safely back at the dormitory. One good thing about the vast research sections of the complex being sealed off from them was that the scientists seemed to rarely move anywhere else, having most of their living and eating quarters near their precious work.

Twice they'd seen sec patrols, but they'd been absurdly easy to dodge. More and more Ryan had come to realize that the Wizard Island complex was like a security sieve. When it had first been established, it had probably been the last word in tightness, but over the years it had fallen apart. The research had taken priority, and there had never been any threats to the scientists from outside.

Everyone in the dormitory was ready and primed. Doc had recovered from the alcoholic excesses of the night before and looked chipper. The first priority was to get hold of some weapons, and the blaster Jak and Ryan had won was a start. J.B. had made the suggestion at their battle meeting that they should try to get their clothes and weapons back. That way they would fight better and be ready to make a swift run for it. At no time during their brief discussions had anyone suggested the possibility they might fail.

If you succeeded, it wouldn't arise.

And if you didn't, then it wasn't going to matter much.

"When shall we start?" Krysty asked now, sitting cross-legged on her bed, doing slow-breathing exercises to ready herself for the coming combat.

"Now's good as any time. Who wants to take this laser blaster?"

Finn grinned at Ryan's question. "Have to be me. I'm the man with blasters. Don't have many skills, but I fucking know 'bout blasters. Gimme, Ryan."

He caught the short, vicious gun, then dropped into a fighter's crouch, pretending to spray the room with the lethal blue beam. In the laughter, none of them heard the warning sound of the main door hissing open.

"M-m-m-m-my suspicions were in affirmative m-m-m-m-mode," Dr. Avian said. He stood there, a malevolent smile of triumph on his face.

He was flanked by four armed sec men.

Chapter Twenty-One

"Careful, Finn," Ryan Cawdor said quietly, not wanting to provoke the rotund man into any action that might leave them dead within seconds. Whatever Finnegan might say about the fallibility of the laser rifles, it figured they had to work sometime. With four of the sec men, it was too long a shot.

"I trust you have recovered from the peculiar illness of last night," Doc Tanner said, offering a half bow to the limping scientist.

"Poison, Dr. Tanner. Poison." With an obvious effort, the man was controlling his stammer, speaking slowly and with great care.

"Poison, sir? That is an aspersion upon my honor! By the three Kennedys, my seconds shall be calling upon you."

Ryan had no idea at all what Doc Tanner was rambling about. Neither, obviously, did Dr. Avian. The scientist waved a threatening plas-hand at them all.

"You t-t-t-try to betray us all."

"What're you going to do 'bout it?" J.B. asked. "Take us in?"

Dr. Avian looked bewildered, as though he hadn't actually thought the confrontation through. Without any sign from Ryan, the others had spread slowly into a half circle, leaving a scattered target for the blasters, each one waiting for a sign from Ryan to make a move.

Only at that moment did the crippled scientist notice Finnegan was holding one of the sec guard's blasters.

"Where d-d-d-did you... And the white head is free from the..."

In any firefight there is a crucial moment when the situation goes beyond words. If the moment is recognized, then there is a chance of staying alive. Missing it kills a man deader than chicken-fried steak.

Ryan knew the moment had come.

"Chill the gimp," he told Finnegan in an ordinary kind of tone, the way you'd ask someone to open a window for you.

Finn aimed the blaster and squeezed the trigger. The weapon spluttered and fired a brief burst of blue-green light. The scientist squealed and staggered back, the front of his coat scorched and smoldering. Finnegan threw the useless gun on the floor.

"What a fucker!" he spat.

Already, Ryan and the others were moving in on the sec men. During the brief stay on Wizard Island, Ryan had come to suspect that the guards operated with virtually no free will at all, performing their patrols and chores by a simple programmed rote. Anything above and beyond that had to come from a specific order from one of the scientists.

That was a key factor in his risking an attack.

Unlike the unreliable blasters, it worked.

Not one of the mutie guards tried to defend themselves against the attack. While Dr. Avian rolled around on the floor, stammering cries for assistance, the sec men went down like helpless tenpins. Ryan broke the neck of the nearest. J.B. kicked the next one in the crotch, felling him, then did a jump and knee drop on the center of his chest. The crack of snapping ribs was obscenely loud in the silence of the fight. None of the sec men even cried out as they went down one after the other.

Jak chopped the legs from the third sec man, leaving Krysty to straddle the creature, her long, strong fingers tightening around the exposed neck. The helmet rolled away, and the idiot face goggled up at her, eyes rolling, mouth opening. The hand made a feeble effort to move the woman, but Krysty was too strong and too experienced. Her strangling fingers clamped around the windpipe. The eyes protruded even more, and the tongue, blackening, burst from the bloody froth that filled the mouth.

Finnegan hit the fourth and last sec man, taking out his anger and frustration at the failure of the laser gun. He was about as tall as the black-uniformed figure, but outweighed him by around sixty pounds. He sent the creature crashing back into the edge of the door with a spine-jarring impact. The guard's gun went flying one way, his helmet spinning the other. As the mutie began to topple, Finn hooked two fingers into his brutish nostrils, jerking the sec man off-balance even more. With amazing lightness for a big man, he pivoted sideways and struck with his forearm across the front of the mutie's neck. Unable to breathe, the guard slumped to his knees, face purpling, waving his hands helplessly in the air. Finnegan, with contemptuous ease, stepped behind the sec man and locked his hands under the creature's chin. Bracing himself like someone pulling a cork from an enormous bottle, inhaling mightily with the effort, he snapped the sec man's neck like a dry branch.

"Four down and done," J.B. said, picking up one of the laser blasters and examining the dubious firing mechanism.

"T-t-t-t-t-termination with utter p-p-p-prejudice," Dr. Avian gasped, reaching for the tiny trans-speak that hung from the top pocket of his long coat.

"Not us, Doc, you," Ryan said, stooping to snatch the tiny transmitter and crush it under his heel.

"You wouldn't kill a man of science? It is b-b-b-beyond logic."

"Chill him, Ryan," Doc Tanner said, face cold as sierra granite.

"You are a colleague," Dr. Avian whimpered, still lying on his back and waving his artificial hand.

"Colleague," Doc Tanner hissed. "I would as soon claim kinship with a diseased timber wolf. A scientist should labor only for betterment and for peace and for life. For the positive things. No man knows that as well as I do. You and your crawling, loathsome colleagues are working only for the powers of darkness. For the black lords of chaos. No, Dr. Avian, you should be crushed like a poisonous worm. Kill him, Ryan. Quickly, so that we can get on with our cleansing business."