Another leaped past her and hit at her hair. It came loose and showered around her shoulders.

“Yippee!” screamed a black. “Don’t she look wild!”

“Killing a bunch of hoodlums isn’t part of my job!” Heller said. Then he shouted, “Please quit this and get away while you still can!”

“The only ones likely to be killed is you and that (bleepch),” said Pete. He shouted down, “Jesus! Start stripping her! Show me some skin! Oh, man, does this beat Sunday TV.”

Two of them seized her coat, one from either side, and yanked it off her, danced away and threw it aside.

Two more dashed in past her flailing arms and tore at her shirt!

Heller was backing up, inch by inch.

“Blackie!” howled Joe down into the vale, “get behind her and get that bra off!”

“Ah,” sighed Pete in ecstasy.

“Pedrito!” howled Joe. “Get the skirt! The skirt, man! Yank it off her!”

As if in ultra-slow motion, Heller moved back further.

“Heat her up! Heat her up!” shouted Joe. “Grab her from behind and heat her up!”

“Get her down! Get her down!” howled Pete.

Miss Simmons’ foot lashed out at a man. He grabbed her shoe with a surging wrench, and tore it off her foot, laces and all. There was a crack.

Miss Simmons’ face contorted in agony. “My ankle!”

Pete said, “Oh, Jesus, I like it when they scream!”

Inch by inch, imperceptibly, Heller was backing up. The angle made by two tree trunks was closing. He was getting out of the shotgun’s field of fire. In a moment he would be able to escape. Smart.

Joe yelled, “Get her down! Get her on her back!”

Pete shouted, “Strip her total like I taught you!”

Joe let out a sigh. “Oh, wow! Look at that boy paw her!”

Miss Simmons’ voice rose to the tops of the trees. “Don’t touch me! Don’t touch me!”

A Hispanic was watching avidly as Miss Simmons cried, “My ankle is broken!”

Joe licked his lips as Miss Simmons’ scream lanced through the glade.

A wild-eyed white heard Pete’s shouted order, “Get her begging for it!” He darted forward.

Pete yelled, “Grab her legs!”

Joe jerked as Miss Simmons’ scream tore up from below.

“Let Whitey go first!” howled Pete. “The rest of you have got the (bleep)! Whitey first!”

Heller suddenly dived to the ground!

The shotgun blasted with a roar!

Heller was rolling to his left in a blur of motion.

A revolver shot racketed.

The man with the shotgun was trying to get around the tree which now blocked his aim. He pulled back.

Another revolver shot sounded and a spurt of dirt leaped near Heller’s head.

Heller was rolling further.

A sudden glimpse of a tree. The shotgun man lunged!

Heller’s hands shot out and grabbed the shotgun.

The man screamed, flailing back a broken hand.

Bark leaped from the tree! The racket of a revolver shot!

A sight down the shotgun barrel at the revolver man!

The buck of the shotgun!

The revolver man’s chest spurted red and he flew backwards.

The shotgun man trying to get up!

The swinging blur of the stock. The crack as the stock shattered. The shotgun man didn’t have a face! Just red flesh and bone splinters!

Heller sprang out into the path.

The group around the girl were spread out, facing up the path, crouched and alert.

A white youth yelled, “It’s just one guy! Kill him!”

A black and a Hispanic rushed forward.

A switchblade flashed.

The other four spread out so they could encircle.

Heller’s foot struck the switchblade hand. The knife flew. The man screamed!

A man seen between two others. He had a gun.

Heller’s foot extended like a battering ram. The man’s gun arm crumpled!

A whirl. Another knife! A foot up against the hand. The knife flew into the air!

Heller spun on one foot, the other extended like a scythe. The flat of the foot tore the man’s whole face off!

Gods! Spikes! This was why Heller was wearing spikes!

A knife blade glittering. It slashed down on Heller’s arm and bit.

A foot up toward the wielder. A down kick! The whole chest of the knife wielder ripped open!

Arms seizing Heller from behind. A darting back of Heller’s head, his own arms rising and casting off the grip. He spun!

Spikes stamped against a thigh and, ripping downward, that foot hit the ground. The other foot coming upward.

The whole throat of the man torn out!

A blur of three men trying to get at Heller.

A woolly head. A spiked foot driving at it. The grind of steel into bones!

A Hispanic face. The blur of a foot kick. The whole side of the head coming off.

A man’s heels. He was running, trying to get away.

A rush. A horizontal thrust of two spiked feet. They hit the man in the back. He went down in a skid of leaves. Heller landed upright. Man’s head two feet below the spikes. Down came Heller. The soles were held in a V. They stripped the skin, ears and two huge slabs of skull off the head.

Silence.

Heller started checking them. Five were dead, ripped to pieces. The sixth had his whole chest open. Veins and arteries were pumping.

The man came to. He screamed. He collapsed. The body went into the final twitches of the death agonies.

Heller went up the hill. Both Pete and Joe were very dead.

He walked back down, surveying the scene. It looked like a slaughterhouse. Blood was all over and leaves were churned into red mud.

I was terrified. I had never had an inkling as to why he was wearing spikes. But I knew now. In a primitive land where other weapons were not legal, he had been walking around on his! Supposing I had not known this! I myself might have been a target! Oh, I would stay a long distance away from this Heller if I ever had to talk to him. He was dangerous!

Miss Simmons, clothes torn, was lying there where they had left her at the first shot.

She was propped on an elbow. She was staring at Heller with wide, round eyes.

He went over to her. He tried to get her to lie back. It must have moved her leg. She screamed in agony! She passed out.

Heller examined her leg. The ankle was a compound fracture with a splinter of bone extending from it.

He got a knife out of his haversack, picked up a broken tree branch and quickly made a splint. He padded the ankle with wads of Kleenex he took from her purse and then taped the splints on with engineer tape.

He tried to get her torn clothes together. He got her into her coat. She was still out cold. He found her glasses and put them in her purse and then tied the purse around her neck.

He gave the churned ground an inspection. His spike tracks were everywhere.

Heller looked down at his baseball shoes. They were coated with blood and fragments of bone and flesh.

He did a tour of the dead men. He chose one of them and took the shoes off the corpse. He took off his baseball shoes and put them on the dead man’s feet. Then he pulled on those of the dead man.

It was a bad sign. He had already been reading G-2 manuals, obviously. As I feared, it was likely to make my work that much harder!

After a bit of search, he found Miss Simmons’ stick. He went over the scene again — and a gory scene it was, there under the darkening sky, wind now tugging at the hair and clothing of the dead.

He picked up Miss Simmons and looked around again to make sure there was nothing left, apparently. Then he looked up the hill to where the shotgun man still lay, partially in view.

“I wish you’d listened,” he said. “I’m not here to punish anybody.” He looked down at Miss Simmons’ face. She was out cold. Then he looked up at the scudding sky and in Voltarian said, “Is this planet inhabited by a Godsless people? Has some strange idea poisoned them to make them think they have no souls? That there is no hereafter?”

Well, that was Heller. Stupid and theatrical. It served his best interests to just dump Miss Simmons and shove one of those abandoned switchblades into her. You could tell he was not Apparatus trained, so maybe G-2 wasn’t going to do me as much harm as I had thought.