"Holdreth Khain, can you hear me?"
His eyes opened, and he blinked a couple of times. Then he looked
directly at me. "I can hear you. But my--my leg hurts." He smiled
feebly. "Damn you Terrans and your hellish alarm systems."
He tried to make it sound like a joke, but there was more than a trace
of bitterness in his voice.
"Holdreth Khain," I said, "I'm bringing in a man to see you--one of
your fellow Damakoi. We've got a sneaking hunch that he may be Zorvash
Pedrik. Do you think you're up to identifying him?"
He seemed to grow a little stronger almost immediately.
"Certainly," he said. "Bring him in."
"Will you be all right, do you think?" I asked. "The doctor has to
attend to another patient."
It was an out-and-out lie, but I wanted to get the doctor out of the
room. The physician started to say something in protest, but I silenced
him with a glance.
"I'll be all right," said Holdreth Khain.
The doctor took the hint and got out.
I pointed at a door across the room. "I'm going to bring the man in
through that door. I want you to take a good look at him--the way he
walks, the way he acts--notice everything about him. I want to be
absolutely sure of our identification."
"Very well," said the Damakoi. "I'll watch him carefully. If it's
Zorvash Pedrik, I'll know him."
"Good. I'll get him now." I went for the alien.
* * * * *
Jedon Onomondo had been searched thoroughly, and his clothing had been
completely changed. He was wiping the dampness of perspiration from his
blue, four-fingered hands with a handkerchief when I walked in.
"How is he, Mr. Cameron?" he asked.
"He'll be all right for a while," I told him. "Are you ready to take a
look at him?"
"Any time."
"Come along, then."
I led him down the corridor to a drop tube, and we went down to the
door of the room where Holdreth Khain lay on a couch with two guards
watching him. They had their instructions.
"He's in there," I told the Damakoi. I gestured at the door. "Now,
don't get violent when you see him--if he's the man we want. I know you
Damakoi are likely to lose your temper at the sight of an enemy, but
we've got guards in there to stop you."
Jedon Onomondo's blue skin seemed to pale a little, but he said
nothing. He nodded in agreement.
I opened the door. The Damakoi went in first, and I followed him,
staying well behind.
Within a few seconds, I'd know whether my reasoning had been right.
Jedon Onomondo walked across the room. It was a long room, nearly forty
feet from end to end. I stayed well behind, letting the Damakoi do as
he pleased.
When he was about half-way across the room, he started to run.
Holdreth Khain had been watching the approach of the other Damakoi,
and, at the same instant he started to run, Holdreth Khain leaped out
of the couch and ran toward Jedon Onomondo.
When they were still ten feet apart, they slammed solidly into the pair
of invisible plexisteel walls I had had set up across the room.
They both screamed in hatred, and tried to batter down the walls. Then
they realized what they had done to themselves and stopped.
I wasn't quite prepared for the Damakoi on my side of the wall. Jedon
Onomondo turned, mouthing an oath in Damakese, and jumped at me.
I didn't avoid it in time, and we went down, rolling over and over on
the floor. His arm went around my throat, squeezing off my air.
I managed to get a finger on the Damakoi's hand. I grabbed and twisted,
and the arm came from around my throat.
* * * * *
He turned a little, and landed a solid left to my temple which filled
the room with bursting stars. I shook my head to clear it and fended
off another blow with my arm.
His guard was down, and I saw my chance. My left drove into the pit of
his stomach, and he doubled up, all the breath knocked out of him.
Then my right fist came up from somewhere around my knees and slammed
into his jaw. The hard uppercut lifted him off his feet and slammed him
back against the invisible wall.
He slumped to the floor, unconscious.
_Good old one-two_, I thought as I rubbed my knuckles.
* * * * *
The guards on the other side of the wall had finally managed to hold
down Holdreth Khain. Ned Dearborn burst through the door behind me.
"You okay, Chief?"
"I'm all right," I told him, "but I think we have a couple of dying
Damakoi on our hands."
Ned walked over and looked at the Damakoi I had just slugged. "How did
they figure they'd get away with it?" he asked.
"Actually, it was a pretty good scheme," I told him. "They knew they
couldn't get one man in here with a theta bomb; they'd never get past
the guards and the detectors.
"So they planted a couple of spheres of ditherium in _two_ men--a
negative sphere in one and a positive sphere in the other. All they
had to do was stand close to each other, and the bomb would go off."
"What was it that tipped you off?" Ned asked.
"Several things. That phony note at the Hotel Granada, for instance.
It was a plant to prove to me that there really was such a person as
'Zorvash Pedrik'--which there isn't, of course.
"In order to find the phony note, they had to give us a clue as to
where it was. So they used a harmless neutrino generator, which would
be spotted by our detectors.
"But a _real_ assassin who actually knew that Holdreth Khain was
working with us would have used something less harmless. Why an
expensive neutrino generator, when some cheap radioactive would do?
_Because he didn't want to kill Holdreth Khain!_
"And that meant that our friendly Damakoi was a phony."