er a moment he couldn't fully enjoy it, because he was being
watched. The feeling was disturbing.

Damn rubbernecks, he thought, and turned irritably, half hoping that
at least it would be an acquaintance or some pretty girls.

But there was no one watching him.

A few pedestrians walked by hurriedly because it was growing dark and
the view that they had come to enjoy was fading. The wind wrapped
their enveloping capes around them and made them all look abnormally
tall and columnar.

It was darker. The sidewalk lights abruptly flicked on in a flood of
amber light that thickened the twilight beyond their circle to an
opaque purple curtain of darkness.

He noticed a pedestrian walking slowly towards him from the direction
he had come. The figure approached more slowly than seemed natural,
with his head bowed and his hands in his pockets as though lost in
thought.

* * * * *

A trailer from the detective agency? It was too soon for that. If it
were arranged that every member of the Board be trailed, still it
could not have been arranged and begun so soon.

[Illustration]

Besides, there was something more deadly than that in the walking
man's indifference.

A killer arranged by Beldman? It would be natural for Beldman or Stout
to take a chance and fight back the direct way. But there was no
evidence. How could either of them have decided who to blame or who to
fight?

The few huge buildings that stood dark against the night sky were
being brightened now by lights going on in hundreds of windows. In
long slender spans between them stretched the aerial walks and the
necklaces of amber lights that outlined them. The wind blew colder
across the walks and the view of sea and sky that had been visible
from them now was blotted out by night. The walkers were going in.
There was small chance of sheltering himself in a crowd, or even of
keeping only one or two walkers between himself and the one who
followed him.

At the first sight of the approaching figure he had instinctively
leaned back against the concrete railing and taken his gun from its
pocket holster, holding it lightly in his gloved hand.

An aged couple and a vigorous middle-aged woman hurrying in the
opposite direction glanced at him without interest or alarm. His pose
was not menacing, and anyway most men with money enough to travel
carried hand arms.

This was an indirect effect of a Federated Nations ruling that onl