railing and jumped up to sit on the railing
casually, a one hundred fifty foot fall behind him and the width of
the lamp post between him and the follower, who now was an unmoving
figure leaning against the railing of the sidewalk near where the
catwalk began.

The sight of the insolently lounging figure did nothing to sooth his
irritation. This escape was not the way he wanted to deal with a
threat. There was an oddity in the man's waiting. The range was poor,
and he probably was not firing, although he would look as if he were
not in any case, but if he were not going to take this chance for his
murder attempt, why did he openly exhibit himself, arousing suspicion
and cutting off future chances? An innocent stroller or even a mere
trailer from the detective agency would have strolled on.

Above came the nearing drone of a taxi which had spotted him in the
bright pool of light at the hack stand.

There was something in the careless confidence of the follower's open
interest in him that raised his neck hair as no direct threat could
have, and filled the rumble of the night-hidden surf with obscure
menace. The man acted as if his job was over, clinched.

Bryce reached the answer as the taxi floated down on hissing roter
blades and settled to the platform. Sliding down from the railing he
walked toward it, stiff-legged. The light was out inside it, and the
cabby did not climb out or attempt to open the door for him. Bryce
turned his head and looked back as if for a last glance at the
watching figure, grasping the door handle with his right hand as if
fumbling blindly. He was left handed. When the door was open a crack,
it stopped opening, and those inside saw the muzzle of a magnamatic in
his left hand looking through the crack at them.

It's easier to catch wolves if you're disguised as a rabbit, Pop Yak
had told him once. He must have looked a complete sucker, starting to
climb into a dark cab with his head turned backward!

"Don't move," Bryce said, some of his anger reaching his voice in a
biting rasp. Inside, the driver was frozen with his head turned enough
to see the glint of a muzzle behind his neck, and in the darkened far
corner of the back seat where there should have been no one there was
the pale blur of a face, and a hand holding something. Bryce knew that
there was no way a shot could reach him except through the shielding
steel door or the shatterproof window, and a man would hesitate before
shooti