hind him, shutting out the roaring clatter of the
casino. "Cross-roader!" he hissed at me. I should have known what was
coming, but I missed it. He slapped me hard across the face, saving his
knuckles, but not doing my jaw a whole lot of good. I would have fallen
clean over, but the bouncers were still tight on my elbows.

"Wait!" I tried to say, but he cuffed me with the other hand, harder, if
that were possible. This is the moment when you have to stop and think.
A Blackout is quite effective--it's hard to hit what you can't see. And
there's something mighty unnerving about being stricken suddenly blind.

Oh, face it, I suppose the real reason I felt for the arteries supplying
blood to his retinas was that so few TK's can do it. I clamped down
tight, and his lights went out. He cried out in fright, and both hands
came groping up in front of him, his fingers trembling.

"I'm blind!" he said, not able to believe it. He began to lose his
balance.

I felt one of the bouncers go for his sap. "Try it, you gorilla," I told
him, wrenching around, now that I was free on his side. "Try it and I'll
rip the retinas off your eyeballs the way you'd skin a peach!" He
recoiled as though I were a Puff Adder. The other bouncer let go of me,
too. I skidded in the slippery sawdust, scared half to death, but got my
back against a wall just as the stick-man who had slugged me lost his
orientation completely and fell to his knees in the sawdust. It would be
some minutes before his vision started dribbling back.

* * * * *

The click of the door latch broke the silence. One of the other
stick-men eased himself in, holding the door only wide enough to squeeze
past the jamb. Don't give the suckers a peek at the seamy side. They
might just take their money to the next clip joint down the street.

He didn't look like the others, somehow. He was older, for one thing.
Perhaps it was his nearly bald scalp, perhaps the thick, bookish glasses
in heavy brown frames. "What's that?" he asked mildly, poking a finger
at the dealer kneeling in the sawdust on the floor. My Blackout victim
was reaching out, trying to find something he could use to raise himself
to his feet. His face was frozen in a fierce, unseeing stare as he
mentally screamed at his eyes to see, see, see!

"Blackout!" one of the bouncers told the second stick-man in a muffled
voice.

Sharp eyes fired a quick, surprised look at me. "Well," said the ba