The next level up opened onto a corridor without gunmen in it. The first three doors Miles tried were locked. The fourth swished open onto a brightly lit office, apparently deserted. On a quick jog around it Miles's eye was caught by a slight movement in the shadows under a console. He bent down to face two women in blue Tidal Authority tech coveralls cowering beneath. One squeaked and covered her eyes; the second hugged her and glared defiantly at Miles.

Miles tried a friendly smile. "Ah . . . hello."

"Who are you people?" said the second woman in rising tone.

"Oh, I'm not with them. They're, um . . . hired killers." A just description, after all. "Don't worry, they're not after you. Have you called the police yet?"

She shook her head mutely.

"I suggest you do so immediately. Ah—have you seen me before?"

She nodded.

"Which way did I go?"

She cringed back, clearly terrorized at being cornered by a psychotic. Miles spread his hands in silent apology, and made for the door. "Call the police!" he called back over his shoulder. The faint beep of comconsole keys being pressed drifted down the corridor after him.

Mark was nowhere on this level. The lift tube grav field had now been turned off by someone; the auto safety bar was extended across the opening and the red glow of the warning light filled the corridor. Miles stuck his head cautiously into the lift tube, to spy another head on the level below looking up; he jerked his head back as a nerve disruptor crackled.

A balcony ran right around the outside of the tower. Miles slipped through the door at the seaward end of the corridor and looked around, and up. Only one more floor above. Its balcony was readily reachable by the toss of a grappler. Miles grimaced, pulled out his spool, and made the toss; got a firm hook around the railing above on the first try. A swallow, a brief heart-stopping dangle over the tower, dike, and growling sea forty meters below, and he was clambering onto the next balcony.

He tiptoed to the glass doorway and checked down the corridor. Mark was crouched, silhouetted by the red light, near the entrance to the lift tube, stunner drawn. The—unconscious, Miles trusted—form of a man in tech coveralls lay sprawled on the corridor floor.

"Mark?" Miles called softly, and jerked back. Mark snapped around and let off a stunner burst in his direction. Miles put his back against the wall and called, "Cooperate with me, and I'll get you out of this alive. Where's Ivan?"

This reminder that Mark still held a trump card had the expected calming effect. He did not fire again. "Get me out of this and I'll tell you where he is," he countered.