“Try again!” he called. “We’ve got to know where they are.”

“I’ve tried everything. They’ve changed it all.”

Rod Loopes looked up, sweat pouring down his broad nose. “That’s the Major’s doing. He’s nobody’s fool.” Then he turned his head and shouted, “Nicole, try tracking Travis with the regular monitor. See where he is right now.”

Nicole’s fingers flew over the keys, typing in the familiar number. Almost instantly the flashing light appeared on the board, and below came the sentence: PRESENTLY TRACKING TRAVIS OAKES, G14332.

For a moment Nicole stared, trying to orient herself to the grid symbols appearing on the screen. Then her eyes widened in shock.

“Eric!” she shouted, “Travis is right across the square from us, in the Shalev Library.” And then suddenly the light, which had been stationary, began to move. “He’s coming here. Running!”

Clayne Robertson blinked once, then peered more closely through the glass doors out across the quad. The only light inside the lobby came from outside, making it difficult to see. “Don,” he hissed, as he moved closer to the entrance, “someone’s coming.”

Don Brownley and Chet Abernathy both jumped to his side and peered out across the quad, unable to believe what they saw. The quad was suddenly alive with dark shapes running across the grass toward them, and they could hear the shouts of men through the doorway.

“We’re under attack!” Clayne shouted as he pushed the door open and blasted off a shot at the nearest figure. As though he had used a cannon with an incredibly wide span of shrapnel, every figure suddenly disappeared, diving for cover or sprawling on the grass. Then, almost instantly, they returned his fire, and the front of Central Control exploded in a shattering spray of plate glass.

“Take cover!” Clayne screamed, diving for the sofa to his left. “Pin them down!”

The Guardians’ opening volley had cleared the front entrance of everything but the metal framework, studded now with jagged shards of glass, and Don and Chet opened fire, the blast of the rifles deafening in the confinement of the lobby.

Clayne swept up his walkie-talkie. “Eric, we’re under fire. It’s a trap. We’ve got Guardians all over the place coming at us.” He instinctively ducked as a bullet slapped through the back of the sofa, leaving a four-inch gaping hole not more than a foot from his nose.

With a cry he scrambled around the corner, glancing quickly at his two companions. Chet was behind the desk, while Don was in the corner almost totally without shelter, levering shells into the chamber and blasting away with a vengeance. “Don, get down!” Clayne yelled.

“Clayne!” the radio blurted.

He jammed the radio to his ear to hear over the explosion of the rifles and the angry whine of ricochets. “What?”

“We need another two or three minutes,” Eric said. “Can you hold them?”