Reich was invisible at last. He had half an hour to slip up into the house, find and kill D’Courtney, and then return to the game. Tate was committed to pinning the peeper secretaries out of the line of his attack. It was safe. It was foolproof except for the Chervil boy. He had to take that chance.

He crossed the main hall and jostled into bodies at the west arch. He went through the arch into the music room and turned right, groping for the stairs.

At the foot of the stairs he was forced to climb over a barrier of bodies with octopus arms that tried to pull him down. He ascended the stairs, seventeen eternal steps, and felt his way through a close tunnel overpass papered with velour. Suddenly he was seized and a woman crushed herself against him.

“Hello, Sardine,” she whispered in his ear. Then her skin became aware of his clothes. “Owww!” she exclaimed, and felt the hard outlines of the gun in his breast pocket. “What’s that?” He slapped her hand away. “Clever-up, Sardine,” she giggled. “Get out of the can.”

He divested himself of her and bruised his nose against the dead-end of the overpass. He turned right, opened a door and found himself in a vaulted gallery over fifty feet long. The lights were extinguished here too, but the luminescent paintings, glowing under ultra-violet spotlights, filled the gallery with a virulent glow. It was empty.

Between a livid Lucrece and a horde of Sabine Women was a flush door of polished bronze. Reich stopped before it, removed the tiny Rhodopsin Ionizer from his back pocket and attempted to poise the copper cube between his thumbnail and forefinger. His hands were trembling violently. Rage and hatred boiled inside him, and his death-lust shot image after image of an agonized D’Courtney through his mind’s eye.

“Christ!” he cried. “He’d do it to me. He’s tearing at my throat. I’m fighting for survival.” He made his orisons in fanatical multiples of three and nine.

“Stand by me, dear Christ! Today, tomorrow, and yesterday. Stand by me! Stand by me! Stand by me!”

His fingers steadied. He poised the Rhodopsin cap, then thrust open the bronze door, revealing nine steps mounting to an anteroom. Reich snapped his thumb-nail against the copper cube as though he were trying to flip a penny to the moon. As the Rhodopsin cap flew up into the anteroom, Reich averted his eyes.

There was a cold purplish flash. Reich leaped up the stairs like a tiger. The two Beaumont House guards were seated on the bench where he had caught them. Their faces were sagging, their vision destroyed, their time sense abolished.

If anyone entered and found the guards before he was finished, he was on the road to Demolition. If the guards revived before he was finished, he was on the road to Demolition. No matter what happened, it was a final gamble with Demolition. Leaving the last of his sanity behind him, Reich pushed open a jewelled door and entered the wedding suite.