“My God!” Reich breathed. “Oh my God.”

He snatched up the gun and inspected it. It’s chambers still contained the emasculated cartridges. The one that had blown the top of Craye D’Courtney’s head out was still in place under the hammer.

“It isn’t Demolition yet,” Reich muttered. “Not by a damned sight. No, by Christ, not by a damned sight!” He folded up the knife-pistol and thrust it into his pocket. At that moment he heard the sound of distant laughter… a sour laugh. Quizzard’s laugh.

Reich stepped quickly to the twisted ramp and followed the sound of the laughter to a plush door hung open on brass hinges and deep set in the wall. Gripping the scrambler at the alert with the trigger set for Big D, Reich stepped through the door. There was a hiss of compressed air and it closed behind him.

He was in a small round room, walled and ceilinged in midnight velvet. The floor was transparent crystal, and gave a clear uninterrupted view of a boudoir on the floor below. It was Chooka’s Voyeur Chamber.

In the boudoir, Quizzard sat in a deep chair, his blind eyes glazing. The D’Courtney girl was perched on his lap wearing an astonishing slit gown of sequins. She sat quietly, her yellow hair smooth, her deep dark eyes staring placidly into space, while Quizzard fondled her brutally.

“How does she look?” Quizzard’s sour voice came distinctly. “How does she feel?”

He was speaking to a small faded woman who stood across the boudoir from him with her back against the wall and an incredible expression of agony on her face. It was Quizzard’s wife.

“How does she look?” the blind man repeated.

“She doesn’t know what’s happening,” the woman answered.

“She knows,” Quizzard shouted. “She isn’t that far gone. Don’t tell me she don’t know what’s happening. Christ! If I only had my eyes!”

The woman said: “I’m your eyes, Keno.”

“Then look for me. Tell me!”

Reich cursed and aimed the scrambler, at Quizzard’s head. It could kill through the crystal floor. It could kill through anything. It was going to kill now. Then Powell entered the boudoir.

The woman saw him at once. She emitted a bloodcurdling scream: “Run, Keno! Run!” She thrust herself from the wall and darted toward Powell, her hands clawing at his eyes. Then she tripped and fell prone. Apparently, the fall knocked her unconscious for she never moved. As Quizzard surged up from the chair with the girl in his arms, his blind eyes staring, Reich came to the appalled conclusion that the woman’s fall was no accident; for Quizzard suddenly dropped in his tracks. The girl tumbled out of his arms and fell into the chair.

There was no doubt that Powell had accomplished this on a TP level, and for the first time in their war, Reich was afraid of Powell… physically afraid. Again he aimed the scrambler, this time at Powell’s head as the peeper walked to the chair.