“It’s worth the chance,” Powell said to himself. “I’ve got to bust that Barrier. It’s the only way.”

He set his blocks on the upper level, masking everything except the emotional broadcast, and transmitted: fear, fear, terror, fear… driving the emotion down to its primitive level… Fear, Fear, Terror, Fear… FEAR - FLIGHT - TERROR - FEAR - FLIGHT - TERROR - flight!

Every bird in every roost awoke screaming. The monkeys screamed back and shook thousands of branches in sudden flight. A barrage of sucking explosions sounded from the lake as the herd of hippos surged up from the shallows in blind terror. The jungle was shaken by the ear-splitting trumpetings of elephants and the crashing thunder of their stampede. Reich heard and froze in his tracks, ignoring Hassop who still ran and sobbed and screamed from wall to wall of the Barrier.

The hippos hit the barrier first in a blind, blundering rush. They were followed by the swambats and the crocodiles. Then came the elephants. Then the wapiti, the zebra, the gnu… heavy, pounding herds. There had never been such a stampede in the history of the Reservation. Nor had the manufacturers of the Defensive Barrier Screen ever anticipated such a concerted mass attack. Reich’s Barrier went down with a sound like scissored glass.

The hippos trampled the fire, scattered it and extinguished it. Powell darted through the darkness, seized Hassop’s arm, and dragged the crazed creature across the clearing to the piled packs. A wild hoof sent him reeling, but he held on to Hassop and located the precious film cannister. In the frantic blackness Powell could sort the frenzied TP broadcasts of the stampeding animals. Still dragging Hassop, he threaded his way out of the main stream. Behind the thick bole of a lignum vitae Powell paused to catch his breath and settle the cannister safely in his pocket. Hassop was still sobbing. Powell sensed Reich, a hundred feet away, back against a fever tree, bow and arrows clutched in his stricken hands. He was confused, furious, terrified… but still safe. Above all, Powell wanted to keep him safe for Demolition.

Unhitching his own Defensive Barrier Screen, Powell tossed it across the clearing toward the embers of the fire where Reich would surely find it. Then he turned and led the numb, unresisting Code Chief toward the Gate.

13

THE REICH CASE WAS READY for final submission to the District Attorney’s office. Powell hoped it was also ready for that cold-blooded, cynical monster of facts and evidence, Old Man Mose.

Powell and his staff assembled in Mose’s office. A round table had been set up in the center, and on it was constructed a transparent model of the key rooms of Beaumont House, inhabited by miniature android models of the dramatis personae. The lab’s model division had done a superlative job, and actually had characterized the leading players. The tiny Reich, Tate, Beaumont, and others moved with the characteristic gaits of their originals. Alongside the table was massed the documentation the staff had prepared, ready for presentation to the machine.