Headlights, approaching. Jim looks at his watch. It’s time, it’s time, adrenaline spikes up through him: “Hey!” he calls to the men. “Police coming!”

And his car jerks forward on its own, out of the parking lot and down Lewis to the south, accelerating as fast as it can. Jim takes off running north, toward the little back entrance to the mall.

Up the entrance steps, almost tripping; he’s scared out of his mind! Into the mall maze, up to concourse level, then up a broad, gentle staircase to mezzanine; once there there are ten directions he can run in, and he takes off with only a single glance back.

Two of the men are chasing him.

Jim runs full speed through the crowd of shoppers, skipping and dodging desperately to avoid knots of people, open airshafts, planters, fountains, hall displays and food stands. Up a short escalator three steps at a time, around the big open space filled by the laser fountain. Looking down and across he can see his pursuers, already lost. Then one spots him and they’re off running again. They’re in a tough position, trying to chase someone in a mall; if Jim had more mall experience he’d lose them in a second. As it is he’s lost himself. Floors and half floors, escalators and staircases extending everywhere in the broken, refracted space … shops are going out of business every day because shoppers can’t ever find the same place twice; what chance for two men pursuing a panic-stricken, very mobile individual? It’s a three-D maze, and Jim has only to run a random pattern, trending westward, and he’s lost them.

Or so Jim thinks, fearfully, as he runs. But when he reaches the east side of the mall and flies through the entryway doors, damned if the two men aren’t coming up an escalator back there, at full speed!

Outside, however, on the street bordering the parking lot, he sees his car, which has made it there on its own. Good programming. He runs out to where it sits by the curb, noticing only at the last second the three policemen approaching to inspect it.

Panic on top of panic; Jim’s systems almost blow out at the sight, but his pursuers are in the parking lot now and there’s no time to lose. Without thinking he runs up to the car and shouts at the policemen, “It’s mine! They’re robbing me, they dragged me out of the car and now they’re chasing me!”

The three policemen regard him carefully, then look as he points at the two men, running across the parking lot. “That’s them!”

The two men see what’s happening, and quickly turn and run back inside. Perfect.