Before he could find the words to protest, she slipped out of her singlesuit and thrust it at him. He caught it involuntarily with his free hand. She already was crouching to thong her feet and he saw that she had a magnificent body—-smooth muscles, a supple perfection—but swatches of Celltape criss-crossed her skin.

“What’s happened to you?”

“I warned you once not to question.” She spoke without looking up, and he sensed the wild power in her. Dangerous. Very dangerous. No inhibitions.

“You’re going to run the P,” he said. He glanced around, looking for someone, anyone, to call on for help. The circle of the distribution dome contained no other people.

“Bet on me,” she said, standing,

“How will I tell the twenty-three minutes?” he asked.

She crowded close to him and slapped a panel beside the emergency hatch. Immediately, he heard the sentry circuit’s hum, then a deep male voice: “Post Nine clear.”

A tiny screen above the circuit speaker glowed with red numerals: 2:29.

“The hatch,” she said.

There was no way to avoid it; he had felt her wild strength. He undogged the hatch and she thrust past him, swinging it wide as she dashed out into the open, turning right. Her body was a silver blur in the moonlight and he saw a dark shadow coming up behind her. His gun was in his hand without thinking about it and he cooked a Hooded Dasher that was only a step behind her. She did not turn.

His hands were shaking as he resealed the hatch.

Running the P!

He glanced at the time signal: 2:29. She had said twenty-three minutes. That would put her back at the hatch by 2:52.

It occurred to him then that the perimeter was just under ten kilometers.

It can’t be done! No one can run ten kilometers in twenty-three minutes!

But she had come from the passage to Lab One. He unwadded her singlesuit. Blood on it, no doubt of that. Her name was stitched over the left breast: Legata.

He wondered if it was a first or last name.

Or a title?

He peered out of the plaz port, looking to the left where she would have to appear if she really did run the perimeter.

What would a Legata be?

A voice on the sentry circuit startled him: “Someone’s out there, pretty far out.”

Another voice answered: “It’s a woman running the P. She just rounded Post Thirty-Eight.”

“Who is it?”

“Too far out to identify.”

Thomas found himself praying for her to make it as he listened to each succeeding post report the runner. But he knew there was not much chance. Since learning about The Game from Waela, he had looked into the statistics. Fifty-fifty in dayside, yes. But nightside, fewer than one in fifty made it.