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I hit the ground, I had decided that they were not cops.
    Rather than getting up for the next performance, I kicked out from where I lay and raked him across the shins with the heel of my boot. It was not quite as spectacular as the time I had kicked Paul Byler in the groin but was more than sufficient for my purposes. I scrambled to my feet then and caught him on the chin with a hard left. He collapsed and did not move. Not bad for one punch. If I could do it without a rock in my hand I'd be a holy terror.
    My triumph lasted all of a pair of seconds. Then a sack of cannonballs was dropped on my back, or so it seemed. I was clipped from behind and borne to the ground in a very unsportsmanlike fashion. The heavyset one was much faster than his appearance had led me to believe, and as he twisted my arm up behind my back and caught hold of my hair I began to realize that little, if any, of his bulk was of the non-functional, fatty variety. Even that central-bulge was a curbstone.
    "All right, Fred. I guess it's time to have our talk," he said.
    Stardance. ..
    Lying there, with my abrasions, contusions, aches and confusions, I decided that Professor Merimee had come very near that still, cold center of things where definition lurks. Absurd indeed was the manner in which a dead hand was extended to give me the finger.
    Lying there, cursing subvocally as I retraced my route to the moment, I became peripherally aware of a small, dark, furry form moving along my southern boundary, pausing, staring, moving again. Doubtless something carnivorous, I decided. I fought with a shudder, transformed it into a shrug. There was no point in calling out. None whatsoever. But there could be a small measure of triumph to going out this way.
    So I tried to cultivate stoicism while straining after a better view of the beast. It touched my right leg and I jerked convulsively, but there was no pain. After a time, it moved over to my left. Had it just eaten my numbed foot? I wondered. Had it enjoyed it?
    Moments later it turned again, advancing upward along my left side, and I finally got a better look at it. I saw a stupid-looking little marsupial that I recognized as a wombat, harmless-seeming and apparently curious, hardly lusting after my extremities. I sighed and felt some of the tension go out of me. It was welcome to sniff around all it cared to. When you are going to die, a wombat is better than no company at all.
    I thought back to the weight and the twisting of my arm, as the heavy man, ignoring his fallen companion, had sat upon me and said, "All that I really want of you is the stone. Where is it?"
    "Stone?" I had said, making the mistake of adding the question mark.
    The pressure on my arm increased.
    "Byler's stone," he said. "You know the one I mean."
    "Yes, I do!" I agreed. "Let up, will you? It's no secret what happened. I'll tell you all about it."
    "Go ahead," be said, easing up a fraction.
    So I told him about the facsimile and how we had come by it. I told him everything I knew about the damned thing.
    As I feared, he did not believe a word I said. Worse yet, his partner recovered while I was talking. He was also of the opinion that I was lying, and he voted to continue the questioning.
    This was done, and at one point many red and electric minutes later, as they paused to massage their knuckles and catch their breath, the tall one said to the heavy one, "Sounds pretty much like what he told Byler."
    "Like what Byler said he told him," the other corrected.
    "If you talked to Paul," I said, "what more can I tell you? He seemed to know what was going on-which I don't-and I told him everything I knew about the stone: exactly what I've just told you."
    "Oh, we talked to him, all right," the tall man said, "and he talked to us. You might say he spilled his guts-"
    "But I wasn't sure of him then," the fat man said, "and I'm less sure of him now. What do you do the minute he kicks off? You head for his old stamping grounds and start