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to do?”
    “Stay alive.” Francis grinned, engaging power. The cat hissed over the sand. “Maybe he figures to pick up a vehicle at the Wells.” Francis leaned back; his Gun was unholstered, and he smoothed long fingers over its cool pearl handle. “All he’ll pick up is a homer.”

    Something was coming.
    Something tall and dark and powerful.
    In the close heat of the rocks, the scorpion was motionless, sensing danger, tail raised to strike. It was female, had recently given birth to its young, and carried them in a brood pouch, carefully guarded. It would kill to survive.
    A shadow crossed the rock. The scorpion tensed. A heavy boot heel smashed down, ending its life.
    Doyle hated scorpions. As a boy, on this same desert, he’d been bit by one and had almost died of the virulent poison. Yet, basically, he respected them, as he respected the rattler and the lizard, as he respected all living things that fight back.
    The desert itself he loved. It had always fascinated him with its paradoxes, its odd character, its subtle beauty. For Doyle 10, the desert retained its purity. It defied man’s corruption. It was Doyle’s private ocean—an easy-rolling sea of sand and rock and cactus, of smokewood and manzanita—and it was only natural, at the end, that he should return here. And this was the end for him. He knew it, accepted it. They were coming for him. His death lay in their Guns as a pearl in an oyster. The homer would find him. No rock could shelter him against it.
    And what if he did reach the Wells? What if he could use the hoverstick he’d hidden there? The sky would not shelter him. He could not escape DS. Not on the ground, nor in the air, nor on the sea. The men of Deep Sleep would find him and destroy him for his terrible crime of refusing to accept death at twenty-one. What good was running?
    Yet Doyle ran.
    Under the sun-blazed sky, through thorn-spiked dry washes, along wind-eroded gullies, over baked clusters of rock and cactus, his lips puffed and bleeding, his clothing in tatters, hands broken-skinned and swollen—fighting to stay alive another hour, another minute, knowing he must die and crying I’ll live! …knowing he must lose and crying I’ll win!…running until he dropped heavily to his knees in the dry hot sand, until the breath in his lungs was fire, until he heard the buzzing whir of a hovercat that was.
    Death.

    “That’s him!” shouted Francis, stopping the cat. “On his knees over there near the rocks.” The harsh chuckle, the Gun in his hand. “Maybe he’s praying to us, Logan! We’ll soon be Gods…maybe he knows!”
    “He’s just exhausted,” said Logan quietly. “He can’t go on, is all.”
    “I was hoping he’d give us a fight, maybe try using that Fuser of his. Liven things up. After all, it’s our last hunt.” He sighed. “Too easy. Too damned easy.”
    Logan reluctantly left the sandcat, following Francis, his weapon still holstered. He didn’t trust himself with it, not at this moment. He might just Gun Francis here and now, because the thought of his DS partner sending a homer blistering into that poor kneeling wretch was almost more than Logan could stand.
    “You want the shot?” asked Francis as Logan moved up beside him.
    “No, it’s yours, Francis…Your last official kill.” It was difficult to keep the bitterness from his voice. 
    “Fair enough, old friend.” The gaunt man nodded. “I was just being generous.”
    Doyle pulled himself to his feet gasping, blood and salt sweat in his eyes. He rubbed at them. They wouldn’t focus properly on the two advancing figures—heat-rippled shapes of black moving toward him across the hot sand.
    The shapes had stopped. One of them held Something caught the sun, dazzling his eyes. Doyle blinked, squinted, trying to get it in focus.
    Gun.
    That’s what it was. He’s going to do it, Doyle. Oh, yes, he’ll do it. He’ll fire the homer at you and the thing will find you and the pain will be