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hair to have grown out to shoulder length.
    "I'm Sleel. Where are we going?"
    "To the converter room.You'll be loading carts for your first rotation."
    "Nice of you to give me time to settle in."
    " 'Idlehands are the devil's workshop,' " Brunder said.
    Sleel followed the other prisoner down a series of interlocked corridors. If there were guards around, he didn't see them.
    The converter room was a high-ceilinged rectangle maybe twenty meters by fifty meters, and a bank of humming rectification units lined one of the long walls. Maybe twenty prisoners, mostly men, worked in the room, moving around the machines, pushing carts full of electronic parts and coils of wire. As Sleel followed Brunder into the big room, he saw a bank of flashers along the doorway, indicating that the door was wired into some kind of scanner. Sleel figured that anybody who tried to take home a souvenir from work, a tool, some cable, whatever, would probably get nailed by the HO scan and no doubt be made to suffer for the effort.
    Sleel turned to Brunder. "Who is the hardest man in the place?"
    "You donetime before?"
    "Not your business.The guy who runs things?"
    Brunder nodded."Truck.Big man with the spacer's buzz, sitting at the desk next to the dollycrane."
    Brunder did not point and he kept his voice low.
    "This place covered by video?"
    "Sure."
    "How long for a guard to get here?"
    "Thirty-one seconds is the record. Forty-five is average."
    "Okay."
    Sleel walked over to where the man called Truck sat. He was big, not as big as Bork, maybe, but not much smaller, and he had a face that had taken a few shots. The nose was slightly bent, the eye sockets padded with some scar tissue, one ear thicker than the other. Sleel would have been a lot more impressed if the guy had been beautiful. A hard with a pretty face meant he didn't let it get hit and that was worse than somebody who looked like this guy. Still, you never knew what an opponent could do; looks could fool you sometimes. There seemed to be a fair amount of muscle under the tight coverall.
    Truck looked up."Yeah?"
    "I'm Sleel. I mind my own business and I don't take any shit."
    Truck grinned."Yeah?"
    "You heard it."
    Truck stood, and Sleel saw his intent as he did. Might as well have a big flashing sign over his head, the way his muscles tightened, the way his hands curled into fists and his breathing altered.Stupid.
    Truck was still gathering himself when Sleel kicked him. The matador's foot snapped out precisely, smacked into Truck's testicles and flattened them briefly against the man's pubic bone.
    Truck sucked in a quick breath, which was good, because it was the last one he was going to get for a few seconds. Sleel stepped in even as Truck reached for his injured scrotum and put everything he had into a flat punch into the man's solar plexus. The punch stole the man's ability to breathe and drove him back half a meter.
    With Truck now having two things to worry about, Sleel gave Truck a third. He spun, his arms drawn in tight, and when he opened out, his right fist formed a hammer that connected with Truck's forehead.
    Truck fell backward like a chainsawed tree and hit the floor.
    The room got very quiet.
    Sleel took a deep breath, let it out, and moved to sit in the unconscious man's chair. With any luck at all, he'd have almost another forty seconds before the guards came to get him. He smiled at the other prisoners and waved one hand jauntily at them. Good to get that out of the way.
    Now he could concentrate on finding a way out of this pit.

Chapter Three
    BORK WAS NOT stupid. People sometimes had the idea that all big men with muscles had less on the ball mentally, and Bork had long ago realized that he could turn this into an advantage. A man who was busy patronizing you would often let something slip that he might not if he thought you could keep up with him. That was good, and Bork knew how to exaggerate his normally easygoing attitude to the point where he might seem less than