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he was aiming and he hit with everything he had, his torso twisting to follow through the blow. Even as he hit and the pain of contact slashed across his knuckles and tingled in his wrist, he knew it was all wrong. For Freddy had scarcely moved, had not even tried to defend himself.
    Freddy was falling, but not as one should fall. He was falling slowly, deliberately, as a tree will topple when the final cut is made. In slow motion, he crumpled toward the floor and as he fell his hand finally cleared the pocket and there was a gun in it. The gun slipped from his flaccid fingers and beat him to the floor.
    Blaine bent to scoop it up and he had it in his hand before Freddy hit the floor and he stood there, with the gun in hand, watching Freddy finally strike the floor—not actually striking it, but just sort of settling down on it and relaxing in slow motion on its surface.
    The clock still groaned upon the wall, and Blaine swung around to look at it and saw that the second hand was barely crawling across the numbered face. Crawling where it should have galloped, and groaning when it should have whirred, and the clock, Blaine told himself, had gone crazy, too.
    There was something wrong with time. The creeping second hand and Freddy’s slow reaction was evidence of that.
    Time had been slowed down.
    And that was impossible.
    Time did not slow down; time was a universal constant. But if time, somehow, had slowed down, why had not he been a party to it?
    Unless—
    Of course, unless time had stayed the way it was and he had been speeded up, had moved so fast that Freddy had not had the time to act, had been unable to defend himself, could under no circumstances have gotten the gun out of his pocket.
    Blaine held his fist out in front of him and looked at the gun. It was a squat and ugly thing and it had a deadly bluntness.
    Freddy had not been fooling, nor was Fishhook fooling. You do not pack a gun in a little game all filled with lightness and politeness. You do not pack a gun unless you’re prepared to use it. And Freddy—there was no doubt of that—had been prepared to use it.
    Blaine swung back toward Freddy and he was still upon the floor and he seemed to be most restful. It would be quite a little while before Freddy would be coming round.
    Blaine dropped the gun into his pocket and turned toward the door and as he did so he glanced up at the clock and the second hand had barely moved from where he’d seen it last.
    He reached the door and opened it and took one last glance back into the room. The room still was bright with chrome, still stark in its utility, and the one untidy thing within it was Freddy sprawled upon the floor.
    Blaine stepped out of the door and moved along the flagstone walk that led to the long stone stairway that went slanting down across the great cliff face.
    A man was lounging at the head of the stairs and he began to straighten slowly as Blaine raced down the walk toward him.
    The light from one of the upstairs windows shone across the face of the straightening man, and Blaine saw the lines of outraged surprise, as if they were sculptured lines in a graven face.
    â€œSorry, pal,” said Blaine.
    He shot his arm out, stiff from the shoulder, with the palm spread flat and caught the graven face.
    The man reeled backward slowly, step by cautious step, tilting farther and farther backward with each step. In another little while he’d fall flat upon his back.
    Blaine didn’t wait to see. He went running down the stairs. Beyond the dark lines of parked vehicles stood a single car, with its taillights gleaming and its motor humming softly.
    It was Harriet’s car, Blaine told himself, but it was headed the wrong way—not down the road toward the canyon’s mouth, but into the canyon’s maw. And that was wrong, he knew, because the road pinched out a mile or two beyond.
    He reached the bottom of the steps and threaded his way among the cars out into the