"Well, not exactly. Stutsman kind of wanted you killed, but I told the boys just to get the stuff in the safe and never mind killing you. I said to them that you were pretty good eggs and I didn't like to bump you off, see?"
"I see," said Manning.
He turned his back on Scorio and started to walk away. The gangster chief came half-way out of his chair, and as he did so, Russ reached out a single finger and tapped a key. Scorio screamed and beat with his fists against the wall of force that had suddenly formed about him. That single tap on the great keyboard had sprung a trap, had been the one factor necessary to bring into being a force shell already spun and waiting for him.
Manning did not even turn around at Scorio's scream. He slowly paced his way down the line of standing gangsters. He stopped in front of Pete and looked at him.
"Pete," he said, "you've sprung a good many prisons, haven't you?"
"There ain't a jug in the System that can hold me," Pete boasted, "and that's a fact."
"I believe there's one that could," Greg told him. "One that no man has ever escaped from, or ever will."
"What's that?" demanded Pete.
"The Vulcan Fleet," said Greg.
Pete looked into the eyes of the man before him and read the purpose in those eyes. "Don't send me there! Send me any place but there!"