The man was waiting for him at the mouth of the ascending tunnel.
Syme looked at him casually, without a flicker of expression, and started to walk on, but the other stepped into his path. He was quite young, Syme saw, with a fighter's shoulders under the white leather, and a hard, determined thrust to his firm jaw.
"All right," the boy said quietly. "What is it?"
"I don't understand," Syme said.
"The game, the angle. You've been following me. Do you want trouble?"
"Why, no," Syme told him bewilderedly. "I haven't been following you. I—"
The boy knuckled his chin reflectively. "You could be lying," he said finally. "But maybe I've made a mistake." Then—"Okay, citizen, you can clear—but don't let me catch you on my tail again."
Syme murmured something and turned away, feeling the spaceman's eyes on the small of his back until he turned the corner. At the next street he took a ramp up, crossed over and came down on the other side a block away. He waited until he saw the boy's broad figure pass the intersection, and then followed again more cautiously.
It was risky, but there was no other way. The signatures, the data, even the photograph on the card could be forged once Syme got his hands on it, but the identity card itself—that oblong of dark diamondite, glowing with the tiny fires of radioactivity—that could not be imitated, and the only way to get it was to kill.
Up ahead was the Founders' Tower, the tallest building in Lillis. The boy strode into the entrance lobby, bought a ticket for the observation platform, and took the elevator. As soon as his car was out of sight in the transparent tube, Syme followed. He put a half-credit slug into the machine, took the punctured slip of plastic that came out. The ticket went into a scanning slot in the wall of the car, and the elevator whisked him up.