Astrell, a beauty no longer. The features of her face sagged loose and shapeless. Her body seemed to dissolve into the floor.
And everywhere, the ooze, the ooze....
A final, sighing breath. Life left her.
Choking, Ross stumbled to a corner and tried to scrub the slime from his hands with a ragged jacket that hung there.
Behind him, still poised in the doorway with Veta, Cheng said grimly, "Don't try anything, Thigpen. You're worth money to me. I don't want to kill you."
"That's right, Ross. Oh, absolutely right!"
It was a voice out of nowhere, coolly mocking, familiar yet distorted. Ross, Cheng, Veta—they all turned, startled.
The voice again: "As a matter of fact, Ross, you're even more valuable to me than to Cheng. That's why I'm taking over."
Ross looked up sharply—really up, into the echoing, empty, catwalk-spanned reaches of the warehouse that stretched above the ceilingless partitions of the office rooms.
Adjudicator Pike Mawson's grav-seat hovered there, high above them. Smiling, sociable, he nodded to Ross.