They turned another corner, and the servant slid to a stop. Two guards were standing there, flamers in their hands, menacing a small group of servants.
Newton took it all in with a single glance. From what Hanlon had said he knew the men were Irad's. "Burn those guards!" he snapped the command at Hooper, and the latter's blaster spoke twice—fierce blasts of death that made the flashes of the flameguns seem like candle-flames. The two guards died instantly.
Newton and the servant were already dashing into Amir's bedroom.
Meanwhile, back in the machine where he had stayed, Hanlon was still working on Irad's mind. Now he thought he perceived a minute opening toward one edge of that decomposing barrier. He attacked it with all his mental strength, and it began to crumble a bit faster. Further and further Hanlon dug away at that tottering mentality until there was an orifice completely through the shield. Instantly he pushed his mind through ... down and down, in and into the deeper parts of Irad's thoughts and memories.
And his body stiffened suddenly at what he found.
Newton and the servant pushed on ahead into the bedroom, just in time to see the man, Irad, sink to the floor, writhing in apparent pain.
But even so there was still enough control in the maddened conspirator so that he swung his flamegun and sent a streak of fire flashing toward the intruders.
The servant, not expecting such a thing, and slow of reflexes, caught most of the blast, and died almost instantly. Newton, trained to quick action and always expecting the unexpected, ducked down and away. Even so, an edge of the flame caught him in the shoulder. The sudden, intolerable pain threw him off balance, and he sank to the floor, his uninjured hand grasping the wound, trying to stanch the flow of blood.
George Hanlon was still in the tricycle, his mind a welter of conflicting emotions. He must be nuts—such a thing as he had just discovered was simply not possible.
"But it is," a cold, precise, soundless voice spoke in his mind. "It is not the mind of this Adwal Irad you are now contacting, but that of another, who has been controlling this entity for some time now."