Bartol listened for a moment smiling. His job was to get his enemy before that enemy killed him. He was not going to wait in the citadel to be killed.
Faintly, he could feel the vibration of heavy beam-rifles as they fired at the fast-moving assassin.
"He's wearing a force shield!" the Commander said. "But what a force shield! Hand guns have no effect, and even a beam-rifle doesn't bother him!"
Bartol kept listening, but he started doing some fast moving himself. First, to the elevator. The elevator was locked, but Bartol burned the door open, wondering whether the car was above or below him. It was below, just as he had expected. One flash of his cutter beam, and the cables parted. There was a faint crash from far below as the automatic brakes grabbed, holding the car in place.
He still had to move fast. There was death waiting for him, and it might yet overtake him. If only the Commander kept busy with the assassin!
He listened. The Commander was still in his citadel, trying to stop the BSA killer. Only heavy-duty guns would knock the assassin out, and they were clumsy and hard to move. The BSA man had to take a roundabout route, but he was working his way steadily toward the citadel of the Autarch, where an android in a gaudy uniform was waiting for him.
The assassin charged through a group of androids armed with handguns. He bowled them over and kept on running. Bartol wished he could follow the action with a vision screen, as the Commander was.
As he listened, Bartol was running down the corridor toward a second elevator. He burned open the door. This time the car was above him. He leaned into the shaft and fired a beam upwards. There was a flare and a grinding crash as the second elevator was destroyed.
Then he stepped into a nearby closet and carefully burned a hole in the floor. The heat was intense in the little room, but his own body shield protected him.
As soon as the hole in the floor was big enough, Bartol dropped through it to the level below. There was no one in the room.