Wearily, I shook my head. "Save your breath, Controller. The only deal I'll make is not to kill you, providing you stop those executions. Beyond that, you'll have to take your chances with the courts."
Silence again. And still Kruze sat granite-solid in his chair. Only his eyes showed that he'd heard me—the emotionless, unblinking eyes that never left mine for an instant. Between us, the desk-top gleamed dully, bleak and bare as a sheet of the wind-polished black lake ice you see sometimes in the wintry hinterlands of Bejak II.
I tightened my grip on the paragun's butt. "The order, Kruze. Write it down, ready for plating, or I shoot."
A thick-shouldered shrug. "Very well, Traynor. If that's the way you want it...."
Kruze leaned forward.
The next instant, there was the faintest of humming, whirring sounds, apparently issuing from the desk.
Simultaneously, involuntarily, my right arm jerked forward and down. The gun tore from my fingers and slapped against the desk-top's polished surface with a noisy crack! as if impelled by unseen springs.
For the fraction of a second I lurched off balance—incredulous, gaping.
Before I could recover, Kruze whipped a gun of his own from the desk's sorter-slot. His voice rang with harsh triumph: "As you said earlier, Friend Traynor—don't move, if you want to live!"
The light in his eyes said even more. I stood ever so still.