Heaving up from his chair, he came around the desk, pocketing my own paragun in the process. "You're an ingenious man, Traynor. So I know you'll appreciate ingenuity in another. You see, a buzzer can be under a desk just as well as on top of it. And sometimes, instead of buzzing, it turns on a magnetic field strong enough to jerk an anvil clear across the room. I've found it quite effective in discouraging would-be assassins. It's so unanticipated—like this—"
The controller had come abreast of me as he spoke. Now, without warning, he suddenly hammered a sledge-like fist straight to the pit of my stomach.
Retching, I lurched back; bent double.
Savagely, Kruze brought up a rock-hard knee, square into my face.
Jagged pain-colors exploded in my brain. I crashed to the floor, the room swirling around me.
Kruze again; words coming from afar: "No noise, now, Traynor! As you warned me, we mustn't attract the attention of my guards. We'll just leave the way you came—down the shaft-lift, into the space-warp, and then away on a little trip."
Groggily, prodded on by kicks, I lurched to my feet ... stumbled back to the alcove and the shaft-lift. My nose was bleeding badly. My belly screamed protest at every step.
Down, now; all the way down, with Kruze and his gun crowded close against me. Then a death-march that ran the length of the corridor from the lift to the space-warp chamber.
When I lagged at the entry-hatch, my captor gave me yet another kick, from behind and to the hinge of my left knee, so that I fell through the slot bodily, sprawling on my face on the stone-hard floor inside.