He reacted quickly, or he might have been strangled. He called his own servos to him. Four feet from his face, the enemy hands and his own met and locked, metal fingers laced metal fingers. He flushed full power into the hands and set them the task of breaking the Hound’s fingers.
But the Hound seemed to have similar ideas. Its own servos wrenched at Ti’s so that the four members swayed back and forth in the air, now gaining an inch or two for their master, now losing the same amount of distance. Finally, with both sets at full power and firmly clenched, they did not move at all but merely strained in frozen tableau against one another. When the grav plates and their connections erupted in sparks and smoke, they did so on all four hands. The servos dropped to the floor as if they were a single creature, a metal bird with shot pellets in its wings. Now both hunter and hunted were handless.
Hunter and hunted. Ti suddenly realized the nomenclature was no longer adequate. Both deprived of hands and Ti able to stop the Hound’s pins, neither was the hunter. He moved by the Hound toward the shooting range. He had discovered another application of his power this night. He mused that necessity always brought out his abilities. It had been necessary to feed himself that day long ago, and he had lifted the spoon. And now it had been a necessity to control the pins. Now he knew he could influence small objects even in high-velocity transit, just as he could lift the spoon.
He moved into the shooting range. The Hound had ceased to follow but bumped purposelessly against the cross-beams as if its mind had been in its hands and as if a loss of ability had led to a loss of purpose. Ti floated up the stairs and into the hallway of the house again. He could hear footsteps in the kitchen: Margle and his men coming to see what had taken the robot so long. Well, he was ready for them. Or he thought he was. He concentrated on his psi until his mind was alive with the power of it. He drifted into the living room just as the Dark Brethren moved in with guns drawn.
“Your Hound is finished,” he said, drawing their attention.
The man on Margle’s left swung and fired. Ti deflected the pins, all but one. That one he redirected to the man who had shot. The pin sunk in his chest, its poison shooting through him. He gagged, doubled over, and dropped.
“Turn yourself in, Margle,” Ti said wearily. “I won’t kill you if you’ll turn yourself in.”
But Margle and the remaining man were crouched behind the sofa. They were not ready to give up just because their target had gotten in a lucky shot. In the dark it had appeared to be a lucky shot and nothing more. They couldn’t see that his hands were gone.
“You’re crazy,” Margle said. “You were crazy for getting into this in the first place.”
“Why did you kill Taguster?”
“Why should I tell you?”
Apparently, they could not see him in the dark. Only the dead man had spotted him, and now the others were waiting to zero in on his voice, or waiting for him to move and give himself away,
“You’re going to kill me, aren’t you—or I will kill you. Either way, telling me won’t make a difference, will it?”
“He was on PBT.”
“Drugs?”
“We supplied.”
“What excuse is that to kill him?”
Margle chuckled as if he were going lax and unwatchful. But Ti knew, if he moved, Margle would fire a murderous barrage—all of which would miss, of course. “It was getting too expensive for him. So he decided to gather information on us. He hoped to turn the information over to the government in return for licensing as a legal addict. Then he could get his drugs free. But he got too nosy, and our boy became suspicious. We ransacked his house when he was out, and we found his file on us. Almost complete enough to turn over to the proper Federal authorities.”