aside the bow and ran into the blazing cornfield to rescue a group of

panic-stricken Cubs. Blinded by the rolling clouds of smoke and seared

by the terrible heat, their earlier bravado had turned into a

paralysing fear, rooting them to the' spot. Cadillac somehow managed

to smother the sticky fire that was eating into some of their bodies

and shepherded them through the waist-high corn.

Despite his efforts, several of the children were gunned down by the

wheeling cloud warriors as they reached safety.

Seized by a terrible rage, and oblivious of the bullets that zinged

past him like angry mosquitoes, Cadillac ran to where he had dropped

the crossbow. He snatched it up and, with a strength born from his

rage and desperation, tensioned the firing mechanism with one swift,

brutal movement. With trembling fingers he scrabbled in the pouch on

his belt for his last remaining bolt.

Gus White, in the middle of a steep turn around his port wing-tip,

spotted Cadillac loading the crossbow. Pulling his rifle into the

shoulder, Gus brought the red aiming dot out by the optical sight onto

Cadillac's chest and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. His gun

had jammed.

Gus uttered a string of obscenities, rolled quickly over to starboard

and began to jink across the sky in the manner of the late Jodi

Kazan.

Steve heard the tail-end ofGus's imprecations followed by the news of

his jammed gun and the location of the Mute crossbowman. The vital

details entered his ear while he was flying in precisely the opposite

direction. Twisting round in his seat, Steve spotted Cadillac on the

ground behind him.

He threw the Skyhawk into a steep right-hand turn. The last targets he

had fired at had been to port so his rifle, hanging on its overhead

mount was on the left side of the cockpit. He reached over and grasped

the pistol grip to bring the mount and the rifle across and into his

shoulder. The manoeuvre was only half-completed as he banked round

towards his target.

In the vital second before Cadillac came into Steve's sights, Cadillac

fired his crossbow. The bolt shot skywards with terrifying speed,

punched through the upper part of $teve's raised right arm and pinned

it to his flying helmet.

Entering the helmet at a steep angle above the ear, the bolt gouged

through Steve's scalp, striking his skull a grazing blow and came to

rest with the barbed point poking out through the crown. Stunned by

the force of the blow, Steve fought to retain consciousness. The world

began to spin; became a blur as he lost control ...

In Unit 18, Gallery 3, on Level One of Inner State U at Grand Central,

Roz Brickman, who had been filled with a sense of foreboding all day,

tried to blot out yet another confused image of blood, broken bodies

and flames that threatened to engulf her. It was a losing battle. She

felt a sharp blow on the head and, in the same instant, a searing pain

shot through her upper right arm forcing an involuntary scream from her

lips. The startled students working on either side saw Roz leap up

from her seat in front of an electron microscope with her right arm

folded across her head. She spun round, her eyes turned up under the

lids then collapsed, unconscious, hitting the floor before anyone could

catch her.

Summoned from his adjacent office, the medical supervisor in charge of

the class found that Roz was bleeding from a shallow scalp wound which

he assumed had been caused through her fall to the floor. He was,

however, unable to account for the additional loss of blood which, when

her lab coat had been removed, was found to be issuing from deep wounds

in her upper arm.

Cadillac watched impassively as the arrowhead spiralled down and made a

crash landing in the middle of the burning cornfield. Five hundred

feet above, Gus White was still trying to unjam his rifle. He swore

through clenched teeth as he tugged at the solidly locked breech but

could not find a way to free it. Now that he had nothing to shoot with

- apart from the air pistol that was part of his survival kit - Gus did

not feel like hanging around. He knew it meant leaving Steve in the

shit but with a Mute marksman somewhere underneath him he stood to get

a bolt coming up through his seat at any minute. In any case, Steve

was probably dead.

Unaware that Cadillac had fired his last bolt, Gus jinked back across

the cropfield to take stock of Steve's situation.