Starblood

stretches of shelving, that had once held ammunition but which were now bowed and warped away from the walls and covered with ugly lumps of fungus. He moved into the second cellar room.
    Behind him the Hound ripped loose the wall panel he had balanced in place, the sound echoing frantically in the cul-de-sacs of the Tory chambers. Light from the shooting range dispelled the gloom. The Hound came quickly after Ti moved toward the third cellar at top speed. He slammed his shoulder stump into a half-fallen beam, but he kept moving, his hatred and his fear denying the pain his nerves insisted was there. The Hound came faster.
    When he reached the entrance to the fifth cellar, Timothy found nature had conspired against him. There had been a cave-in, and the beams and rocks of the ceiling had collapsed to effectively bar his escape. With the Hound at his neck, there was no time to break through.
    He turned on his pursuer. Its sensors gleamed in the dim light, thirty feet away. It fired three pins…
    He moved aside as he saw its intent. The darts studded the rubble wall behind him, where they quivered like arrows. He sent his servos to an overhead beam lying in the Hound's path and had them worry its tenuous connections with the rotting ceiling. Just as the Hound passed beneath, the beam tore loose and crashed into it. The only effect was a momentary deflection in the machine's course. The Hound swerved, bobbled, recovered in only moments and swept closer, firing another three pins.
    All three missed. Ti was surprised, for he had not had time to take, evasive action—and Hounds were not known for sloppy marksmanship.
    The Hound fired three more; again, they all missed.
    Ti abruptly realized he was turning them aside with his psionic power! The second time, he had been more conscious of his effort. Now he stood with his back to the collapsed ceiling, waiting the next attack. It fired, and the darts spun away to either side. Over the next several minutes, he deflected another two dozen of the slender spines. The Hound ceased shooting and bobbled gently from side to side, regarding him with its measuring devices. A moment later, it dispatched two servos for his neck…
    Reacting quickly, he called his own servos to him. Four feet from his face, the enemy's hands and his own met and locked, metal fingers laced through metal fingers. He set full power into his hands and tried to snap the other set of prosthos.
    His hopes for a swift triumph were destroyed when he saw the Hound had similar ideas. Its own servos wrenched at his, the four members swaying back and forth in the air, gaining and losing the same space in a rhythmic duel. Finally, when both sets reached full power and stress, they did not move at all, but merely strained in frozen tableau against each other. The grav-plates on all four hands erupted almost simultaneously in smoke and sparks. The metal hands 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…
    Timothy realized the nomenclature was no longer adequate. With both of them handless, and with Ti able to neutralize the pin weapon, the balance of power had been equalized. As he moved past the Hound, he was aware that another facet of his power had made itself known tonight. Under moments of stress and anxiety, he seemed to acquire new abilities. The hate had been valuable, and he would still need it And with his power to influence small objects in transit as well as when they were still, he might be able to give vent to the hatred when he encountered Klaus Margle.
    The Hound stopped following him when he moved into shooting range again. It bumped purposelessly against the beams, as if its mind had been in its hands and, losing them, it had lost all cleverness. Ti floated upstairs and stopped in the hallway
to
listen. He could hear footsteps in the kitchen…
    He was prepared for them. Confidence surged through him, augmenting his hate. He drifted into the living-room just as the gunmen walked in with their weapons drawn. "Your Hound is finished," he said, drawing their attention from the areas of deeper shadow which they were cautiously exploring.
    The man on Margle's left swung and fired. Timothy deflected all but one pin, lifted that and turned it back on the gunman. The dart sank into the Brother's chest, its poison exploding into his bloodstream. He gagged, doubled over, and dropped.
    "I won't