I dived to the deck. The chain struck me across the back, stingingly; the lead weight felt like a hammer-blow.

  I twisted and twirled on the floor to escape further blows. My maneuver was partially effective; I got stung several times, but not critically. One strike across the face could blind me and break all the bones of my face.

  The manriki was a Japanese Samurai weapon, popular with palace guards. It was sacrilegious to spill blood on the palace grounds, yet competent defense had to be made. So this bloodless weapon came into play, most effectively. It was also used to disarm unruly Samurai warriors; a trained manriki could handle all but the best.

  I could not evade the chain much longer. I spun like a top, while that thing flashed above me, scoring my back like a whip. I dared not grab for it; my hands would be caught. All I wanted to do was get inside its radius.

  Then the shadow came to my aid again. The demon misjudged my roll, and overshot me. I straightened out within the radius of the chain, jumping up, and delivered a roundhouse kick, a mawashi geri, to the side of his head.

  The foot is reputed to be the strongest section of the body; the head the weakest. Much depends, however, on how they are used. An expert skull could break an inexpert foot. In this case the foot was expert. The ball of it broke the bones of his head, crushing his temple inward, and he was done.

  The sound of this fight had alerted the ship. The demon sentry system had been incompetently organized; obviously they lacked proper discipline and direction. But that made little difference now. Four more demons charged me, their feet clattering on the rusty deck. All carried bos: long staffs, similar to those used the world over. Dangerous weapons, and a bleak prospect for me. One such weapon in expert hands would be enough to finish me. Four . . .

  Still, the darkness helped me. I realized they could not turn on lights even if they had them, because that would attract attention from the shore. This was supposed to be an empty ship.

  I snatched up the chain and struck the lead demon across the face with it—the very blow I had feared would be used against me. He staggered back, and I grabbed his bo. Now I had a weapon to match theirs, and thanks again to my brief Shaolin training, that had at least exposed me to such weapons though there had not been time to make me expert, I had some idea of how to use it. My odds had just improved significantly.

  I was near the superstructure of the ship, a restricted part of the deck bounded on one side by a narrow iron stair descending into the bowels. A lifeboat was lashed in this vicinity, and there were bundles of heavy rope strewn about. A cluttered place, and that was just fine by me.

  I stayed on the deck, where I had dived for the fallen staff. I might not have been a match for any one of them with this weapon, but they had made the mistake of rushing in together, crowding each other, hampering each other’s motions, tripping over the ropes. A group is not better than an individual in all cases, especially when the locale is restricted.

  They tried to draw back, to organize against me, but I gave them no chance. I poked the end of my bo like a rapier. I hit one demon in the chest, breaking ribs; I got another on the chin with the backswing, knocking him out. I twirled my staff around my head, seeking another opening.

  Now there was one. He struck at my head. I ducked down, just as though this were a routine Shaolin exercise, so that the bo passed harmlessly over my head. Then I rifled a lengthwise shot to his crotch, using the bo like a spear. I hated to do it, after my own experience. But my chance to catch Miko was vanishing, and I had to move swiftly. This blow was incapacitating, regardless of how little pain he actually felt.

  The last bo demon went down. Probably he would be up again soon, but not in condition to do me harm. I jumped out of the tangle of injured or unconscious demons, and braced for the onslaught of the next, now striding down the deck.

  And I fell on my face. My bo flew wide. One of those injured had grabbed my foot. Feeling like an idiot, I kicked backward and hit him with my heel, crushing his cheekbone, and he settled down again. I had underestimated the demon’s resistance to the pain of injury, and it had almost cost me severely.

  Time for a change of venue; if I stayed here my luck was sure to run out. I rolled for the rail and half-tumbled into the stairwell, trying to avoid the oncoming demon. I got my feet under me and charged downward, seeking a good place to hide. They certainly knew I was aboard, but if they had to spread out in a search pattern covering the whole ship, the advantage would be mine. I might yet be able to locate Miko and make him talk.

  “Lights!” the demon behind me cried.

  Blinding lights came on. I shielded my eyes with one hand— and made out a demon with a rifle, trained on me.

  I froze, needing no command. Evidently the sudden transition to brilliance didn’t bother demon eyes, perhaps because of that lack of night vision. “I thought you folks didn’t use firearms,”

  I said.

  Now the pursuing demon descended the stairs. “Astute, judoka,” he said. “We do believe in the power of our bodies, a power that cannot be properly exploited by the use of firearms. Any weakling can pull a trigger. We much prefer the manly ancient ways. In addition, firearms make a great deal of unpleasant noise, and our hearing is acute. There is a decided advantage in silent weapons. Finally, there are strong local gun-control laws. I fear our immunity to police interference would be severely strained if we violated those particular statutes. So we eschew such weapons, except in special cases.”

  I turned, slowly, to face him. He was about five feet eight but looked shorter because of his gorilla-like build. He weighed about 225 pounds, with long arms and short, bowed legs. When he walked, he limped. A scar ran along his chin, enhancing his ugliness. His clothing, in contrast, was bright and pretty: blue kungfu trousers and kimono shirt.

  “Hello, Miko,” I said.

  “You have gone to a great deal of trouble to find me, Striker,” the demon said.

  “Kill-Thirteen has been a great nuisance to me, Miko,” I replied. I watched him carefully. He did not appear to be armed, but I knew better than to trust that. Anything could be hidden under his uniform.

  “The terms of our encounter are simple,” Miko said. “Defeat me in fair combat, and you shall go free. Lose, and you will become one of us.”

  “One of you!” I exclaimed, appalled.

  “Come now, Striker,” he said as though admonishing a balky child. “It is an excellent proposition for one of your stature. We make no secret of it; we desire to be represented by men of your reputation and competence. There is a substantial future for you, with us.”

  “Substantial future!” I echoed. “I am your enemy! You could never trust me!” But, my own words gave me a thrill of misgiving, for I remembered saying something similar long ago, to the head monk of the kung-fu monastery. How wrong I had been, then.

  “All demons are trustworthy,” he said. “They know there is no other source of Kill-Thirteen. Be at ease on that score. Also, we know you to be a man of integrity; if you agree to join us, you will do so.”

  “Then why don’t you just shoot me down and dose me with it now?” I demanded, partly because I was afraid they would do just that.

  “Two reasons, Striker. First, the drug is a strain on the system, initially. If you were dosed when wounded, it could be fatal, and that would be pointless. Second, we must have your acquiescence. You are strong-minded; dosed against your will, you would seek suicide at the earliest opportunity, and would be of no use to us. But if you agree, your strength and your honor would tremendously enhance our effort. It is worth some risk to us, to convert you.”

  “You talk of honor,” I said. “What assurance do I have that your man won’t simply shoot me dead, after I beat you?”

  “Striker, we do have standards,” he said. “We are not fly-by- night ruffians. We merely want to pursue our objectives with security. We have no reason to kill you.”

  “That wasn’t the way it looked when your black mistress raided my dojo!”

  “An object lesson, no more. She spared your life deliberately.”

  “And in the hospital—”

  “They were underlings, not party to our higher decision. With a man like you in charge of such operations, such errors will not occur.”

  It was possible, I realized. They did stand in need of better leadership. Miko was an excellent talker, but his ship-alert system stunk; he was an incomplete leader. But he was intelligent enough to recognize his own limitations. Probably their really competent people were spread thinly.

  I gave it one more try. “Ilunga told me you would kill me.”

  “Ilunga is a woman,” he said, almost contemptuously. “You humbled her. It is quite possible that she hopes you will kill me, as she aspires to my position.”

  Answer enough. And they did have me covered. I would have to gamble. Gamble that I could beat him, and that the demons would keep their word.

  “One other thing,” I said. “I didn’t come here just to go away again. I need to know the source of the drug.”

  Now he hesitated, which was a good sign. A liar would have agreed readily. “Few demons and no straights can know that place,” he said finally. “If I told you, they would cut off our supply, and we would all die.”

  “You don’t offer much of a bargain, then,” I said. “If I lose, you’ll tell me, because I’ll be an addict, a demon. If I win, I deserve the information. You have to be prepared to gamble yourself.”

  “No. My gamble is in fighting you. This is sacred.”

  I laughed. “You are demons! Creatures of hell, bound to a hell-drug! How can anything be sacred to you?”

  But he was serious. “Kali would know. And punish. I can offer you your life, no more. If we cannot agree on terms, I shall be forced to kill you now.” And he raised his arm in a gesture to the rifleman.

  Kali. Who was that? It was a clue, perhaps sufficient. He seemed to have spoken the name unawares. And they could kill me.

  “All right,” I said. It was a hell of a gamble, because the last thing I wanted to do was to take a sniff of Kill-13. But I had to chance it.

  “This way,” Miko said.

  We were on a kind of catwalk overlooking a tremendous interior room. In fact, it was the cavernous hold of the tanker, converted to human use. The walls were painted red, and the broad floor was carpeted. One end was set up like a dojo, with training equipment and even hangings of bright silk and pictures on the wall. It was a lush residence, but the reek of oil was omnipresent.

  The rifleman remained on the catwalk, covering me, while Miko, the other demons, and I climbed iron rungs set into the wall, to the bottom of the hold.

  I certainly was not going to make any quick break out of this one, even if I were prepared to break my word.

  Miko signaled, and the rifleman lowered his weapon. Not that that made much difference now. The wounded demons formed themselves into a semicircle on the floor. Miko approached carefully, barehanded. He knew one of the barehanded martial arts, obviously, probably kung-fu. His kung-fu uniform meant nothing; all demons called themselves members of the Kung-Fu Temple, even karatekas like Ilunga.

  We made formal bows, then closed.

  Miko leaped straight into the air, his lameness disappearing. He emitted a terrible kiai yell and made an awful face. “Saaaa!”

  If he thought to frighten me, he was a fool. I was an old hand at this. I too leaped high and let fly a worse yell. “Yaaaa!” And I made a face I wish I could have seen.

  God, he was fast! He flipped across the deck, his bare feet flashing toward my head.

  I jumped away, blocking with my forearms. I had also removed my shoes. I tried to make a counter kick at his inverted face, but he was already changing position. His eyes blazed orange as his head avoided my blow.

  Then he was on his feet, and his fist scored on my shoulder, rocking me back. I countered with an uppercut to his nose: an inverted fist, uraken. His forward inertia prevented him from getting out of the way in time, and I drew blood. It was a neat shot, and must have looked impressive, but I knew it was sheer luck, and only a minor injury. One tries many motions, not expecting them to work, and sometimes they do.

  He didn’t seem to be in pain—largesse of the drug again—but he was aware of the dripping blood. He must have assumed that my reflexes were faster than they were; actually I was relying on my many years of conditioning, making automatic responses that were faster than any thought-out ones could be. I had to, because of his incredible speed. So he made a mistake in judgment, deciding that he could not defeat me fairly after all.

  He pulled back, reached into his kimono, and brought forth two blades. They were sais—long sharp knives with projecting tines, to catch opposing blades. Each one was like a Neptune’s trident, but with the center prong twice as long as the other two. The main blade was about a foot long. In short, a wicked instrument, one that could stand up to a sword.

  I had no sword. Barehanded, I had no chance against this weapon; even if I managed to get hold of one sai, the other would get me. He obviously knew how to use it. With his speed, he would cut me apart in moments. So I ran.

  “Coward!” he yelled gleefully. “You have nowhere to go! I’ll pin you to the wall!”

  Easy talk, from the armed to the unarmed. But I had a surprise of my own to unveil. “Bless you, Chiyako!” I thought I drew out my tonfas, clashing them together so that they emitted their peculiar clacking sound, loud in this chamber. There was a murmur of surprise from the demons.

  They chuckled when they saw my crude looking weapons. Certainly the tonfa was as unlikely an instrument as any; it had no blade, little mass, and was only a foot and a half long. But it did have its points, as Chiyako had demonstrated, and it was ideal against a blade. I hoped Miko knew no more about the tonfa than the other demons did.

  Miko thrust one of his sais at me. The twelve-inch blade sliced toward my gut, but I moved one tonfa to intercept it, rather like a Ping Pong paddle catching the ball. The point stuck momentarily in the wood before he jerked it back.

  I did not take the offense at once. My weapon was defensive in nature, not suited to fancy ploys. At least, not by one who was less than expert in its use, as I was. I wanted to test the skill of my opponent in this new circumstance. I could not afford overconfidence.

  That skill was not long in the proving. The demon danced about, his blades flashing in and out in a blinding display. He twirled the sais, and he seemed to float in the air, jumping and somersaulting with the amazing reflexes of the drug. I tried to keep my gaze on the weapons, but this quickly made me dizzy. That may have been part of his strategy. At this rate, I would soon make a mistake, either blocking a feint, or failing to block a genuine thrust. The demon might not know much about the tonfa, but he did know how to bewilder an opponent.

  I had to be more aggressive. Time would play into his hands, not mine. I whirled my tonfas around their short handles, making feints of my own. He wasn’t fooled; his blades flicked in and out, nicking me in the arms, the legs. Both the edge and the point of the sai were dangerous. I suspected that the main reason my wounds were not worse was that he wanted to defeat me without injuring me too badly for me to survive a dose of Kill-13.

  Still, I managed to strike him several times about the body, and these blows had to hurt, like wooden boxing gloves. The sais were specially designed to fight swords, but I did not carry a sword. The trident was almost useless against the squat tonfa. He was always moving, so I could not score cleanly, but just as he was making me bleed, from a dozen shallow cuts in my arms and upper body, so my blows with the wood were bruising him. I was sure I had scored several strikes that would have knocked out the average man, as the tonfa is as solid as a policeman’s billy-club.

  But this was no average man. Welts were rising on his muscular upper arms, and a nasty bump was rising on his forehead, and no doubt worse bruises were hidden by the uniform, but he was a demon, and he took no notice of them.

  He thrust at my neck, and this time I gambled. Instead of intercepting it with the flat of my board, I struck upward at his hand. Too late and I could receive a fatal cut; too early and he would have time to counter my move, perhaps disarming me. But I timed it right.

  The edge of the tonfa caught his hand, hard. The sai went flying away. He was half disarmed.

  But with the other blade he caught my exposed hand, slicing it across the back. I dropped the tonfa; I only hoped the tendons leading to my fingers had not been severed. My gamble had gained me nothing, after all; now I, too, was half-armed. And one sai could do a hell of a lot more damage than one tonfa could stop.

  I backed away. I had to stop the bleeding. I concentrated, and felt the force of ki going to that hand, strengthening it, shutting off the flow. I had learned the power of ki from a venerable Japanese warrior, an expert in Aikido. Hiroshi was his name, and he was able to do extraordinary things, utilizing this hidden power. With me it was intermittent; only in moments of extreme stress or need could I draw on it. If I lost this fight, I might try to use the ki to combat the effect of Kill-13 on my system. But how much better to win!

  Miko gambled too. Confident of victory, he leaped at me and struck downward with his remaining sai. I caught it on my other tonfa, the blade between the board and the handle, holding it there momentarily. Now, with no second blade to guard against, I struck him with my wounded hand on the sai-arm. I used the “knife-hand” blow, the side of my hand held stiff. Blood was streaming down my arm, despite my ki effort, but my force was undiminished. I made contact at the middle of his forearm—and the ki made my hand so strong that his arm snapped like a twig.

  Now he was unarmed, victim of his rash attack. But I was not fool enough to relinquish the initiative. As he hunched over, I followed through with a descending elbow strike, hiji oroshi-uchi, that hit him in the upper middle back, right between the shoulders on the spine. His spine snapped. He went into a terrible muscle spasm, his whole body contorting.