treatment

right sleeve was torn from the blows it had taken and returned. He jerked the dangling fabric free with his left hand. The length of pressure tubing which covered the right forearm gleamed in the strong lights. There was a smear of blood near the wrist, but the nunchaku had not marked the rigid plastic. A single toothmark winked just above the line at which the tanker had cut the section from his lure.
"I said bring him," Beverly Dyson repeated in a voice with more life than before. Slade, who was expecting the next words to call a spray of gunfire, was amazed to hear the Councilor continue, "Don't worry, my good man. I have an offer for you."
"No," said Slade. He turned quickly, smoothly, a shark twisting against a fool who would grasp its tail.
The gunman might be ordered to fire or might not. It did not matter whether Slade faced the blast. The men who had accompanied Durotige were two paces closer, now. Their confidence had been in their master's promise of good treatment, not in their own numbers. Now they scuttled back so quickly that one stumbled