Catseye by Andre Norton

forced. He slipped along the wall, paused by the tank room. The gurgle of flowing water, the plop of an aquarium inhabitant—nothing else. The marine things appeared not to have succumbed to the sleeper either.
    Horan crossed to the animal room. Again no sound at all—which was doubly suspicious. Inside that door was the alert signal, which would arouse the yardmen and ring straight through to Kyger’s quarters. Troy edged about the mesh door, his back against the wall, his free hand going to that knob, ready to push it flat.
    â€œDanger!”
    Again that word burst in his brain with the force of a full-lunged scream in his ear. He half turned, and a blast of pure, flaming energy cut so close that he cried out involuntarily at the searing bite of its edge against the line of his chin. Half blinded by the recent glare, Troy snapped the stunner beam at the dark shape arising from the floor and threw himself in a roll halfway across the room.
    Troy shot another beam at a black blot in the doorway. But the paralyzing ray seemed to have no effect in even slowing up his attacker. Before Troy could find his feet, the other had made the corridor, and then Troy heard the metallic clang of the outer door. Horan stumbled across the room, slammed his hand upon the alarm signal, heard the clamor tear the unnatural silence of the cage room to shreds. Perhaps the aroused yard guard would be able to catch the fugitive now in the open.

FIVE
    The fact that there was no corresponding uproar from the cage rooms confirmed Troy’s belief that a sleeper had been set within the shop walls. He turned up the light power to full strength and began a careful search of the room. This was where the intruder had been occupied; what he had sought must lie here.
    In the cages the occupants were balled, or sprawled, in deep, beam-induced slumber, save for that corner cage where the kinkajou had been put. Bright beads of eyes peered out at Troy, small paws rested against the netting. Troy gained an impression of excitement rather than fear. The signal of danger had been meant as a warning to him, not a cry for assistance such as the animal had made in the villa garden.
    Troy ran his finger down the netting, looked into those round eyes. “If you could just tell me what is behind all this,” he half whispered.
    â€œSomeone comes—”
    The kinkajou retreated. Before Troy’s eyes it rolled quickly into its chosen ball-in-the-corner position once again. Troy’s boot struck against some object on the floor, sent it to rebound from the wall with a metallic “ping.” He wriggled halfway under the rack of cages and picked up a dull-green cube—the sleeper.
    He glanced once more at the kinkajou. To all appearances that animal was now as deeply under the influence of the gadget he held as all the other beasts in the room.
    But if the stock of Kyger’s establishment had been so subdued, the human inhabitants of the building were not. Two yardmen, stunners in fist, came through into the corridor. And Kyger ran in their wake, his chosen weapon a far more deadly hand blaster, which must be a relic of his service days.
    Troy held out the sleeper cube, told his story of the assailant who had appeared so totally immune to the direct fire of a stunner.
    â€œWearing a person-protect, probably,” Kyger snapped impatiently. “Anything gone here—or disturbed—?”
    He passed down the line of cages, but as he reached the end one, he paused and gave a searching glance at the ball of sleeping kinkajou. Troy made no mention of the fact that the animal had been able to defy the wave of the sleeper, had saved his own life by its warning. In spite of Kyger’s treatment of him, some deep-buried and undefinable emotion kept him from warming to the merchant as he had to Rerne. He had no idea what could lie behind the invasion of the shop, but he wanted to know more of what was going on here.
    â€œI could