My name is James Gregory, Ph.D. You could call me an egghead. For three years I've been one of Uncle Sam's boys, tinkering with some of God's bigger secrets at a New Mexico desert project.

     Until last week, I was married, but now she was on her way to Reno. My sport is hunting deer, a good diversion for a mathematician who wants to relax and to forget domestic unpleasantness.

     Rifle across my knees, I was sitting on a stump opening day when the first bullet hit me in the back, to the left of the spine. I went down, mad and scared, and little behind in my breathing.

     Damn crazy fool!" I hollered. Another bullet tore through the stump, ripping out a fistful of wood on the exit side. The third screamed as it ricochets off a rock. I yelled. I waved my red cap.

     Egghead or now, my decision kind of made itself, as the fourth shot burned my arm. The man was standing in thick bushes 70 yards away, and I aimed at all I could see of him—his head.

     Right then, I didn't know who it was I had killed, and it turned out he didn't know me. Bu he had his reasons, he'd been told what to do....