"Better give him another shot, Harry;" said the other, "when those guys
wake up, they drive you crazy."
Houston could almost feel the sting of the needle as it was inserted
into the arm of the helpless prisoner.
Slowly, Harris's thoughts, which had begun to become fully coherent,
again became chaotic, finally sliding off into silence and darkness.
"Are you all right, sir?"
Houston looked up from his intense concentration. The stewardess was
standing by his seat. He realized that there was a film of perspiration
on his brow, and that he probably had looked dazed while he was
concentrating on Harris's mind.
"Sure," he said quickly, "I'm all right. I'm just a little tired. Had to
get up too early to catch this plane." He rubbed his forehead. "I do
have a little headache; would you happen to have any aspirin aboard?"
She smiled professionally. "Certainly, sir. I'll get a couple of
tablets."
As she left for the first-aid cabinet, Houston thought bleakly to
himself: _Harris was framed. Possibly others have been, too. But by
whom? And why?_
He could see why a Normal might do such a thing. But why would a
Controller do it?
There was only one answer. Somewhere, there was a Controller, or a group
of Controllers who were megalomaniacs _par excellence_. If that were so,
he--or they--could make the late "Blackjack" Donnely look like a meek,
harmless, little mouse.
* * * * *
The one part of Continental U.S.A. over which the American Government
had no jurisdiction was small, areawise, in comparison with its power.
The District of the United Nations occupied the small area of Manhattan
Island which ran from 38th Street on the south to 49th Street on the
north; its western border was Third Avenue, its eastern, the East River.
From here, the UN ruled Earth.
There were no walls or fences around it; only by looking at street signs
could anyone tell that they had crossed an international border.
Crossing Third Avenue from west to east, one found that 45th Street had
suddenly become Deutschland Strasse; 40th Street became Rue de France;
47th was the Via Italiano. 43rd Street's sign was painted in Cyrillic
characters, but beneath it, in English, were the words "Avenue of Mother
Russia."
Third Avenue was technically One World Drive. Second Avenue was labelled
as Planetary Peace Drive, and First was United Nations Drive.
But New Yorkers are, and always have been, diehards. Just as The Avenue
of the Americas had forever remained Sixth Avenue, no matter what the
maps called it, so had the other streets retained their old names in
conversation.
Even the International Post Office, after years of wrangling, had given
up, and letters addressed to _Supreme Headquarters, United Nations
Police, 45th Street at Second Avenue_, were delivered without comment,
even though the IPO still firmly held that they were technically
misaddressed. And, privately, even the IPO officials admitted that the
numbers were easier to say and remember than the polyglot street names
that had been tagged on by the General Assembly.
So when David Houston signalled a taxi at Grand Central Station and
said, "Forty-fifth and Second," the driver simply set his automatic
controls, leaned back in his seat, and said, "Goin' to see the cops,
huh?"
When no answer was forthcoming, the driver turned around and took a good
look at his passenger. "Maybe you're a UN cop yourself, huh?"
Houston shook his head. "Nope. Some kids have been scribbling dirty
words on my sidewalk, and I'm going to report it to the authorities."
The driver turned back around and looked ahead again. "Jeez! That's
serious. Hadn't you better take it up with the Secretary General? I
wouldn't be satisfied with no underlings in a case like that."
"I'm thinking of taking it up with the Atomic Energy Control Board,"
Houston told him. "I think those kids are using radioactive chalk."
"That's one way for 'em to get blue jeans," said the driver cryptically.
There was silence for a moment as the taxi braked smoothly to a halt,
guided and controlled by the automatic machinery in the hood.
Then, suddenly, the driver said: "Ship up!" He pointed east, along 45th
Street, toward Long Island. Far in the distance was a rapidly rising
vapor trail, pointing vertically toward the sky, the unmistakable sign
of a spaceship takeoff. They didn't leave often, and it was still an
unusual sight.
Houston said nothing as he climbed out and paid the driver, tossing in
an extra tip.
"Thanks, buddy," said the driver. "Watch out for them kids."
Houston didn't answer. He was still watching the vapor trail as the cab
pulled away.
* * * * *
_There goes Harris_, he was thinking. _An innocent man, guilty of
nothing more than being born different. And because of that, he's
labelled as an inhuman monster, not even worthy of being executed.
Instead, he's taken into space, filled full of hibernene, and chained to
a floating piece of rock for the rest of his life._
Such was humanity's "humane" way of taking care of the bogey of
Controllers. Capital punishment had been outlawed all over Earth; it had
long since been proved that legalized murder, execution by the State,
solved nothing, helped no one, prevented no crimes, and did infinitely
more harm than good in the long run.
With the coming of the Controllers, a movement had arisen to bring back
the old evil of judicial murder, but it had been quickly put down when
the Penal Cluster plan had been put forth as a more "humane" method.
Hibernene was a drug that had been evolved from the study of animals
like the bear, which spent its winters in an almost death-like sleep. A
human being, given a proper dosage of the drug, lapsed into a deep coma.
The bodily processes were slowed down; the heart throbbed sluggishly,
once every few minutes; thought ceased. It was the ideal prison for a
mental offender that ordinary prisons could not hold.
But it wasn't quite enough for the bloodthirsty desire for vengeance
that the Normals held for the Controllers. There had to be more.
Following Earth in its orbit around the sun, trailing it by some
ninety-three million miles, were a group of tiny asteroids, occupying
what is known as the Trojan position. They were invisible from Earth,
being made of dark rock and none of them being more than fifteen feet in
diameter. But they had been a source of trouble in some of the early
expeditions to Mars, and had been carefully charted by the Space
Commission.
Now a use had been found for them. A man in a spacesuit could easily be
chained to one of them. With him was a small, sun-powered engine and
tanks of liquified food concentrates and oxygen. Kept under the
influence of hibernene, and kept cool by the chill of space, a man could
spend the rest of his life there--unmoving, unknowing, uncaring, dead as
far as he and the rest of Mankind were concerned--his slight bodily
needs tended automatically by machine.
It was a punishment that satisfied both sides of the life-or-death
argument.
Houston shook off the bleak, black feeling of terrible chill that had
crept over him and pushed his way into the UN Police building.
* * * * *
The thirteenth floor housed the Psychodeviant Division. As he stood in
the rising elevator, Houston wondered wryly if the number 13 was good
luck or bad in this case.
He stepped out of the elevator and headed for the Division Chief's
office.
Division Chief Reinhardt was a heavy-set, balding man, built like a
professional wrestler. His cold blue eyes gleamed from beneath shaggy,
overhanging brows, and his face was almost expressionless except for a
faint scowl that crossed it from time to time. In spite of the fact that
a Canadian education had wiped out all but the barest trace of German
accent, his Prussian training, of the old Junkers school, was still
evident. He demanded--and got--precision and obedience from his
subordinates, although he had no use for the strictly military viewpoint
of obsequiousness towards one's superiors.
He was sitting behind his desk, scowling slightly at some papers on it
when Houston stepped in.
"You wanted me to report straight to you, Mr. Reinhardt?"
Reinhardt looked up, his heavy face becoming expressionless. "Ah,
Houston. Yes; sit down. You did a fine job on that London affair; that's
what I call coming through at the last moment."
"How so?"
"Your orders to return," he said, "were cut before you found your man.
We have a much more important case for you than some petty pilfering
Controller. We are after much more dangerous game."
Houston nodded. "I see." Inwardly, he wondered. It was almost as if
Reinhardt knew that Houston had found out that the recall had come
early. Houston would have given his right arm at that moment to be able
to probe Reinhardt's mind. But he held himself back. He had, in the
past, sent tentative probes toward the Division Chief and found nothing,
but he didn't know whether it would be safe now or not. It would be
better to wait.
* * * * *
Reinhardt stood up, walked to the wall, and turned on a display screen.
He twisted a knob to a certain setting, and a map of Manhattan Island
sprang onto the screen in glowing color.
"As you know," Reinhardt said pedantically, "no Controller can do a
perfect job of controlling a normal person. No matter how much he may
want to make John Smith act naturally, some of the personality of the
Controller will show up in the actions of John Smith. Am I correct?"
Houston nodded without saying anything. The question was purely
rhetorical, and the statement was perfectly correct.
"Very well, then," Reinhardt continued, "by means of these
peculiarities, our psychologists have found that there is widespread,
but very subtle controlling going on right in the UN General Assembly
itself! The amazing thing is that they all bear the--shall we
say--trademark of the same Controller. Whoever he is, he seems to have a
long-range plan in mind; he wants to change, ever so slightly, certain
international laws so that he will profit by them. Do you follow?"
"I follow," said Houston.
"Good. It has taken painstaking research and a great deal of
psychological statistical analysis, but we have found that one
company--and one company only--benefits by these legal changes. Did you
ever hear of Lasser & Sons?"
"Sure," said Houston. "They're in the import-export business, with a few
fingers in shipping and air transport."
"That's them," said Reinhardt. "Someone in that company, presumably
someone at the top, is a Controller. And he's a very subtle, very
dangerous man. Unlike the others, there is nothing hasty or overt in his
plans. But within a few years, if this goes on, he will have more power
than the others ever dreamed of."
"And my job is to get him?" Houston asked.
Reinhardt nodded. "That's it. Get him. One way or another. You're in
charge; I don't care how you do it, but this one Controller is more
dangerous than any other we've come across, so get him."
Houston nodded slowly. "Okay. Can you give me all the data you have so
far?"
Reinhardt patted a heavy folder on his desk. "It's all here." Then he
tapped the projected map on the screen. "That's the Lasser
Building--Church Street at Worth. Somewhere in there is the man we're
looking for."
* * * * *
David Houston spent the next six weeks gathering facts, trying to
determine the identity of the mysterious Controller at Lasser & Sons.
Slowly, the evidence began to pile up.
At the same time, he worried over his own problem. Who was betraying
non-criminal Controllers to the PD Police?
In that six-week period, two more men and a woman were arrested--one in
Spain, one in India, and one in Hawaii.
There weren't very many Controllers on Earth, percentagewise. Of the
three and a half billion people on Earth, less than an estimated
one-thousandth of one percent were telepathic. But that made a grand
total of some thirty-five thousand people.
Spread, as they were, all over the planet, it was rare that one
Controller ever met another. The intelligent ones didn't use their
power; they remained concealed, even from each other.
But _someone_, somewhere, was finding them and betraying them to the
Psychodeviant Police.
As more and more data came in on the Lasser case, Houston began to get
an idea. If there were a really clever, highly intelligent, megalomaniac
Controller, wouldn't it be part of his psychological pattern to attempt
to get rid of the majority of Controllers, those who simply wanted to
lead normal lives?
And, if so, wasn't it possible that both his cases--the official and the
unofficial--might lead to the same place: Lasser & Sons?
It began to look as though Houston could kill both his birds at once, if
he could just figure out when, how, and in what direction to throw the
stone.
In the middle of the seventh week, a Controller in Manchester, England,
was mobbed and torn to bits by an irate crowd before the PD Police
could get to him. There was no doubt in Houston's mind that this one was
a real megalomaniac; he had taken over another man's brain and forced
him to commit suicide. The controlled man had taken a Webley automatic,
put it to his temple, and blown his brains out.
The Controller's mistake was in not realizing what the sudden shock of
that bullet, transmitted to him telepathically, could do to his own
mind. In the mental disorder that followed, he was spotted and killed
easily.
* * * * *
There was still no word from Dorrine. She had flown back to the States a
week after Houston had returned, but she had had to get back to England
after three days. Since then, he had had three letters, nothing more.
And letters are a damned unsatisfactory way for a telepath to conduct a
love affair.
The one other factor that entered in was The Group, the small band of
sane, reasonable telepaths who had begun to build themselves into an
organization--a sort of Mutual Protective Association.
Personally, Houston didn't think much of the idea; the Group didn't have
any real organization, and they refused to put one together. It was
supposed to be democratic, but it sometimes bordered on the anarchic.
He stayed with them more for companionship than any other reason. When
Dorrine had come back for her short stay, Houston had met with them and
tried to get them to help him trace down the megalomaniac Controller who
was doing so much damage, but they'd balked at the idea. Their job, they
claimed, was to get enough members so that they could protect themselves
from arrest by the Normals, and then just let things ride.
"After all," Dorrine had said, "things will work themselves out,
darling; they always do."
"Not unless somebody helps them, they don't," Houston had snapped back.
"Someone has to do something."
"But, Dave, darling--we _are_ doing something! Don't you see?"
He didn't, but there was no convincing either the Group or Dorrine. She
was passionately interested in the recruiting work she was doing, and
she thought that the Group was the answer to every Controller's
troubles.
And then she had rushed back to England. "I'll be back soon, Dave,"
she'd said. "I think I have a lead on a girl in Liverpool."
So far, the girl hadn't been found. Controllers didn't like to give
themselves away to anyone, so they kept a tight screen up most of the
time.
It seemed as though everyone on Earth was in deadly fear all the time.
The Normals feared losing their identities to Controllers, and the
Controllers feared death at the hands of the Normals.
And death or the Penal Cluster were their only choices if they were
discovered.
Houston worried about the risks Dorrine was taking, but there was
nothing he could do. She was doing what she thought was right, just as
he was; how could he argue with that?
Houston went on with his job, putting together facts and rumors and
statistical data analysis, searching out his quarry.
And, at the end of the eighth week, everything blew high, wide, and
hellish.
* * * * *
It was late evening. A cool wind blew over New York, bringing with it a
hint of the rain to come. Church Street, in lower Manhattan, was not
crowded, as it had been in the late afternoon, but neither was it
entirely deserted. The cafes and bars did a lively business, but the
tall, many-colored office buildings gaped at the street with blind and
darkened eyes. Only a few of the windows glowed whitely with fluorescent
illumination.
In one of the small coffee shops, David Houston sat, smoking a cigarette
and stirring idly at a cup of cooling coffee.
Across the street was the Lasser Building; high up on the sixtieth
floor, a whole suite of offices was brightly lit. The rest of the
building was clothed in blackness.
Who was up there in that suite? Houston wasn't quite sure. He had
narrowed his list of suspects down to three men: John Sager, Loris
Pederson, and Norcross Lasser, three top officials in the company. Sager
and Pederson were both vice-presidents of the firm; Sager was in charge
of the Foreign Exports department, while Pederson handled the actual
shipping. Lasser, by virtue of being the grandson of the man who had
founded the firm, was president of Lasser & Sons, Inc.
Lasser seemed like a poor choice as chief villain of the outfit; he was
a mild, bland man, quiet and friendly. Besides, his position made him
an obvious suspect; naturally, the majority stockholder of the firm
would profit most by the increased power of the company. And, equally
obviously, a Controller wouldn't want to put himself in such an exposed
position.
Which made Lasser, in Houston's mind, a hell of a good suspect. If
anything happened, Lasser could cover by claiming that he, too, had been
controlled, and the chances were that he could get away with it. A
Controller never did anything directly; their dirty work was done by
someone else--a puppet under their mental control. At least, so ran the
popular misconception. If Lasser were the man, he stood a good chance of
getting away with it, even if he were caught, provided he played his
cards right.
* * * * *
That reasoning still didn't eliminate Sager or Pederson. Either of them
could be the Controller. And there still remained the possibility that
some unknown, unsuspected fourth person had the company of Lasser & Sons
under his thumb.
That was what Houston intended to find out tonight.
He took a sip of his coffee, found it still reasonably hot.
Damn the megalomaniacs, anyway! Houston subconsciously tightened his
fists. He, personally, had more to fear from the Normals than from
another Controller. Normals could kill or imprison him, while a
Controller would have a hard time doing either, directly.
But Houston could understand the Normal man; he could see how fear of a
Controller could drive a man without the ability into a frenzied panic.
He could understand, even forgive their actions, born and bred in
ignorance and fear.
No, the ones he hated were the ones who had conceived and fostered that
fear--the psychologically unstable megalomaniac Controllers. There were
only a handful of them--probably not more than a few hundred or a
thousand. But because of them, every telepath on Earth found his life in
danger, and every Normal found his life a hell of terror.
Let Dorrine and her do-nothing friends run around the globe recruiting
members for their precious Group; that was all right for them.
Meanwhile, David Houston would be doing something on a more basic action
level.
He glanced at his watch. Almost time.
"How's the deployment?" he whispered in his throat.
"We've got the building surrounded now," said the voice in his ear. "You
can go in anytime."
"How about the roof?"
"That's taken care of, sir; we've got 'copter that can be on the top of
the Lasser Building at any time you call. They can land within thirty
seconds of your signal."
"Okay," Houston said; "I'm going in now. Remember--no matter what I say
or do, no one is to leave that building if they're conscious. And keep
your eyes on me; if I act in the least peculiar, handcuff me--but don't
knock me out.
"And if I'm not back on time, come in anyway."
"Right."
* * * * *
Houston finished his coffee, dropped a coin on the counter, and headed
for the other side of the street.
The big problem was getting into the building itself. It was ringed with
alarms; Lasser & Sons didn't want just anybody wandering in and out of
their building.
So Houston had arranged a roundabout way. The building next to the
Lasser Building was a good deal smaller, only forty-five stories high. A
week before, Houston had rented an office on the eighteenth floor of
the building; on the door, he had already had a sign engraved: Ajax
Enterprises.
It was a shame the office would never be used.
Houston walked straight to the next-door building and opened the front
door with his key. Inside, a night watchman lounged behind a desk,
smoking a blackened briar. He looked up, smiled, and nodded.
"Evening, Mr. Griswold; working late tonight?"
Houston forced a smile he did not feel. "Just doing a little paper
work," he said.
He took the automatic elevator to the eighteenth floor. He didn't relish
the idea of walking up to the roof, but taking the elevator would make
the nightwatchman suspicious.
He didn't bother going to the office; he headed directly for the
stairway and began his long climb--twenty-seven floors to the roof.
All through it, he kept up a running comment through his throat mike. "I
wish I weighed about fifty pounds less; carrying two hundred and twenty
pounds of blubber up these stairs isn't easy."
"Blubber, hooey!" the earphone interrupted. "Any man who's
six-feet-three has a right to carry that much weight. Actually, you're
a skinny-looking sort of goop."
Both men were exaggerating; Houston wasn't fat, but his broad, powerful
frame couldn't be called skinny, either.
When he finally reached the roof, he paused and surveyed the wall of the
Lasser Building, which towered high above him, spearing an additional
thirty stories in the air. Up there, the lights on the sixtieth floor
gleamed in the night.
The air was growing cooler, and the beginnings of a mist were forming.
Houston hoped it wouldn't start to rain before he got inside.
* * * * *
The forty-sixth floor of the Lasser Building had no windows on this
side, but there were plenty on the forty-seventh.
Leading up to them was an inviting looking fire escape, but Houston knew
he didn't dare take that. By law, every fire escape was rigged with a
fire alarm, in addition to the regular burglar alarm. He'd have to use
another way.
The Lasser Building was a steel structure, shelled over with a bright
blue anodized aluminum sheath. Only the day before, Houston, wearing the
gray coverall of a power-line workman, had checked the wall to find the
big steel beams beneath the aluminum. He had also installed certain
other equipment; now he was going to make use of it.
Concealed in the louvres of the air-conditioner intake of the lower
building was a specially constructed suit and several hundred feet of
power line which was connected to the main line of the building.
In the darkness, Houston slipped on the suit. It was constructed
somewhat like a light diving suit or a spacesuit, but without the
helmet. In the toes, knees, and hands, were powerful electromagnets
controlled by switches in the fingers of the gloves and powered by the
current in the long line.
Houston stepped over to the blue aluminum wall, reached out a hand, and
lowered one finger. Instantly, the powerful magnet anchored his hand to
the wall, held by the dense magnetic field to the steel beam beneath the
aluminum sheath. That one magnet alone could support his full body
weight, and he had six magnets to work with.
Slowly, carefully, David Houston began to crawl up the wall.
Turn on a magnet in the right hand; lift up the left hand and anchor it
higher; turn on the right hand and lift it even with the left, then
anchor it again; do the same with both legs; then begin the process all
over again, turning the magnets off and on in rotation.
Up and up he went. Past the forty-sixth floor, past the forty-seventh,
the forty-eighth, and the forty-ninth. Not until he reached the fiftieth
floor did he attempt to open one of the windows.
There was a magnetic lock inside the window, but Houston had taken that,
too, into account. The powerful magnet in his right glove slid it aside
easily. Houston lifted the window and stepped inside.
He had ten more floors to go.
He took off the suit and rolled it up into a tight package, then dropped
it out the window. It landed with a barely audible thump. Houston took a
deep breath, drew his stun gun, and headed for the stairway.
* * * * *
On the landing of the sixtieth floor of the Lasser Building, David
Houston paused for a moment.
"Sounds like you're out of breath," said the voice in his ear.
"You try climbing all that way sometime," Houston whispered. "I'm no
superman, you know."
"Shucks," said the voice, "you've disillusioned me. What now?"
"I'm going to try to get a little information," Houston told him. "Hold
on."
On the other side of the door, he could hear faint sound, as if someone
were moving around, but he could hear no voices.
Carefully, he sent out a probing thought, trying to see if he could
attune his mind with that of someone inside without betraying himself.
He couldn't detect anything. The sixtieth floor covered a lot of space;
if whoever was inside was too far away, their thoughts would be too
faint to pick up unless Houston stepped up his own power, and he didn't
want to do that.
Cautiously, he reached out a hand and eased open the door.
The hallway was brightly lit, but there was no one in sight. The
unaccustomed light made Houston blink for a moment before his eyes
adjusted to it; the hallways and landings below had been pitch dark,
forcing him to use a penlight to find his way up.
He stepped into the hallway, closing the door behind him.
Now he could hear voices. He stopped to listen. The conversation was
coming from an office down the hall--if it could be called a
conversation.
There would be long periods of silence, then a word or two: "But not
that way." "Until tomorrow." "Vacillates."
There were three different voices.
Houston moved on down the hall, his stun gun ready. A few yards from the
door, he stopped again, and, very gently, he sent out another
thought-probe, searching for the minds of those within, carefully
forging his way.
* * * * *
And, at that crucial instant, a voice spoke in his ear.
"Houston! What's going on? You haven't said a thing for two full
minutes!"
"I'm all right!" Houston snapped. Only the force of long training and
habit kept him from shouting the words aloud instead of keeping them to
a subvocal whisper.
"All right or not," said the other, "we're coming in in seven minutes,
as ordered. Meanwhile, there's a news bulletin for you; the British
division has picked up another Controller--a woman named Dorrine Kent.
Two in one night ought to be a pretty good bag."
For a moment, Houston's mind was a meaningless blur.
_Dorrine!_
And then another voice broke through his shock.
"Dear me, sir! Calm yourself! You're positively fizzing!"
Houston jerked. Standing in the doorway of the office was Norcross
Lasser, with a benign smile on his face and a deadly-looking .38
automatic in his hand. Behind him stood John Sager and Loris Pederson,
their faces wary.
"Please drop that stun gun, Mr. Cop."
* * * * *
In those few moments, Houston had regained control of himself. He
realized what had happened. The interruption of his thought-probe had
startled him just a little, but that little had been enough to warn the
Controller.
He wondered which of the three men was the actual Controller.
He began to lower his weapon, then, suddenly, with all the force and
hatred he could muster, he sent a blistering, shocking thought toward
the man with the gun.
Lasser staggered as though he'd been struck. His gun wavered, and
Houston fired quickly with his stun gun. At the same time, Lasser's
automatic went off.
The bullet went wild, and the stun beam didn't do much better. It struck
Lasser's hand, paralyzing it, but it didn't knock out Lasser.
The mental battle that ensued only took a half second, but at the speed
of thought, a lot of things can happen in a half second.
Houston realized almost instantaneously that he had made a vast mistake.
He had badly underestimated the enemy.
There was no need to worry, now, about which one of the men was a
Controller--_all three of them were!_
As soon as Sager and Pederson realized what had happened, they
leaped--mentally--into the battle. Lasser, already weakened by the
unexpected mental blow from Houston, lost consciousness when the others
let loose their blasts because his mind was still linked with Houston's,
and he absorbed a great deal of the mental energy meant for Houston's
brain.
Houston, fully warned by now, held up a denial wall which screened his
mind from the worst that Sager and Pederson could put out, but he knew
he couldn't hold out for long.
"Come in--_now!_" he said hoarsely into the microphone.
"Stupid swine!" Sager susurrated sibilantly.
Pederson said nothing aloud, but his brain was blazing with fear and
hatred. His gun hand jerked towards a holster under his arm. Lasser was
still crumpling towards the floor.
The entire action had taken less than a second.
Houston tried to fire again with his stun gun, but it required every bit
of concentration he could sum up to hold off the combined mental
assaults of Sager and Pederson.
But they, too, were at somewhat of a disadvantage. In order to keep all
their efforts concentrated on the PD policeman, both Controllers had to
refrain from putting too much attention on their bodily motions.
Pederson was still fumbling for his gun, and Sager hadn't yet started
for his.
Lasser barely touched the floor before his consciousness began to
return. The resulting fraction of a second of mental static afforded
Houston a brief respite; it disturbed Pederson just as he was getting
his fingers on the butt of his weapon.
Both Controllers were focusing their mental energies on Houston's brain,
and during the brief respite, Houston made one vital mental adjustment.
He allowed both thought-probes to fuse in a small part of his
consciousness. They went _through_ him and lashed back at the two
Controllers.
Both of them had had their minds tuned to Houston's, and in that instant
they found they, were also attuned to each other.
The resultant of the energy was shocking to Houston, but it was
infinitely worse for Sager and Pederson, since neither of them had been
expecting it. Pederson, who had already been slightly distracted, got
the major brunt of the force. He managed to jerk his gun free, but his
brain was already lapsing into unconsciousness.
* * * * *
Houston's fingers tightened on his own weapon. It fired once at Lasser,
who was trying to lift himself from the floor. Then it swept up and
coughed again, dropping Pederson. His pistol barked once, sending a
singing ricochet along the hall.
Sager, who had staggered to one side when he and Pederson had
short-circuited each other, had time to get behind the protection of
the office door. He couldn't close it because Lasser's and Pederson's
inert forms blocked the doorway, but at least it afforded protection
against Houston's stun gun.
His thought came through to Houston: _So the stupid Normals have a
Controller working for them! Traitor!_
_You're the traitor_, Houston thought coldly. _You and your megalomaniac
friends. It's madmen like you who have made telepaths hated and feared
by the Normals._
_And so they should hate and fear us_, came the snarling mental answer.
_Within a few generations, we will have supplanted them. We will control
Earth--not they._
* * * * *
The exchange had only taken a fraction of a second. Houston was already
charging toward the open door, hoping to get inside before Sager could
reach a weapon.
_You call me a traitor_, Houston thought, _but you have been framing
innocent Controllers, putting them into the hands of the PD Police_.
_That's a lie!_ the reply came hotly. _We would never betray another
telepath to the stupid Normals! If a telepath were so bullheaded as to
get in our way, we'd dispose of him. But it would be Controller
justice; we wouldn't turn him over to animals!_
In one blazing moment, Houston realized that the Controller was telling
the truth!
No mental communication can be expressed properly in words. In, behind,
and around each statement, other, dimmer nuances of thought gleam
through. Each thought tells the receiver much more than can be put down
in crude verbal symbols.
Thus, Houston already knew that Lasser, Sager, and Pederson were the
three top men in a world-wide clique of megalomaniac Controllers. This
was the top of the madmen's organization; these three were the _creme de
la creme_ of the Normal human's real enemies.
He knew that there were twelve others scattered over Earth, and he knew
where and who they were. That brief exchange had brought all the
information into Houston's own mind as it leaked from the minds of the
others. He knew it without thinking about how he knew it.
And they were _not_ the ones who had been turning the sane Controllers
over to the Psychodeviant Police!
Then who was? And why?
Houston was right back where he had started.
But that brief instant of confusion was Houston's downfall. Sager
instantly realized that he had delivered, inadvertently, a telling blow
to Houston's mind.
Physically, Houston had been propelling himself toward the open door. At
the instant of the revelation, he had been part way through it. And at
that moment, Sager acted.
He slammed all his weight violently against his side of the door,
knocking Houston off balance as the door swung and struck him. He went
down, and Sager was on top of him before he struck the floor.
It was the weirdest battle ever fought, but its true worth could only
have been detected by another telepath. It was intense and brutal.
The men fought both physically and mentally. They struggled for
possession of the stun gun, at the same time hurling emotion-charged
shafts of mental energy at each other's brains.
The struggle lasted less than a minute. Somehow, Sager managed to get
one hand on the gun, twisting it. Houston, trying to keep it out of
Sager's hand, jerked it up between them.
It coughed once, sending a beam of supersonic energy into the bodies of
both men.
The effect was the same as if they had both been crowned with baseball
bats.
* * * * *
Little pinpoints of light against a sea of darkness.
_I'm cold_, Houston thought. _And I'm sick._
He couldn't tell whether his eyes were open or closed--and he didn't
much care.
He tried to move his arms and legs, found he couldn't, and gave it up.
He blinked.
_My eyes must be open_, he thought, _if I can blink_.
Well, then, if his eyes were open, why couldn't he see anything? All he
could see were the little pinpoints of light against a background of
utter blackness.
_Like stars_, he thought.
_Stars? STARS!_
With a sudden rush, total awareness came back to him, and he realized
with awful clarity where he was.
He was chained, spread-eagled, on an asteroid in the Penal Cluster,
nearly a hundred million miles from Earth.
It was easy to piece together what had happened. He dimly remembered
that he had started to wake up once before. It was a vague, confused
recollection, but he knew what had taken place.
The PD Police, coming in response to his call, had found all four men
unconscious from the effects of the stun beam. Naturally, all of them
had been taken into custody; the PD Police had to find out which one of
the men was the Controller and which the controlled. That could easily
be tested by waiting until they began to wake up; the resulting mental
disturbances would easily identify the telepath.
Houston could imagine the consternation that must have resulted when the
PD men found that all three suspects--_and_ their brother officer--were
Controllers.
And now here he was--tried, convicted, and sentenced while he was
unconscious--doomed to spend the rest of his life chained to a rock
floating in space.
A sudden chill of terror came over him. Why wasn't he asleep? Why wasn't
he under hibernene?
_It's their way of being funny_, came a bitter thought. _We're supposed
to be under hibernene, but we're left to die, instead._
For a moment, Houston did not realize that the thought was not his own,
so well did it reflect his own bitterness. It was bad enough to have to
live out one's life under the influence of the hibernation drug, but it
was infinitely worse to be conscious. Under hibernene, he would have
known nothing; his sleeping mind in his comatose body would never have
realized what had happened to him. But this way, he would remain fully
awake while his body used up the air too fast and his stomach became
twisted with hunger pangs which no amount of intravenous feeding could
quell. Oh, he'd live, all right--for a few months--but it would be
absolute hell while he lasted. Insanity and catatonia would come long
before death.
* * * * *
_That's a nasty thought; I wish you hadn't brought it up._
That wasn't his own thought! There was someone else out here!
_Hell, yes, my friend; we're all out here._
"Where are you?" Houston asked aloud, just to hear his own voice. He
knew the other couldn't hear the words which echoed so hollowly inside
the bubble of the spacesuit helmet, but the thought behind them would
carry.
"You mean with relation to yourself?" came the answer. "I don't know. I
can see several rocks around me, but I can't tell which one you're on."
Houston could tell now that the other person was talking aloud, too. So
great was the illusion carried to his own brain that it almost seemed as
though he could hear the voice with his ears.
"Then there are others around us?" Houston asked.
"Sure. There were three of us: a Hawaiian named Jerry Matsukuo; a girl
from Bombay, Sonali Siddhartha; and myself, Juan Pedro de Cadiz. Jerry
and Sonali are taking a little nap. You're the first of your group to
wake up."
"My group?"
"Certainly, my friend. There are five of you; the other four must still
be unconscious."