"So he could reach you from nonspace!" Harding said. "That was
something we didn't know. We suspected we still didn't have the whole
picture about the rogue. But he didn't know everything either. He
thought his escape route from the project and away through the conduit
system was clear. It was a very bold move. If he'd reached any point on
Earth where we weren't waiting to destroy him from a distance, he would
have needed only a minute or two with the projector to win all the way.
Well, that failed. And a very short time later, we knew we had the
rogue in the conduit."
"How did you find that out?"
Harding said, "The duplicate global scanner I told you about. After
all, the rogue _could_ have been Weldon. Aside from you two, he
could have been almost anyone involved in the operation. He might have
been masquerading as one of our own telepaths! Every location point
the diex field turned to during that 'test run' came under instant
investigation. We were looking for occurrences which might indicate the
rogue had been handling the diex projector.
"The first reports didn't start to come in until after the Weldon
imitation had taken the projector into the conduit. But then, in a few
minutes, we had plenty! They showed the rogue had tested the projector,
knew he could handle it, knew he'd reestablished himself as king of the
world--and this time for good! And then he walked off into the conduit
with his wonderful stolen weapon...."
Arlene said, "He was trying to get Dr. Ben and me to open the project
exit for him again. We couldn't, of course. I never imagined anyone
could experience the terror he felt."
"There was some reason for it," Harding said. "Physical action
is impossible in nonspace, so he couldn't use the projector. He
was helpless while he was in the conduit. And he knew we couldn't
compromise when we let him out.
"We switched the conduit exit to a point eight hundred feet above the
surface of Cleaver Interplanetary Spaceport--the project he's kept us
from completing for the past twenty-odd years--and opened it there. We
still weren't completely certain, you know, that the rogue mightn't
turn out to be a genuine superman who would whisk himself away and out
of our reach just before he hit the marblite paving.
"But he wasn't...."