2
Kill For Us!
Their names were Glora and Malcolm Mergon; he was her father. They
could make suckers out of anyone they wanted to; they could get into
another guy's mind and make him think, see, feel, hear anything they
wanted him to. Take Extra Sensory Perception, and imagine somebody
who's perfected all of it--and that's the way Glora and Malcolm Mergon
were. Only more so.
We didn't need visas; we didn't have to go into the antiseptic wards;
we didn't have to be scanned. Every time we came into contact with
Guards, or doctors or officers--those guys thought whatever Glora and
Malcolm wanted them to think. So we walked right straight through
all the red tape, and caught a sky-taxi to a sky-top hotel bordering
Central Park West; by then it was noon of a nice spring day.
I sat there, sweating and feeling cold in spite of the even
temperature. I didn't savvy anything; I felt like a kid who'd gotten
lost.
They brought a three-dimensional map out of the air, I guess; I
couldn't tell. It hung in the air like it was glued to nothingness.
Glora moved around me and stood in front of the big tri-dimensional
map. Her legs were long and slim and smooth; she'd be a prize for some
big shot, I thought; but she wasn't my kind. My kind you'll still find
along the North Canal, with very little on, and nothing in their heads
but phony dreams.
"Now," she pointed at various marked sections on the map. "These are
the locations of the ten Uranium Piles that supply all of Earth's
power. If these piles should all reach critical mass at the same time,
the earth would vaporize instantaneously.
"Scientific theory here is that even if all of them blew at once,
though the destruction would be terrific, it wouldn't be fatal. That a
hundred square miles around each pile would be destroyed only. That's
so wrong, Ray. Through special abilities, Mal and I are aware of an
unstable element existing here; Earth scientists can't discover it. If
those Ten Piles reach simultaneous critical mass, it will react on this
big unstable element. The Earth won't exist anymore."