"Not half as bad," said the guard, "as he wants to see you." He stuck
his head inside the guardroom, yelled, "Hey, Webb, come relieve me.
That missing physicist has shown up. I've got to take him up to the
chief."
"I can find my way," Saxon assured him dryly.
"I've got my orders," retorted the man, "to escort you, and escorted
you'll be."
As they took the lift, Saxon probed gently into the guard's mind. He
was thinking about a Venusian dancer performing at the Sun Palace on
Greater Broadway. Either he didn't know why Villainowski wanted him, or
he was more interested in the dancer.
Saxon sighed in resignation.
Chief Villainowski was a small wiry man of Polish descent who had led
none too reputable a life, although it was not generally known. Jon
Saxon, regarding him across the polished desk, read suspicion and
wonder in the chief's mind. Villainowski was never able to reconcile
Saxon's appearance with his indisputable scientific attainments.
"_Looks like a plug ugly_," Villainowski was thinking although he was
far from a beauty himself. "_Ought to be a prize fighter instead of a
physicist!_"
"Will you pray tell me," he asked aloud of the amused Saxon, "what the
hell possessed you to sneak out the night before we leave?"
Saxon grinned like a mastiff. "It was that General Atomic affair. I
haven't told you, but I met one of their agents, a girl by the name of
Ileth Urban, about a month ago."
"Black-headed girl?" asked the third man in the room. He had his chair
leaned against the wall. A tall, angular, sandy-haired man with pale
blue eyes like gimlets. "Does she have hazel-green eyes, small delicate
features? Ears peaked like an animal's...."
"I hadn't noticed the ears," Saxon confessed, swinging toward the
sandy-haired man.
Gavin Murdock, T.I.S. agent, had been assigned as T.I.S. representative
to this first expedition beyond the Solar System. He said, "No, I guess
not. She wears her hair in a page-boy bob."
Villainowski interrupted: "Well, damn it, man, who gave you permission
to horn in on the T.I.S.'s work?"
"I knew her. She'd been set to pump me dry of information by General
Atomic. If anyone could get anything out of her, I could."
"You don't fancy yourself much," the chief grunted with a touch of
asperity. "What did you find out?"
Saxon related events just as they had transpired, omitting only the
alien telepaths in the street and his own telepathic ability.
"By Pluto!" exploded Villainowski when he had concluded. "We can grab
the lot of them."
"Not so fast," Murdock interrupted from his chair against the wall.
"What proof have you? Only Saxon's word. It won't hold in a court of
law."
"But the girl!" Villainowski protested. "She's General Atomic's
representative on the expedition. You don't intend to let her--"
"It's better to have her where we can watch her," the T.I.S. agent
returned. "Saxon can keep an eye on her. He seems to be able to pry
more out of her than any of my agents have. If he can persuade her that
he hasn't told us about the fracas in her apartment...."
"I can convince her of that, I think," said Saxon. "But she doesn't
know anything...."
"Except," Murdock interrupted again, "that she's to take orders from an
agent known as Q62. At least, she should lead us to him." He paused,
regarded Saxon with his penetrating pale blue eyes. "What the devil did
you do to her, man, to get that information out of her? Stick darts
under her finger nails?"
In both Murdock's and Villainowski's mind Saxon read a cold
determination to keep him under surveillance as well as the girl.
* * * * *
Villainowski, he knew, hated the corporations in general, but it was
nothing to the black flame of hatred that consumed the man whenever he
thought of General Atomic. It was almost psychopathic. He had never
forgotten or forgiven General Atomic, Saxon knew, for stealing his
first three discoveries and then disgracing him.
It was a queer friendship that existed between the two men questioning
Saxon--the gaunt cold-blooded manhunter, who had sent a girl with whom
he was infatuated to the Lunar Penal Colony, and Villainowski, the
small wiry scientist, ex-Jovian slaver, and at present head of the
first expedition into deep space.
"Well," the sandy-haired Murdock repeated inexorably, "how did she
happen to tell you about Q62?"
"It was a slip," explained Saxon. "I followed it up."
"She's not given to making slips," Murdock pointed out. "Not Ileth
Urban."
When Saxon didn't reply, the T.I.S. agent said, "Saxon, we've
investigated your past pretty thoroughly. We did the same with every
man and woman connected with this expedition. We encountered a strange
thing. Saxon, who are your parents?"
Jon Saxon could feel his stomach contract. "I don't know. I haven't any
recollection before my eleventh year." He could feel Murdock's probing
blue eyes, sense his scepticism.
"You've a convenient memory, because we've been unable to find any
trace of your parents or birth prior to your enrollment in the
Institute. A thousand years ago your case would have been unusual,
but it could have happened. But today, with our universal system of
records, it's impossible. I've never encountered a parallel case to
yours."
"I'm sorry," said Saxon dryly, "but I do seem to have been born, don't
I? And somehow escaped the census."
Murdock smiled a wintry smile. "There were funds deposited at the
Institute for your education. We haven't been able to trace those funds
either. In fact, every way we've turned, we've run into a blank wall."
"I'm sorry," said Saxon again, "but I can't help you. I have absolutely
no memory before I was eleven. Don't think it hasn't worried me. I
asked the T.I.S. to investigate it years ago. They couldn't find
anything then. It's not surprising they haven't found anything this
time."
"You won't object to being examined by our N.P.A.?"
"No," replied Saxon.
Villainowski spoke into an inter-communicating audio, "Send in the
N.P.A."
The neuro-psychoanalyst must have been waiting outside because he
entered immediately. Saxon regarded him curiously. Government's N.P.A.
was a lean Cassius-like individual with an ingratiating smile. Saxon
had taken an immediate dislike to him when he had first seen him
prowling about the corridors of the research building, but he knew the
man was a brilliant psychologist.
The N.P.A. approached Saxon rubbing his hands together and smiling.
"So this is the subject. How are you, Jon? There's no need to ask
questions. I've studied your record. No question but what there's a
mental block, is there? Hope we can break it. Sit here, if you don't
mind."
Saxon took the chair indicated, the N.P.A. facing him.
"Take one of these." He held out a box of hypno-pills.
Saxon selected one, gulped it down. He made no effort to read the minds
of Murdock, Villainowski or the N.P.A.
The neuro-psychoanalyst was wearing a revolving mirror about an inch
in diameter on a band about his forehead. He set the mirror in motion
which caught the room light, alternately darkening and flashing.
"Look into the light, Jon," he said in a calm, sure voice. "Relax and
watch the light. You are going to sleep when I count three. You can
feel the effect of the hypno-pill already. When I count three you
sleep, sleep.... One." A pause. "Two." Pause. "Three...."
* * * * *
After half an hour the N.P.A.'s voice wasn't so sure. He had given
Jon three more pills, had tried all the devices at the command of the
largest neural-clinic in the Empire without the slightest effect.
Jon Saxon continued to regard the N.P.A. with a half hidden gleam of
amusement in his dark gray eyes.
The neuro-psychoanalyst sat back, mopped his perspiring face with his
handkerchief. "It's no use!" he said in a strained voice. "He can't be
hypnotized!"
"I could have told you that," replied Saxon. "Do you think I haven't
tried to have the block broken before?"
The N.P.A. swore and got to his feet. "Well, why didn't you say so?" he
shouted. It was the first time Saxon had ever seen him lose his temper.
"Because these gentlemen have been suspicious of me." He indicated
Murdock and Villainowski. "If I had offered any objections to being
hypnotized, they'd have been sure that I was afraid to."
All at once, Saxon experienced the peculiar tingling in scalp and
skin that warned him the alien creatures, whom he had met in the
street, were present. He couldn't possibly be mistaken. Once having
experienced that peculiar inhuman feel it was not to be forgotten or
confused.
Not only were they invisible, but neither doors nor walls seemed to
offer any resistance to them.
"_Who are you?_" he concentrated, but his thought met that strange
mental barrier. There was no answer.
He realized that the three men were watching him with a curious
tenseness.
Suddenly the N.P.A.'s jaw dropped. An expression of complete
astonishment lit up his face. "I've got it! I've got it!" he cried.
"Got what?" growled Villainowski, moving uneasily behind his massive
desk.
"Saxon! Saxon, that's who! My Lord, why didn't it occur to me before.
He's a--"
The words died suddenly on the N.P.A.'s lips. An expression of fright
crossed his lean features. Then, without a sound, he crumpled to the
carpet.
Jon Saxon, staring in horror, realized that the tingling of his skin
was diminishing. The telepaths were withdrawing.
At the same instant Murdock's chair hit the floor as he leaped across
the room, dropped to his knee beside the prone figure of the N.P.A. For
a moment he was bent over the body like a bronze statue, then he turned
his face up to Villainowski.
Saxon, who had read his thoughts, was amazed at Murdock's passionless
expression.
"He's dead," the T.I.S. agent said in a toneless voice. "I wouldn't
have believed it, if I hadn't seen it happen, but he's deader than the
moon."