NINETEEN

Notification reached Willis Gram with no delay. To the members of the Extraordinary Committee for Public Safety, gathered about his bed in his office-bedroom, he said, propping himself bolt upright among the pillows, ‘Listen to this.’

‘I can’t believe it,’ Gram said happily. To the Committee members he said, ‘I called you here because of this third transmission we got from Provoni. They’ll be here in six days.’ He stretched, yawned, grinned around at them. ‘I was going to tell you how fast we have to act to open the relocation camps, as well as stopping our crackdown on Under Men still at large, and blowing up their transmitters and printing presses and like that. But: if Badger pulverizes Dinosaur, then that’s it! We can go on as if nothing has happened, as if Provoni never made it back here at all.’

‘But the first two notes were telecast,’ Fred Rayner, the Interior Minister, said bitingly.

‘Well, we’ll not disclose it about the third message. About them landing here in six days and “taking over the government”, and all that.’

‘Mr. Council Chairman,’ Duke Bostrich, Minister of State, said, ‘the third message is coming in – so help me God – on the forty meter band, so it’s been picked up here and there all over the world. By this time tomorrow, everyone will know.’

‘But if Badger gets Dinosaur it won’t matter.’ Gram inhaled deeply, reached to take an amphetamine capsule to soar even higher in this sudden, unexpected moment of greatness. ‘You know,’ he said to them all, especially Patty Platt, Minister of Defense, who had never liked or respected him, ‘you know it was my idea to station ships like Badger out there five years ago… picket ships, not heavily armed. We know the Gray Dinosaur isn’t armed. So even a picket ship can destroy it.’

‘Sir,’ General Hefele said, ‘I am familiar with the T-144 class of picket ships, the class including Badger. Because of the long periods they must remain in space, and the distances they need to cover, they are built too clumsily to maneuver to where a bow shot, I use that as an example, could effectively be—’

‘You mean,’ Gram said, ‘that my picket ships are obsolete? Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Because,’ General Rayburn with his thin, black moustache said, ‘it never occurred to us that (one) Provoni might return, and (two) that a picket ship stationed in some vast area of empty space could sight Provoni if, or I suppose I should say when, Provoni returned.’ He gestured. ‘The number of parsecs it—’

‘Generals Rayburn and Hefele,’ Gram said, ‘you will begin to compose resignation notes. Have them ready for me within an hour.’ He lay back, then, abruptly started up; he pressed a button which turned on his general fone screen. It showed the Wyoming computer, or at least a section of it.

‘Technician,’ he instructed.

A white-smocked programmer appeared. ‘Yes, Council Chairman.’

Gram said, ‘I want a prognosis on this situation: a T-144 picket ship has encountered Gray Dinosaur at’ – he reached for his desk, groping and straining and grunting – ‘at these coordinates.’ He read them to the technician, who was of course recording these instructions. ‘I want to know,’ he said, ‘with all facts considered, what are the chances that a T-144 class ship could destroy the Gray Dinosaur?’

The technician rewound the tape, then plugged the deck into the computer’s input and turned the switch to on. Behind plastic frames, wheels spun around; tapes wound themselves and rewound themselves.

Mary Scourby, Minister of Agriculture, said, ‘Why don’t we just wait and see the outcome of the battle?’

‘Because,’ Willis Gram said, ‘that damn Dinosaur and that donkey Provoni driving it – plus their nonterrestrial friend – it may be all souped-up with weapons. And a fleet may be following.’ To General Hefele, who was already painstakingly writing out his resignation, Gram said, ‘Do our radar scopes sight anything else in that area? Ask Badger.’

From his coat pocket, General Hefele brought forth a transmitter-receiver. ‘Any other blips seen by Badger?’ A pause. ‘No.’ He returned to writing his resignation.

The technician in Wyoming said, ‘Mr. Council Chairman, we have the 996-D computer’s response to your query. It feels that the third message from Thors Provoni, the one we’re picking up on all forty meter band frequencies, is the critical datum. The computer analyzes that the statement beginning, “We will join you in six days” implies that one of the aliens is with Provoni. Not knowing the alien’s powers, it cannot compute, but it does go on to answer a correlative — the Gray Dinosaur cannot out-maneuver a T-144 picket ship for very long. So the unknown variable – the presence of the alien – is too great. It can’t compute the situation.’

‘I’m receiving a message from the crew monitoring Badger,’ General Rayburn said suddenly. ‘Be quiet.’ He tilted his head on one side, toward the side of his ear-insert fone.

Silence.

‘Badger’s gone,’ General Rayburn said.

‘Gone?’ A half-dozen voices spoke up at once. ‘Gone?’ Gram demanded. ‘Gone where?’

‘Into hyperspace. We’ll know soon because, as has been abundantly shown, a ship can remain in hyperspace for ten, twelve, fifteen minutes at the most. We won’t have to wait long.’

‘Dinosaur took off right into hyperspace?’ General Hefele asked, incredulously. ‘That’s only done as a last resort – the most extreme evasion measure possible. And they drew Badger into it after them. Maybe Dinosaur has been rebuilt; maybe its exterior surfaces are now of an alloy that does not decompose rapidly in hyperspace. Maybe they need only to wait until Badger blows up or returns to mutual or paraspace. You know, the Gray Dinosaur that left this system ten years ago may not be the Gray Dinosaur that’s coming back.’

‘Badger recognized it,’ General Hefele said. ‘It’s the same ship, and if modified, at least not so outwardly. Captain Greco of Badger, before he dropped down into hyperspace, said that it fitted the ident foto made fifteen years ago to the last jot and tittle, except—’

‘“Except”?’ Gram asked, grinding his molars. I’ve got to stop grinding my teeth, he realized; I broke right through that upper right cap, that time. That should have taught me. He leaned back, fooled with his pillows.

‘Except,’ General Hefele said, ‘some of the exterior sensors were either missing or visibly changed, possibly damaged. And of course the hull was deeply pitted.’

‘Badger could see all that?’ Gram said wonderingly.

‘The new Knewdsen radar scopes, the so-called eyepiece models, can—’

‘Be quiet.’ Gram was consulting his watch. ‘I’ll time them,’ he said vigorously. ‘It’s been about three minutes already, hasn’t it? I’ll make it five, just to be on the safe side.’ He sat in silence, studying his Omega watch; everyone else studied his own.

Five minutes passed.

Ten.

Fifteen.

Over in the corner, Camelia Grimes, the Minister of Job Opportunities and Education, began to sniffle quietly into her lace handkerchief. ‘He lured them to their death,’ she half-spoke, half-whispered huskily. ‘Oh, dear, it’s so sad, just so sad. All those men lost.’

Gram said, ‘Yeah, that’s sad. It’s also sad, too, that he got by a picket ship. One chance in – what? A billion? That a picket ship would pick it up in the first place. It almost looked like then and there we had him. Nailed down; snuffed, as a sight for his alien friends to witness.’

To General Hefele, General Rayburn said, ‘Are there any other ships which might pick up the Gray Dinosaur when and if it emerges from hyperspace?’

General Hefele said, ‘No.’

‘So we won’t know if it emerged,’ Gram said. ‘Maybe it was destroyed, too, along with Badger.’

‘We’ll know when and if it comes out of hyperspace,’ General Hefele said, ‘because as soon as it emerges, it’ll begin transmitting that signal on the forty meter band, again.’ To an aide he said, ‘Have my com-net monitor for a renewed indication of their transmission.’ To Gram he said, ‘I’m assuming—’

‘You may so assume,’ General Rayburn said. ‘No radio signal can pass out of hyperspace into paraspace.’

General Hefele said to his aide, ‘Find out if Provoni’s signal was cut off a few minutes ago.’

A moment later, through the intercom equipment which he wore from several neck straps, the tall, young aide had his message. ‘Signal cut out twenty-two minutes ago and has not resumed.’

‘They’re still in hyperspace,’ General Hefele said. ‘And the signal may never resume; it may be all over.’

‘I still want your resignation,’ Gram said.

A red light lit up on the console of his desk. He picked up the appropriate fone and said, ‘Yes? You have her with you?’

‘Miss Charlotte Boyer,’ his third-level clearance A receptionist said. ‘Brought in here by two PSS men who had to drag her all the way. My goodness, their shins are going to be blade and blue tomorrow, and she bit one on the hand; it tore a whole lot of flesh loose, and he’s going to have to go to the infirmary right away.’

Gram said, ‘Get four military MPs to spell the PSS men. When you have them, and they’ve got her completely under control, then let me know and I’ll see her.’

‘Yes sir.’

‘If a certain individual named Denny Strong barges into the building looking for her,’ Gram said, ‘I want him arrested for trespassing and I want him in a jail cell immediately. If he tries to physically break into my office, here, I want the guards to snuff him. On the spot. The second his hand touches the handle to the door to this room.’ I could have done it once myself, Gram thought. But now I’m too old and my reflexes are too slow. Nonetheless, he lifted the lid at the corner of his desk-top… which brought the butt of a .38 magnum pistol within easy reach. If Nicholas Appleton’s mental image of him – and his knowledge of him – are correct, then I’d better be ready, he thought. And good God, he thought, I have to be ready vis-à-vis Nick Appleton –just because he left the building voluntarily and with no show of violence, there’s no guarantee that he’ll continue to go along with this.

That’s the trouble with being that age, he reflected. You idealize the whole woman, her self, her personality… but at my age it’s simply how good a lay they’d make and that’s that. I’ll enjoy her, use her up, teach her a few things she probably doesn’t know about sexual relations – even though she’s ‘been around’ – that she hasn’t dreamed up. She can be my little fish, for example. And once she learns them, does them, she’ll remember them the rest of her life. They’ll haunt her, the memory of them… but on some level she’ll be yearning for them again: they were so nice. Let’s see what Nick Appleton, or Denny Strong, or whoever gets her after me, will do to gratify that. And she won’t be able to force herself to tell him what it is that’s the matter.

He chuckled.

‘Council Chairman,’ General Hefele said, ‘I have news from my aide.’ His aide bent over him, covertly speaking into his ear. ‘I regret to say – the forty meters’ signal has resumed.’

‘That’s that,’ Gram said stoically. ‘I knew they’d come back out; they wouldn’t have gone in if they hadn’t known they could handle it… and Badger couldn’t.’ Laboriously, he heaved himself up to a sitting position, then rolled over, extended a massive leg, raised himself to a standing position. ‘My bathrobe,’ he said, looking around.

‘I have it, sir,’ Camelia Grimes said; she held it up for him to back into. ‘Now your slippers.’

General Hefele said frigidly, ‘They’re right by your feet.’ And thought, Do you need someone to put them on for you, Council Chairman? You gigantic mushroom that has to be waited on day and night, who lies in bed like a sick kid home from school, evading the realities of adulthood. And he’s our ruler. He’s the person primarily responsible for stopping the invaders.

‘You always forget,’ Gram said, facing him, ‘that I’m a telepath. If you said the things you think, you’d be put up before a gas-grenade squad. And you know it.’ He felt genuine anger, and it was rare for thoughts alone to ruffle him. But in this case it had gone too far. ‘You want a vote?’ he asked, waving his arm at them all, the collected assembly of the Extraordinary Committee for Public Safety, plus Earth’s two top military planner-advisers.

‘“A vote”?’ Duke Bostrich asked, smoothing, reflexively, his distinguished silver hair. ‘As to what?’

Fred Rayner, from Interior, said acidly, ‘Mr. Gram’s removal as Council Chairman, and someone else–of the group of us here in this room – taking his place.’ He smiled starkly, thinking, Must it be spelled out, as with children? This is our chance to rid ourselves of the fat old fool; let him spend the rest of his life untangling his convoluted personal affairs… an example of which came up just now, this Boyer girl.

‘I’d like a vote,’ Gram said, after a pause. During the pause he had listened in on their various thoughts and knew that he would be given a support vote; hence he was scarcely worried. ‘Go on,’ he said, ‘vote!’

Rayner said, ‘He’s read our thoughts; he knows how it’ll come out.’

‘Or he’s bluffing,’ Mary Scourby, Agriculture, said. ‘He’s read our thoughts and knows we can dislodge him, and will do so.’

‘So,’ Camelia Grimes said, ‘we will have to vote after all.’

By a show of hands they derived a vote of six for retention of Gram and four against.

‘Tiddly winks, old man,’ Gram said scorchingly to Fred Rayner. ‘Catch a woman if you can; if you can’t catch a woman, catch a clean old man.’

‘And the “clean old man”,’ Rayner said, ‘is you.’

Throwing his head back, Willis Gram howled with delight.

Then, stepping into his slippers, he stumped toward the main doors of the room.

‘Council Chairman,’ General Hefele said quickly, ‘we may be able to contact Dinosaur and get some idea of the demands Provoni will be making, and to what extent his alien cohorts can and will—’

‘I’ll talk to you later,’ Gram said, opening the door. He paused, then, and said, half to himself, ‘Tear up your resignations, Generals. I was momentarily upset; it’s nothing.’ But you, Fred Rayner, he thought. I will get you, you double-domed monstrosity. I will see you snuffed for what you thought of me.

At third level, Willis Gram, in bathrobe, pajamas and slippers, sauntered up to the desk of his clearance A receptionist – a rating which permitted her to know about and deal with his most personal problems and activities. At one time Margaret Plow had been his mistress… she had then been eighteen. And look at her now, he said to himself. In her forties. The energy, the fire, was gone; all that remained was a brisk, efficient mask.

The walls of her cubicle had been made opaque. No one could observe their conversation. Only, he thought, a passing telepath might pick up something. But they had learned to live with that.

‘Did you get the four MPs?’ he asked Miss Plow.

‘They have her in the next room. She bit one of them.’

‘What did he do in return?’

‘He slapped her halfway across the room, and that seemed to bring her out of it. She was – well, actually, not metaphorically a wild animal. As if she thought she was going to be snuffed.’

‘I’ll go talk with her,’ he said, and passed on through the cubicle into the next room.

There she stood, her eyes screaming hatred and fear, like a trapped raptor – hawk eyes, he thought, which you better never look into. I learned that early, he reflected; don’t look into the eyes of a hawk or an eagle. Because you won’t be able to forget the hate that you saw…and the passionate, insatiable need to be free, the need to fly. And oh, those great heights. Those dreadful drops on the prey; panic-stricken rabbit: that’s the rest of us. Funny image: an eagle held prisoner by four rabbits.

The MPs, however, were not rabbits. He made out the kind of grip they had on her – where they held her and how tightly. She couldn’t move. And they would outlast her.

‘I could have you tranquilized again,’ he said to her, in a conciliatory tone. ‘But I know how you hate it.’

‘You white bastard,’ she said.

‘“White”?’ He did not understand. ‘But there’s no more white and yellow and black. Why do you say white?’

‘Because you’re the king of the tracks.’

One of the MPs said brusquely, ‘“White” is still an insult in certain low-income strata.’

‘Oh,’ he said, nodding. He was picking up thoughts from her mind, now, and what he found amazed him. On the surface she was straining, taut, stationary only because four MPs held her. But inside—

A frightened, small girl, fighting in the manner of a child terrified of, say, going to the dentist. An irrational, abreactive return to prerational mentational processes. She does not see us as human, he realized. She distinguishes us as vague shapes, dragging her one way, then, almost at once, another, then doing this: forcing her – four big professional men forcing her – to stand in one spot, for God knows how long and what for. Her mentational processes were, he estimated, on about the three-year-old level. But perhaps he could get somewhere talking with her. Perhaps he could drain off some of her fear, allowing her thoughts to resume a more mature quality.

‘My name is Willis Gram,’ he said to her. ‘And do you know what I’ve just done?’ He smiled at her, raised his hand, pointed at her, augmented his smile. ‘I’ll bet you can’t guess.’

She shook her head. Briefly. Once.

‘I’ve opened up all those relocation camps on the moon and in Utah, and all the people inside will come out.’

Her eyes huge and luminous, she continued to stare. But, in her thoughts, the data registered; it sent bewildering flows of psychic energy traveling throughout her cerebral cortex as she tried to understand.

‘And we’re not going to arrest anyone anymore,’ he said. ‘And so you’re free.’ At this, a wave of oceanic relief flooded through her mind; her eyes dimmed and then one tear spilled out, sliding down her cheek.

‘Can—’ She swallowed with difficulty and her voice shook. ‘Can I see Mr. Appleton?’

‘You can see anyone you want. Nick Appleton is free, too; we kicked him out of here two hours ago. He probably went home. He has a wife and child whom he’s very fond of. He’s undoubtedly gone back to them.’

‘Yes,’ she said distantly. ‘I met them. The woman is a bitch.’

‘But his thoughts about her – I spent quite a bit of time with him today. Fundamentally, he loves her; he just wants to have a bit of wild oat sowing… you realize I’m a telepath; I know things about other people that a non—’

‘But you can lie,’ Charlotte said, between clenched teeth.

‘I’m not lying,’ he said, although, as he well knew, he was.

Charlotte said, now suddenly calm, ‘Am I really free to go?’

‘There is one matter.’ Gram felt his way carefully, his mind tuned to her thoughts, trying to pick them up before they turned into speech or action. ‘You realize that we gave you a medical examination after PSS occifers brought you out of the ruins of the 16th Avenue printing plant… do you remember that?’

‘A – medical exam?’ She looked at him uncertainly. ‘No, I don’t remember. All I remember is being dragged by my arms through the building, with my head hitting the floor, outdoors, and then—’

‘Hence the physical exam,’ Gram said. ‘We did this with everyone we captured at 16th Avenue. We also made cursory psychological exams. You registered rather badly; you were completely traumatized and in nearly a catatonic stupor.’

‘So?’ She eyed him mercilessly. The hawk-stare, it had never left her eyes.

‘You need bed rest.’

‘And I’m going to get it here?’

‘This building,’ Gram said, ‘contains probably the finest psychiatric facilities in the world. After a few days of rest and therapy—’

The hawk eyes flamed up; thoughts shot through her mind, emanations from the thalamus which he could not follow, and then, all at once, in the twinkling of an eye, at the sound of the last trumpet, she contorted herself, limp, then, stiff, then spinning. Spinning! All four MPs had lost their holds on her; they reached out, and one of them brought forth a plastic club weighted with shot.

She backed lightning-fast, hunched over, squirming, opened the door behind her, ran down the hall. A PSS occifer, coming toward her, saw Willis Gram and the four MPs; sizing up the situation, he made a grab for her as she shot past him. He managed to get a grip on her right wrist… as he pulled her round she kicked him in the testicles. And he let go. She plunged on, toward the wide entrance doors of the building. No one else tried to stop her — not after they had seen the PSS occifer crumple to the floor in acute pain.

One of the four MPs brought out a 2.56 Richardson laser pistol, raised it, barrel ceiling-pointed. ‘Shall I snuff her, sir?’ he asked Willis Gram. ‘I can get off one good shot if you tell me immediately.’

‘I can’t decide,’ Gram said.

‘Then I won’t, sir.’

‘Okay. Don’t.’ Willis Gram moved back into the office, slowly seated himself on the bed; he hunched forward, staring sightlessly at the patterns of the flooring.

‘She’s flurped, sir,’ one of the MPs said to him. ‘I mean, she’s witless. Completely snurled.’

Gram said hoarsely, ‘I’ll tell you what she is — she’s a gutter rat.’ He had picked that phrase out of Nick Appleton’s mind. ‘A real one.’ I can sure pick ’em, he thought. And so can he.

He told me, Gram thought, that he would see her again. And he will; she’ll locate him somehow. He’ll never go back to his wife.

Rising, he heavily made his way over to Margaret Plow’s desk in the inner work cubicle. ‘May I use your fone?’ he asked.

‘You can use my fone; in fact you can use my—’

‘Just the fone,’ he said. He dialed Director Barnes’ private priority line; it would link up with Barnes wherever he was: in the bathroom taking a squat, on the freeway, even at his desk.

‘Yes, Council Chairman.’

‘I want one of your — special troops. Maybe two.’

‘Who?’ Barnes said stolidly. ‘I mean, who do you want them to snuff?’

‘Citizen 3XX24J.’

‘You’re serious? This isn’t a whim, a mood? You really mean it? Remember, Council Chairman, you just now released him on the basis of him receiving complete amnesty along with everybody else.’

Gram said, ‘He took Charlotte away from me.’

‘Oh, I see,’ Barnes said. ‘She’s gone.’

‘Four MPs couldn’t hold her; she becomes a maniac when she’s trapped. I caught something in her mind about an elevator once, in her childhood, which wouldn’t open; she was all alone. I think she was about eight. So she’s got some variation of claustrophobia. Anyhow, she can’t be restrained.’

‘That’s hardly 3XX24J’s fault,’ Barnes said.

‘But,’ Gram said, ‘it’s to him she’s going.’

‘Should it be done quietly? And made to look like an accident? Or do you simply want the special troopers to merely walk in and do it and then walk out again, despite who sees them?’

‘The latter,’ Gram said. ‘Like a ritualistic execution. And the freedom he’s enjoying now’ — and, he thought, his moment of joy when he finds Charlotte again — ‘that’s going to have to serve as the last meal they give condemned prisoners.’

‘That isn’t done any more, Council Chairman.’

‘I think I will add one stipulation for your troopers,’ Gram said. ‘I want him snuffed while she is there. I want her to see it happen.’

‘All right, all right,’ Barnes said, nettled. ‘Anything else? What’s the latest about Provoni? One of the TV stations said that a picket ship detected the Gray Dinosaur. True?’

‘We’ll deal with it when we come to it,’ Gram said.

‘Council Chairman, that statement makes no sense.’

‘Okay, we’ll deal with that when we come to that.’

Barnes said, ‘I’ll let you know when my people have completed the exercise. With your permission, I’ll send three men, one to have a tranquilizing gun ready for use on her, if, as you say, she becomes maniacal at times.’

‘If she fights you,’ Gram said, ‘don’t hurt her. His snuffdom will be enough. Goodbye.’ He hung up.

Margaret Plow said, ‘I thought you shot them afterward.’

‘Girls, yes. Their men-friends, before.’

‘How candid you are today, Council Chairman. There must be a terrible strain on you, the business with Provoni. That third message; he said six days. Just six days! And you’re opening the camps and granting the general amnesty. It’s too bad Cordon isn’t alive to see this day; too bad his kidney ailment or liver ailment or whatever it was caused him to succumb just hours before—’ She stopped abruptly.

‘“Just hours before victory was in sight,”’ he finished for her, reading the rest direct, like an iron oxide tape, from her basically empty mind. ‘Well, he was a bit of a mystic. Maybe he knew.’ Yes, maybe he did, Gram thought. He was an odd person. May be he’ll rise from the dead. Oh, well, hell — we’ll simply say he never died; it was a cover story. We wanted Provoni to think—

Good God, he thought. What am I thinking? Nobody’s risen from the dead in 2100 years; they’re not going to start to now.

After Appleton’s death, he asked himself, do I want to make a one final try for Charlotte Boyer? If I could get my government psychiatrists working on her, they could iron out that feral streak, make her passive — as a woman should be. And yet — he liked her fire. Maybe that’s the very thing about her that makes me find her attractive, he thought, that gutter rat streak, as Appleton put it. And maybe that’s what hooked Appleton. Many men like violent women; I wonder why? Not merely strong women, or stubborn or opinionated, but simply wild.

I have to think about Provoni, he told himself. Instead of this.

Twenty-four hours later, a fourth message came from the Gray Dinosaur, monitored by the huge radio telescope on Mars.

Certainly terse, Willis Gram thought, as he studied the message in written form. ‘And we haven’t been able to transmit back to them?’ he asked General Hefele, who had brought him the news.

‘I think we’re reaching him, but he’s not listening, either due to faulty circuitry in his receiving apparatus or due to his unwillingness to negotiate with us.’

‘When he is approximately one hundred astronomical units out,’ Gram asked, ‘can’t you get him with a cluster-missile? One of those that is tropic to—’ He gestured.

‘To life,’ General Hefele said. ‘We have sixty-four types of missiles we can try; I’ve already had their carrier-ships deploy them in the general area in which we expect to encounter the ship.’

‘You don’t know of any “general area in which we expect to encounter the ship”. He could have come out of hyper-space anywhere.’

‘Then let’s say we have all our hardware available for use, once the Dinosaur is spotted. Maybe he’s bluffing. Maybe he’s come back alone. Exactly as he went, ten years ago.’

‘No,’ Gram said cannily. ‘His ability to remain in hyper-space in that old 2198 tub. No, his ship has been rebuilt. And not by any technology we know.’ A further idea struck him. ‘God — he, he and the Dinosaur, may be inside the creature; it may have wrapped itself around the ship. So of course the hull didn’t disintegrate. Provoni may be like some little internal parasite in the nonhumanoid entity, but one he’s on good terms with. Symbiosis.’ The idea struck him as plausible. Nobody, humanoid or otherwise, ever did anything for nothing; he knew that as one of life’s verities, as sure as he knew his own name. ‘They’ll probably want our entire race, six billion Old Men and then us, to fuse with him in some kind of poly-encephalic jello. Think of that; how would you like that?’

‘Everyone of us, Old Men included, would fight that,’ General Hefele said quietly.

‘It doesn’t sound so bad to me,’ Gram said. ‘And I know, far better than you, what brain-fusion is like.’ You know what we telepaths do every few months, he thought. We get together somewhere and weave our minds into a vast composite mind, a single mentational organism that thinks with the power of five hundred, six hundred men and women. And it is our joy-time, for all of us. Even for me.

Only this way, Provoni’s way, everyone could be woven into the web.

But that might not be Provoni’s idea at all. And yet — he had caught something in the four messages, the use of the word ‘we’. A kind of concurrence between him and it seemed indicated. And in harmony, Gram thought. The messages, though terse, are frosty… as the kids say.

And the one he’s bringing is the vanguard for thousands, he said morbidly to himself. Badger’s crew, the first casualties. There ought to be an alloy plaque set up somewhere, honoring them. They weren’t afraid to take Provoni on; they dogged the Dinosaur and died in the attempt. Maybe with men with that courage we might fight and win after all. And an inter-stellar war is hard to maintain – he had read that somewhere. Thinking this, he felt a trifle better.

Nicholas Appleton, after hours of fighting his way through crowds, managed to locate Denny Strong’s apartment building. He entered the elevator, ascended to the fiftieth floor.

He rapped on the door. Silence. And then her voice, Charley’s voice, came, ‘Who the fuck is it?’

‘It’s me,’ he said. ‘I knew you would come here.’ If Willis Gram wanted us not to see each other, he thought, he shouldn’t have let both of us go.

The door opened. There stood Charley in a striped red-and-black shirt, hoop trousers, living sandals… and she had on a good layer of makeup, including enormous lashes. Even though he knew they were fake, the eyelashes got through to him. ‘Yes?’ she asked.