V

The new sign on the office door said:

ROY WALTONInterim DirectorBureau of Population Equalization

He had argued against putting it up there, on the grounds that his appointment was strictly temporary, pending a meeting of the General Assembly to choose a new head for Popeek. But Ludwig had maintained it might be weeks or months before such a meeting could be held and that there was no harm in identifying his office.

"Everything under control?" the UN man asked.

Walton eyed him unhappily. "I guess so. Now all I have to do is start figuring out how Mr. FitzMaugham's filing system worked, and I'll be all set."

"You mean you don't know?"

"Mr. FitzMaugham took very few people into his confidence," Walton said. "Popeek was his special brain-child. He had lived with it so long he thought its workings were self-evident to everyone. There'll be a period of adjustment."

"Of course," Ludwig said.

"This conference you were going to have with the director yesterday when heâ€”ah, what was it about?" Walton asked.

The UN man shrugged. "It's irrelevant now, I suppose. I wanted to find out how Popeek's subsidiary research lines were coming along. But I guess you'll have to go through Mr. FitzMaugham's files before you know anything, eh?" Ludwig stared at him sharply.

Suddenly, Walton did not like the cheerful UN man.

"There'll be a certain period of adjustment," he repeated. "I'll let you know when I'm ready to answer questions about Popeek."

"Of course. I didn't mean to imply any criticism of you or of the late director or of Popeek, Mr. Walton."

"Naturally. I understand, Mr. Ludwig."

Ludwig took his leave at last, and Walton was alone in the late Mr. FitzMaugham's office for the first time since the assassination. He spread his hands on the highly polished desk and twisted his wrists outward in a tense gesture. His fingers made squeaking sounds as they rubbed the wood surface.

It had been an uneasy afternoon yesterday, after the nightmare of the assassination and the subsequent security inquisition. Walton, wrung dry, had gone home early, leaving Popeek headless for two hours. The newsblares in the jetbus had been programmed with nothing but talk of the killing.

"A brutal hand today struck down the revered D. F. FitzMaugham, eighty-one, Director of Population Equalization. Security officials report definite prospects of solution of the shocking crime, and...."

The other riders in the bus had been vehemently outspoken.

"It's about time they let him have it," a fat woman in sleazy old clothes said. "That baby killer!"

"I knew they'd get him sooner or later," offered a thin, wispy-haired old man. "Theyhadto."

"Rumor going around he was really a Herschelite...."

"Some new kid is taking over Popeek, they say. They'll get him too, mark my words."

Walton, huddling in his seat, pulled up his collar, and tried to shut his ears. It didn't work.

They'll get him too, mark my words.

He hadn't forgotten that prophecy by the time he reached his cubicle in upper Manhattan. The harsh words had drifted through his restless sleep all night.

Now, behind the safety of his office door, he thought of them again.

He couldn't hide. It hadn't worked for FitzMaugham, and it wouldn't for him.

Hiding wasn't the answer. Walton smiled grimly. If martyrdom were in store for him, let martyrdom come. The work of Popeek had to go forward. He decided he would conduct as much of his official business as possible by screen; but when personal contact was necessary, he would make no attempt to avoid it.

He glanced around FitzMaugham's office. The director had been a product of the last century, and he had seen nothing ugly in the furnishings of the Cullen Building. Unlike Walton, then, he had not had his office remodeled.

That would be one of the first tasksâ€”to replace the clumsy battery of tungsten-filament incandescents with a wall of electroluminescents, to replace the creaking sash windows with some decent opaquers, to get rid of the accursed gingerbread trimming that offended the eye in every direction. Thethunkety-thunkair-conditioner would have to go too; he'd have a molecusorter installed in a day or two.

The redecorating problems were the minor ones. It was the task of filling FitzMaugham's giant shoes, even on an interim basis, that staggered Walton.

He fumbled in the desk for a pad and stylus. This was going to call for an agenda. Hastily he wrote:

1. Cancel F's appointments2. Investigate setup in Filesa) Lang terraforming projectb) faster-than-lightc) budgetâ€”stretchable?d) locate spy pickups in building3. Meeting with section chiefs4. Press conference with telefax services5. See Ludwig ... straighten things out6. Redecorate office

He thought for a moment, then erased a few of his numbers and changedPress conferenceto6.andRedecorate officeto4.He licked the stylus and wrote in at the very top of the paper:

0. Finish Prior affair.

In a way, FitzMaugham's assassination had taken Walton off the hook on the Prior case. Whatever FitzMaugham suspected about Walton's activities yesterday morning no longer need trouble him. If the director had jotted down a memorandum on the subject, Walton would be able to find and destroy it when he went through FitzMaugham's files later. And if the dead man had merely kept the matter in his head, well, then it was safely at rest in the crematorium.

Walton groped in his jacket pocket and found the note his brother had slipped to him at lunchtime the day before. In the rush of events, Walton had not had a chance to destroy it.

Now, he read it once more, ripped it in half, ripped it again, and fed one quarter of the note into the disposal chute. He would get rid of the rest at fifteen-minute intervals, and he would defy anyone monitoring the disposal units to locate all four fragments.

Actually, he realized he was being overcautious. This was Director FitzMaugham's office and FitzMaugham's disposal chute. The director wouldn't have arranged to have hisownchute monitored, would he?

Or would he? There was never any telling, with FitzMaugham. The old man had been terribly devious in every maneuver he made.

The room had the dry, crisp smell of the detecting devices that had been usedâ€”the close-to-the-ground, ugly metering-robots that had crawled all over the floor, sniffing up footprints and stray dandruff flakes for analysis, the chemical cleansers that had mopped the blood out of the rug. Walton cursed at the air-conditioner that was so inefficiently removing these smells from the air.

The annunciator chimed. Walton waited impatiently for a voice, then remembered that FitzMaugham had doggedly required an acknowledgment. He opened the channel and said, "This is Walton. In the future no acknowledgment will be necessary."

"Yes, sir. There's a reporter fromCitizenhere, and one from Globe Telefax."

"Tell them I'm not seeing anyone today. Here, I'll give them a statement. Tell them the Gargantuan task of picking up the reins where the late, great Director FitzMaugham dropped them is one that will require my full energy for the next several days. I'll be happy to hold my first official press conference as soon as Popeek is once again moving on an even keel. Got that?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good. Make sure they print it. Andâ€”oh, listen. If anyone shows up today or tomorrow who had an appointment with Director FitzMaugham, tell him approximately the same thing. Not in those flowery words, of course, but give him the gist of it. I've got a lot of catching up to do before I can see people."

"Certainly, Director Walton."

He grinned at the sound of those words,Director Walton. Turning away from the annunciator, he took out his agenda and checked off number one,Cancel FitzMaugham's appointments.

Frowning, he realized he had better add a seventh item to the list:Appoint new assistant administrator. Someone would have to handle his old job.

But now, top priority went to the item ticketed zero on the list:Finish Prior affair. He'd never be in a better position to erase the evidence of yesterday's illegality than he was right now.

"Connect me with euthanasia files, please."

A moment later a dry voice said, "Files."

"Files, this is Acting Director Walton. I'd like a complete transcript of your computer's activities for yesterday morning between 0900 and 1200, with each separate activity itemized. How soon can I have it?"

"Within minutes, Director Walton."

"Good. Send it sealed, by closed circuit. There's some top-level stuff on that transcript. If the seal's not intact when it gets here, I'll shake up the whole department."

"Yes, sir. Anything else, sir?"

"No, that'll beâ€”on second thought, yes. Send up a list of all doctors who were examining babies in the clinic yesterday morning."

He waited. While he waited, he went through the top layer of memoranda in FitzMaugham's desk.

There was a note on top which read,Appointment with Lamarre, 11 Juneâ€”1215. Must be firm with him, and must handle with great delicacy. Perhaps time to let Walton know.

Hmm, that was interesting, Walton thought. He had no idea who Lamarre might be, but FitzMaugham had drawn a spidery little star in the upper-right-hand corner of the memo sheet, indicating crash priority.

He flipped on the annunciator. "There's a Mr. Lamarre who had an appointment with Director FitzMaugham for 1215 today. If he calls, tell him I can't see him today but will honor the appointment tomorrow at the same time. If he shows up, tell him the same thing."

His watch said it was time to dispose of another fragment of Fred's message. He stuffed it into the disposal chute.

A moment later the green light flashed over the arrival bin; FitzMaugham had not been subject, as Walton had been in his previous office, to cascades of material arriving without warning.

Walton drew a sealed packet from the bin. He examined the seal and found it untampered, which was good; it meant the packet had come straight from the computer, and had not even been read by the technician in charge. With it was a typed list of five namesâ€”the doctors who had been in the lab the day before.

Breaking open the packet, Walton discovered seven closely-typed sheets with a series of itemized actions on them. He ran through them quickly, discarding sheets one, two, and three, which dealt with routine activities of the computer in the early hours of the previous day.

Item seventy-three was his request for Philip Prior's record card. He checked that one off.

Item seventy-four was his requisition for the key to the clinic's gene-sorting code.

Item seventy-five was his revision of Philip Prior's records, omitting all reference to his tubercular condition and to the euthanasia recommendation. Item seventy-six was the acknowledgment of this revision.

Item seventy-seven was his request for the boy's record cardâ€”this time, the amended one. The five items were dated and timed; the earliest was 1025, the latest 1037, all on June tenth.

Walton bracketed the five items thoughtfully, and scanned the rest of the page. Nothing of interest there, just more routine business. But item ninety-two, timed at 1102, was an intriguing one:

92: Full transcript of morning's transactions issued at request of Dr. Frederic Walton, 932K104AZ.

Fred hadn't been bluffing, then; he actually had possession of all the damning evidence. But when one dealt with a computer and with Donnerson micro-memory-tubes, the past was an extremely fluid entity.

"I want a direct line to the computer on floor twenty," he said.

After a brief lag a technician appeared on the screen. It was the same one he had spoken to earlier.

"There's been an error in the records," Walton said. "An error I wouldn't want to perpetuate. Will you set me up so I can feed a direct order into the machine?"

"Certainly, sir. Go ahead, sir."

"This is top secret. Vanish."

The technician vanished. Walton said, "Items seventy-three through seventy-seven on yesterday morning's record tape are to be deleted, and the information carried in those tubes is to be deleted as well. Furthermore, there is to be no record made of this transaction."

The voicewrite on floor twenty clattered briefly, and the order funneled into the computer. Walton waited a moment, tensely. Then he said, "All right, technician. Come back in where I can see you."

The technician appeared. Walton said, "I'm running a check now. Have the machine prepare another transcript of yesterday's activities between 0900 and 1200, and also one of today's doings for the last fifteen minutes."

"Right away, sir."

While he waited for the new transcripts to arrive, Walton studied the list of names on his desk. Five doctorsâ€”Gunther, Raymond, Archer, Hsi, Rein. He didn't know which one of them had examined the Prior baby, nor did he care to find out. All five would have to be transferred.

Meticulously, he took up his stylus and pad again, and plotted a destination for each:

Gunther ... Zurich.Raymond ... Glasgow.Archer ... Tierra del Fuego.Hsi ... Leopoldville.Rein ... Bangkok.

He nodded. That was optimum dissemination; he would put through notice of the transfers later in the day, and by nightfall the men would be on their way to their new scenes of operation. Perhaps they would never understand why they had been uprooted and sent away from New York.

The new transcripts arrived. Impatiently Walton checked through them.

In the June tenth transcript, item seventy-one dealt with smallpox statistics for North America 1822-68, and item seventy-two with the tally of antihistamine supply for requisitions for Clinic Three. There was no sign of any of Walton's requests. They had vanished from the record as completely as if they had never been.

Walton searched carefully through the June eleventh transcript for any mention of his deletion order. No, that hadn't been recorded either.

He smiled, his first honest smile since FitzMaugham's assassination. Now, with the computer records erased, the director dead, and the doctors on their way elsewhere, only Fred stood in the way of Roy's chance of escaping punishment for the Prior business.

He decided he'd have to take his chances with Fred. Perhaps brotherly love would seal his lips after all.

The late Director FitzMaugham's files were spread over four floors of the building, but for Walton's purposes the only ones that mattered were those to which access was gained through the director's office alone.

A keyboard and screen were set into the wall to the left of the desk. Walton let his fingers rest lightly on the gleaming keys.

The main problem facing him, he thought, lay in not knowing where to begin. Despite his careful agenda, despite the necessary marshaling of his thoughts, he was still confused by the enormity of his job. The seven billion people of the world were in his hands. He could transfer fifty thousand New Yorkers to the bleak northern provinces of underpopulated Canada with the same quick ease that he had shifted five unsuspecting doctors half an hour before.

After a few moments of uneasy thought he pecked out the short message,Request complete data file on terraforming project.

On the screen appeared the words,Acknowledged and coded; prepare to receive.

The arrival bin thrummed with activity. Walton hastily scooped out a double handful of typed sheets to make room for more. He grinned in anguish as the paper kept on coming. FitzMaugham's files on terraforming, no doubt, covered reams and reams.

Staggering, he carted it all over to his desk and began to skim through it. The data began thirty years earlier, in 2202, with a photostat of a letter from Dr. Herbert Lang to FitzMaugham, proposing a project whereby the inner planets of the solar system could be made habitable by human beings.

Appended to that was FitzMaugham's skeptical, slightly mocking reply; the old man had kept everything, it seemed, even letters which showed him in a bad light.

After that came more letters from Lang, urging FitzMaugham to plead terraforming's case before the United States Senate, and FitzMaugham's increasingly more enthusiastic answers. Finally, in 2212, a notation that the Senate had voted a million-dollar appropriation to Langâ€”a miniscule amount, in terms of the overall need, but it was enough to cover preliminary research. Lang had been grateful.

Walton skimmed through more-or-less familiar documents on the nature of the terraforming project. He could study those in detail later, if time permitted. What he wanted now was information on the current status of the project; FitzMaugham had been remarkably silent about it, though the public impression had been created that a team of engineers headed by Lang was already at work on Venus.

He shoved whole handfuls of letters to one side, looking for those of recent date.

Here was one dated 1 Feb 2232, FitzMaugham to Lang: it informed the scientist that passage of the Equalization Act was imminent, and that Lang stood to get a substantial appropriation from the UN in that event. A jubilant reply from Lang was attached.

Following that came another, 10 May 2232, FitzMaugham to Lang: official authorization of Lang as an executive member of Popeek, and appropriation ofâ€”Walton's eyes buggedâ€”five billion dollars for terraforming research.

Note from Lang to FitzMaugham, 14 May: the terraforming crew was leaving for Venus immediately.

Note from FitzMaugham to Lang, 16 May: best wishes, and Lang was instructed to contact FitzMaugham without fail at weekly intervals.

Spacegram from Lang to FitzMaugham, 28 May: arrived at Venus safely, preparing operation as scheduled.

The file ended there. Walton rummaged through the huge heap, hoping to discover a later communiquÃ©; by FitzMaugham's own request, Lang should have contacted Popeek about four days ago with his first report.

Possibly it had gone astray in delivery, Walton thought. He spent twenty minutes digging through the assorted material before remembering that he could get a replacement within seconds from the filing computer.

He typed out a requisition for any and all correspondence between Director FitzMaugham and Dr. Herbert Lang that was dated after 28 May 2232.

The machine acknowledged, and a moment later replied,This material is not included in memory banks.

Walton frowned, gathered up most of his superfluous terraforming data, and deposited it in a file drawer. The status of the project, then, was uncertain: the terraformers were on Venus and presumably at work, but were yet to be heard from.

The next Popeek project to track down would be the faster-than-light spaceship drive. But after the mass of data Walton had just absorbed, he found himself hesitant to wade through another collection so soon.

He realized that he was hungry for the sight of another human being. He had spent the whole morning alone, speaking to anonymous underlings via screen or annunciator, and requisitioning material from an even more impersonal computer. He wanted noise, life, people around him.

He snapped on the annunciator. "I'm calling an immediate meeting of the Popeek section chiefs," he said. "In my office, in half an hourâ€”at 1230 sharp. Tell them to drop whatever they're doing and come."

Just before they started to arrive, Walton felt a sudden sick wave of tension sweep dizzyingly over him. He pulled open the top drawer of his new desk and reached for his tranquilizer tablets. He suffered a moment of shock and disorientation before he realized that this was FitzMaugham's desk, not his own, and that FitzMaugham forswore all forms of sedation.

Chuckling nervously, Walton drew out his wallet and extracted the extra benzolurethrin he carried for just such emergencies. He popped the lozenge into his mouth only a moment before the spare figure of Lee Percy, first of the section chiefs to arrive, appeared in the screener outside the door.

"Roy? It's meâ€”Percy."

"I can see you. Come on in, Lee."

Percy was in charge of public relations for Popeek. He was a tall, angular man with thick corrugated features.

After him came Teddy Schaunhaft, clinic coordinator; Pauline Medhurst, personnel director; Olaf Eglin, director of field agents; and Sue Llewellyn, Popeek's comptroller.

These five had constituted the central council of Popeek. Walton, as assistant administrator, had served as their coordinator, as well as handling population transfer and serving as a funnel for red tape. Above them all had been FitzMaugham, brooding over his charges like an untroubled Wotan; FitzMaugham had reserved for himself, aside from the task of general supervision, the special duties attendant on handling the terraforming and faster-than-light wings of Popeek.

"I should have called you together much earlier than this," Walton said when they were settled. "The shock, though, and the general confusionâ€”"

"We understand, Roy," said Sue Llewellyn sympathetically. She was a chubby little woman in her fifties, whose private life was reported to be incredibly at variance with her pleasantly domestic appearance. "It's been rough on all of us, but you were so close to Mr. FitzMaugham...."

There was sympathetic clucking from various corners of the room. Walton said, "The period of mourning will have to be a brief one. What I'm suggesting is that business continue as usual, without a hitch." He glanced at Eglin, the director of field agents. "Olaf, is there a man in your section capable of handling your job?"

Eglin looked astonished for a moment, then mastered himself. "There must be five, at least. Walters, Lassen, Dominicâ€”"

"Skip the catalogue," Walton told him. "Pick the man you think is best suited to replace you, and send his dossier up to me for approval."

"And where doIgo?"

"You take over my slot as assistant administrator. As director of field agents, you're more familiar with the immediate problems of my old job than anyone else here."

Eglin preened himself smugly. Walton wondered if he had made an unwise choice; Eglin was competent enough, and would give forth one hundred percent effort at all timesâ€”but probably never the one hundred two percent a really great administrator could put out when necessary.

Still, the post had to be filled at once, and Eglin could pick up the reins faster than any of the others.

Walton looked around. "Otherwise, activities of Popeek will continue as under Mr. FitzMaugham, without a hitch. Any questions?"

Lee Percy raised an arm slowly. "Roy, I've got a problem I'd like to bring up here, as long as we're all together. There's a growing public sentiment that you and the late director were secretly Herschelites." He chuckled apologetically. "I know it sounds silly, but I just report what I hear."

"I'm familiar with the rumor," Walton said. "And I don't like it much, either. That's the sort of stuff riots are made of."

The Herschelites were extremists who advocated wholesale sterilization of defectives, mandatory birth control, and half a dozen other stringent remedies for overpopulation.

"What steps are you taking to counteract it?" Walton asked.

"Well," said Percy, "we're preparing a memorial program for FitzMaugham which will intimate that he was murdered by the Herschelites, who hated him."

"Good. What's the slant?"

"That he was too easygoing, too humane. We build up the Herschelites as ultrareactionaries who intend to enforce their will on humanity if they get the chance, and imply FitzMaugham was fighting them tooth and nail. We close the show with some shots of you picking up the great man's mantle, etcetera, etcetera. And a short speech from you affirming the basically humanitarian aims of Popeek."

Walton smiled approvingly and said, "I like it. When do you want me to do the speech?"

"We won't need you," Percy told him. "We've got plenty of stock footage, and we can whip the speech out of some spare syllables you left around."

Walton frowned. Too many of the public speeches of the day were synthetic, created by skilled engineers who split words into their component phonemes and reassembled them in any shape they pleased. "Let me check through my speech before you put it over, at least."

"Will do. And we'll squash this Herschelite thing right off the bat."

Pauline Medhurst squirmed uneasily in her chair. Walton caught the hint and recognized her.

"Uh, Roy, I don't know if this is the time or the place, but I got that transfer order of yours, the five doctors...."

"You did? Good," Walton said hurriedly. "Have you notified them yet?"

"Yes. They seemed unhappy about it."

"Refer them to FitzMaugham's book. Tell them they're cogs in a mighty machine, working to save humanity. We can't let personal considerations interefere, Pauline."

"If you could only explain whyâ€”"

"Yeah," interjected Schaunhaft, the clinic coordinator suddenly. "You cleaned out my whole morning lab shift down there. I was wonderingâ€”"

Walton felt like a stag at bay. "Look," he said firmly, cutting through the hubbub, "Imade the transfer. I had reasons for doing it. It's your job to get the five men out where they've been assigned, and to get five new men in here at once. You're not required to make explanations to themâ€”nor I to you."

Sudden silence fell over the office. Walton hoped he had not been too forceful, and cast suspicion on his actions by his stiffness.

"Whew!" Sue Llewellyn said. "You really mean business!"

"I said we were going to run Popeek without a hitch," Walton replied. "Just because you know my first name, that doesn't mean I'm not going to be as strong a director as FitzMaugham was."

Until the UN picks my successor, his mind added. Out loud he said, "Unless you have any further questions, I'll ask you now to return to your respective sections."

He sat slumped at his desk after they were gone, trying to draw on some inner reserve of energy for the strength to go on.

One day at the job, and he was tired, terribly tired. And it would be six weeks or more before the United Nations convened to choose the next director of Popeek.

He didn't know who that man would be. He expected they would offer the job to him, provided he did competent work during the interim; but, wearily, he saw he would have to turn the offer down.

It was not only that his nerves couldn't handle the grinding daily tension of the job; he saw now what Fred might be up to, and it stung.

What if his brother were to hold off exposing him until the moment the UN proffered its appointment ... and then took that moment to reveal that the head of Popeek, far from being an iron-minded Herschelite, had actually been guilty of an irregularity that transgressed against one of Popeek's own operations? He'd be finished. He'd be laughed out of public life for goodâ€”and probably prosecuted in the bargainâ€”if Fred exposed him.

And Fred was perfectly capable of doing just that.

Walton saw himself spinning dizzily between conflicting alternatives. Keep the job and face his brother's exposÃ©? Or resign, and vanish into anonymity. Neither choice seemed too appealing.

Shrugging, he dragged himself out of his chair, determined to shroud his conflict behind the mask of work. He typed a request to Files, requisitioning data on the faster-than-light project.

Moments later, the torrent beganâ€”rising from somewhere in the depths of the giant computer, rumbling upward through the conveyor system, moving onward toward the twenty-ninth floor and the office of Interim Director Walton.

The next morning there was a crowd gathered before the Cullen Building when Walton arrived.

There must have been at least a hundred people, fanning outward from a central focus. Walton stepped from the jetbus and, with collar pulled up carefully to obscure as much of his face as possible, went to investigate.

A small red-faced man stood on a rickety chair against the side of the building. He was flanked by a pair of brass flagpoles, one bearing the American flag and the other the ensign of the United Nations. His voice was a biting raspâ€”probably, thought Walton, intensified, sharpened, and made more irritating by a harmonic modulator at his throat. An irritating voice put its message across twice as fast as a pleasant one.

He was shouting, "This is the place! Up here, in this building, that's where they are! That's where Popeek wastes our money!"

From the slant of the man's words Walton instantly thought:Herschelite!

He repressed his anger and, for once, decided to stay and hear the extremist out. He had never really paid much attention to Herschelite propagandaâ€”he had been exposed to little of itâ€”and he realized that now, as head of Popeek, he owed it to himself to become familiar with the anti-Popeek arguments of both extremist factionsâ€”those who insisted Popeek was a tyranny, and the Herschelites, who thought it was too weak.

"This Popeek," the little man said, accenting the awkwardness of the word. "You know what it is? It's a stopgap. It's a silly, soft-minded, half-hearted attempt at solving our problems. It's a fake, a fraud, a phony!"

There was real passion behind the words. Walton distrusted small men with deep wells of passion; he no more enjoyed their company than he did that of a dynamo or an atomic pile. They were always threatening to explode.

The crowd was stirring restlessly. The Herschelite was getting to them, one way or another. Walton drew back nervously, not wanting to be recognized, and stationed himself at the fringe of the crowd.

"Some of you don't like Popeek for this reason or that reason. But let me tell you something, friends ... you're wronger than they are! We've got to get tough with ourselves! We have to face the truth! Popeek is an unrealistic half-solution to man's problems. Until we limit birth, establish rigid controls over who's going to live and who isn't, weâ€”"

It was straight Herschelite propaganda, undiluted. Walton wasn't surprised when someone in the audience interrupted, growling, "And who's going to set those controls? You?"

"You trusted yourselves to Popeek, didn't you? Why hesitate, then, to trust yourselves to Abel Herschel and his group of workers for the betterment and purification of mankind?"

Walton was almost limp with amazement. The Herschelite group was so much more drastic in its approach than Popeek that he wondered how they dared come out with these views in public. Animosity was high enough against Popeek; would the public accept a group more stringent yet?

The little man's voice rose high. "Onward with the Herschelites! Mankind must move forward! The Equalization people represent the forces of decay and sloth!"

Walton turned to the man next to him and murmured, "But Herschel's a fanatic. They'll kill all of us in the name of mankind."

The man looked puzzled; then, accepting the idea, he nodded. "Yeah, buddy. You know, you may have something there."

That was all the spark needed. Walton edged away surreptitiously and watched it spread through the crowd, while the little man's harangue grew more and more inflammatory.

Until a rock arced through the air from somewhere, whipped across the billowing UN flag, and cracked into the side of the building. That was the signal.

A hundred men and women converged on the little man on the battered chair. "We have to face the truth!" the harsh voice cried; then the flags were swept down, trampled on. Flagpoles fell, ringing metallically on the concrete; the chair toppled. The little man was lost beneath a tide of remorseless feet and arms.

A siren screamed.

"Cops!" Walton yelled from his vantage point some thirty feet away, and abruptly the crowd melted away in all directions, leaving Walton and the little man alone on the street. A security wagon drew up. Four men in gray uniforms sprang out.

"What's been going on here? Who's this man?" Then, seeing Walton, "Hey! Come over here!"

"Of course, officer." Walton turned his collar down and drew near. He spotted the glare of a ubiquitous video camera and faced it squarely. "I'm Director Walton of Popeek," he said loudly, into the camera. "I just arrived here a few minutes ago. I saw the whole thing."

"Tell us about it, Mr. Walton," the security man said.

"It was a Herschelite." Walton gestured at the broken body crumpled against the ground. "He was delivering an inflammatory speech aimed against Popeek, with special reference to the late Director FitzMaugham and myself. I was about to summon you and end the disturbance, when the listeners became aware that the man was a Herschelite. When they understood what he was advocating, theyâ€”well, you see the result."

"Thank you, sir. Terribly sorry we couldn't have prevented it. Must be very unpleasant, Mr. Walton."

"The man was asking for trouble," Walton said. "Popeek represents the minds and hearts of the world. Herschel and his people seek to overthrow this order. I can't condone violence of any sort, naturally, but"â€”he smiled into the cameraâ€”"Popeek is a sacred responsibility to me. Its enemies I must regard as blind and misguided people."

He turned and entered the building, feeling pleased with himself. That sequence would be shown globally on the next news screenings; every newsblare in the world would be reporting his words.

Lee Percy would be proud of him. Without benefit either of rehearsal or phonemic engineering, Walton had delivered a rousing speech and turned a grisly incident into a major propaganda instrument.

And more than that, Director FitzMaugham would have been proud of him.

But beneath the glow of pride, he was trembling. Yesterday he had saved a boy by a trifling alteration of his genetic record; today he had killed a man by sending a whispered accusation rustling through a mob.

Power.Popeek represented power, perhaps the greatest power in the world. That power would have to be channeled somehow, now that it had been unleashed.

The stack of papers relating to the superspeed space drive was still on his desk when he entered the office. He had had time yesterday to read through just some of the earliest; then, the pressure of routine had dragged him off to other duties.

Encouraged by FitzMaugham, the faster-than-light project had originated about a decade or so before. It stemmed from the fact that the ion-drive used for travel between planets had a top velocity, a limiting factor of about ninety thousand miles per second. At that rate, it would take some eighteen years for a scouting party to visit the closest star and report back ... not very efficient for a planet in a hurry to expand outward.

A group of scientists had set to work developing a subspace warp drive, one that would cut across the manifold of normal space and allow speeds above light velocity.

All the records were here: the preliminary trials, the budget allocations, the sketches and plans, the names of the researchers. Walton ploughed painstakingly through them, learning names, assimilating scientific data. It seemed that, while it was still in its early stages, FitzMaugham had nurtured the project along with money from his personal fortune.

For most of the morning Walton leafed through documents describing projected generators, types of hull material, specifications, speculations. It was nearly noon when he came across the neatly-typed note from Colonel Leslie McLeod, one of the military scientists in charge of the ultradrive project. Walton read it through once, gasped, and read it again.

It was dated 14 June 2231, almost one year ago. It read:

My dear Mr. FitzMaugham:I'm sure it will gladden you to learn that we have at last achieved success in our endeavors. The X-72 passed its last tests splendidly, and we are ready to leave on the preliminary scouting flight at once.McLeod

My dear Mr. FitzMaugham:

I'm sure it will gladden you to learn that we have at last achieved success in our endeavors. The X-72 passed its last tests splendidly, and we are ready to leave on the preliminary scouting flight at once.

McLeod

It was followed by a note from FitzMaugham to McLeod, dated 15 June:

Dr. McLeod:All best wishes on your great adventure. I trust you'll be departing, as usual, from the Nairobi base within the next few days. Please let me hear from you before departure.FitzM.

Dr. McLeod:

All best wishes on your great adventure. I trust you'll be departing, as usual, from the Nairobi base within the next few days. Please let me hear from you before departure.

FitzM.

The file concluded with a final note from McLeod to the director, dated 19 June 2231:

My dear Mr. FitzMaugham:The X-72 will leave Nairobi in eleven hours, bound outward, manned by a crew of sixteen, including myself. The men are all impatient for the departure. I must offer my hearty thanks for the help you have given us over the past years, without which we would never have reached this step.Flight plans include visiting several of the nearer stars, with the intention of returning either as soon as we have discovered a habitable extrasolar world, or one year after departure, whichever first occurs.Sincere good wishes, and may you have as much success when you plead your case before the United Nations as we have had hereâ€”though you'll forgive me for hoping that our work might make any population equalization program on Earth totally superfluous!McLeod

My dear Mr. FitzMaugham:

The X-72 will leave Nairobi in eleven hours, bound outward, manned by a crew of sixteen, including myself. The men are all impatient for the departure. I must offer my hearty thanks for the help you have given us over the past years, without which we would never have reached this step.

Flight plans include visiting several of the nearer stars, with the intention of returning either as soon as we have discovered a habitable extrasolar world, or one year after departure, whichever first occurs.

Sincere good wishes, and may you have as much success when you plead your case before the United Nations as we have had hereâ€”though you'll forgive me for hoping that our work might make any population equalization program on Earth totally superfluous!

McLeod

Walton stared at the three notes for a moment, so shocked he was unable to react. So a faster-than-light drive was not merely a hoped-for dream, but an actualityâ€”with the first scouting mission a year absent already!

He felt a new burst of admiration for FitzMaugham. What a marvelous old scoundrel he had been!

Faster-than-light achieved, and the terraforming group on Venus, and neither fact released to the public ... or even specifically given to FitzMaugham's own staff, his alleged confidants.

It had been shrewd of him, all right. He had made sure nothing could go wrong. If something happened to Lang and his crew on Venusâ€”and it was quite possible, since word from them was a week overdueâ€”it would be easy to say that the terraforming project was still in the planning stage. In the event of success, the excuse was that word of their progress had been withheld for "security reasons."

And the same would apply to the space drive; if McLeod and his men vanished into the nether regions of interstellar space and never returned, FitzMaugham would not have had to answer for the failure of a project which, as far as the public knew, was still in the planning stage. It was a double-edged sword with the director controlling both edges.

And now Walton was in charge. He hoped he would be able to continue manipulations with an aplomb worthy of the late Director FitzMaugham.

The annunciator chimed. "Dr. Lamarre is here for his appointment with you, Mr. Walton."

Walton was caught off guard. His mind raced furiously.Lamarre? Who the dickensâ€”oh, that left-over appointment of FitzMaugham's.

"Tell Dr. Lamarre I'll be glad to see him in just a few minutes, please. I'll buzz you when I'm ready."

Hurriedly he gathered up the space-flight documents and jammed them in a file drawer near the data on terraforming. He surveyed his office; it looked neat, presentable. Glancing around, he made sure no stray documents were visible, documents which might reveal the truth about the space drive.

"Send in Dr. Lamarre," he said.

Dr. Lamarre was a short, thin, pale individual, with an uncertain wave in his sandy hair and a slight stoop of his shoulders. He carried a large, black leather portfolio which seemed on the point of exploding.

"Mr. Walton?"

"That's right. You're Dr. Lamarre?"

The small man handed him an engraved business card.

T. ELLIOT LAMARREGerontologist

Walton fingered the card uneasily and returned it to its owner. "Gerontologist? One who studies ways of increasing the human life-span?"

"Precisely."

Walton frowned. "I presume you've had some previous dealings with the late Director FitzMaugham?"

Lamarre gaped. "You mean he didn'ttellyou?"

"Director FitzMaugham shared very little information with his assistants, Dr. Lamarre. The suddenness of my elevation to this post gave me little time to explore his files. Would you mind filling me in on the background?"

"Of course." Lamarre crossed his legs and squinted myopically across the desk at Walton. "To be brief, Mr. FitzMaugham first heard of my work fourteen years ago. Since that time, he's supported my experiments with private grants of his own, public appropriations whenever possible, and lately with money supplied by Popeek. Naturally, because of the nature of my work I've shunned publicity. I completed my final tests last week, and was to have seen the director yesterday. Butâ€”"

"I know. I was busy going through Mr. FitzMaugham's files when you called yesterday. I didn't have time to see anyone." Walton wished he had checked on this man Lamarre earlier. Apparently it was a private project of FitzMaugham's and of some importance.

"May I ask what this 'work' of yours consists of?"

"Certainly. Mr. FitzMaugham expressed a hope that someday man's life span might be infinitely extended. I'm happy to report that I have developed a simple technique which will provide just that." The little man smiled in self-satisfaction. "In short," he said, "what I have developed, in everyday terms, is immortality, Mr. Walton."

Walton was becoming hardened to astonishment; the further he excavated into the late director's affairs, the less susceptible he was to the visceral reaction of shock.

Still, this stunned him for a moment.

"Did you say you'd perfected this technique?" he asked slowly. "Or that it was still in the planning stage?"

Lamarre tapped the thick, glossy black portfolio. "In here. I've got it all." He seemed ready to burst with self-satisfaction.

Walton leaned back, spread his fingers against the surface of the desk, and wrinkled his forehead. "I've had this job since 1300 on the tenth, Mr. Lamarre. That's exactly two days ago, minus half an hour. And in that time I don't think I've had less than ten major shocks and half a dozen minor ones."

"Sir?"

"What I'm getting at is this: just why did Director FitzMaugham sponsor this project of yours?"

Lamarre looked blank. "Because the director was a great humanitarian, of course. Because he felt that the human life was short, far too short, and he wished his fellow men to enjoy long life. What other reason should there be?"

"I know FitzMaugham was a great man ... I was his secretary for three years." (Though he never said a word about you, Dr. Lamarre, Walton thought.) "But to develop immortality at this stage of man's existence...." Walton shook his head. "Tell me about your work, Dr. Lamarre."

"It's difficult to sum up readily. I've fought degeneration of the body on the cellular level, and my tests show a successful outcome. Phagocyte stimulation combined withâ€”the data's all here, Mr. Walton. I needn't run through it for you."

He began to hunt in the portfolio, fumbling for something. After a moment he extracted a folded quarto sheet, spread it out, and nudged it across the desk toward Walton.

The director glanced at the sheet; it was covered with chemical equations. "Spare me the technical details, Dr. Lamarre. Have you tested your treatment yet?"

"With the only test possible, the test of time. There are insects in my laboratories that have lived five years or moreâ€”veritable Methuselahs of their genera. Immortality is not something one can test in less than infinite time. But beneath the microscope, one can see the cells regenerating, one can see decay combated...."

Walton took a deep breath. "Are you aware, Dr. Lamarre, that for the benefit of humanity I really should have you shot at once?"

"What?"

Walton nearly burst out laughing; the man looked outrageously funny with that look of shocked incomprehension on his face. "Do you understand what immortality would do to Earth?" he asked. "With no other planet of the solar system habitable by man, and none of the stars within reach? Within a generation we'd be living ten to the square inch. We'dâ€”"

"Director FitzMaugham was aware of these things," Lamarre interrupted sharply. "He had no intention of administering my discovery wholesale to the populace. What's more, he was fully confident that a faster-than-light space drive would soon let us reach the planets, and that the terraforming engineers would succeed with their work on Venus."

"Those two factors are still unknowns in the equation," Walton said. "Neither has succeeded, as of now. And we can't possibly let word of your discovery get out until there are avenues to handle the overflow of population already on hand."

"So you proposeâ€”"

"To confiscate the notes you have with you, and to insist that you remain silent about this serum of yours until I give you permission to announce it."

"And if I refuse?"

Walton spread his hands. "Dr. Lamarre, I'm a reasonable man trying to do a very hard job. You're a scientistâ€”and a sane one, I hope. I'd appreciate your cooperation. Bear with me a few weeks, and then perhaps the situation will change."

Awkward silence followed. Finally Lamarre said, "Very well. If you'll return my notes, I promise to keep silent until you give me permission to speak."

"That won't be enough. I'll need to keep the notes."

Lamarre sighed. "If you insist," he said.

When he was again alone, Walton stored the thick portfolio in a file drawer and stared at it quizzically.

FitzMaugham, he thought,you were incredible!

Lamarre's immortality serum, or whatever it was, was deadly. Whether it actually worked or not was irrelevant. If word ever escaped that an immortality drug existed, there would be rioting and death on a vast scale.

FitzMaugham had certainly seen that, and yet he had sublimely underwritten development of the serum, knowing that if terraforming and the ultradrive project should fail, Lamarre's project represented a major threat to civilization.

Well, Lamarre had knuckled under to Walton willingly enough. The problem now was to contact Lang on Venus and find out what was happening up there....

"Mr. Walton," said the annunciator. "There's a coded message arriving for Director FitzMaugham."

"Where from?"

"From space, sir. They say they have news, but they won't give it to anyone but Mr. FitzMaugham."

Walton cursed. "Where is this message being received?"

"Floor twenty-three, sir. Communications."

"Tell them I'll be right down," Walton snapped.

He caught a lift tube and arrived on the twenty-third floor moments later. No sooner had the tube door opened than he sprang out, dodging around a pair of startled technicians, and sprinted down the corridor toward communications.

Here throbbed the network that held the branches of Popeek together. From here the screens were powered, the annunciators were linked, the phones connected.

Walton pushed open a door markedCommunications Centraland confronted four busy engineers who were crowded around a complex receiving mechanism.

"Where's that space message?" he demanded of the sallow young engineer who approached him.

"Still coming in, sir. They're repeating it over and over. We're triangulating their position now. Somewhere near the orbit of Pluto, Mr. Walton."

"Devil with that. Where's the message?"

Someone handed him a slip of paper. It said,Calling Earth. Urgent call, top urgency, crash urgency. Will communicate only with D. F. FitzMaugham.

"This all it is?" Walton asked. "No signature, no ship name?"

"That's right, Mr. Walton."

"Okay. Find them in a hurry and send them a return message. Tell them FitzMaugham's dead and I'm his successor. Mention me by name."

"Yes, sir."

He stamped impatiently around the lab while they set to work beaming the message into the void. Space communication was a field that dazzled and bewildered Walton, and he watched in awe as they swung into operation.

Time passed. "You know of any ships supposed to be in that sector?" he asked someone.

"No, sir. We weren't expecting any calls except from Lang on Venusâ€”" The technician gasped, realizing he had made a slip, and turned pale.

"That's all right," Walton assured him. "I'm the director, remember? I know all about Lang."

"Of course, sir."

"Here's a reply, sir," another of the nameless, faceless technicians said. Walton scanned it.

It read,Hello Walton. Request further identification before we report. McL.

A little shudder of satisfaction shook Walton at the sight of the initialedMcL.at the end of the message. That could mean only McLeodâ€”andthatcould mean only one thing: the experimental starship had returned!

Walton realized depressedly that this probably implied that they hadn't found any Earth-type worlds among the stars. McLeod's note to FitzMaugham had said they would search for a year, and would return home at the end of that time if they had no success. And just about a year had elapsed.

He said, "Send this return message: McLeod, Nairobi, X-72. Congratulations! Walton."

The technician vanished again, leaving Walton alone. He gazed moodily at the complex maze of equipment all around him, listened to the steadytick-tickof the communication devices, strained his ears to pick up fragments of conversation from the men.

After what seemed like an hour, the technician returned. "There's a message coming through now, sir. We're decoding it as fast as we can."

"Make it snappy," Walton said. His watch read 1429. Only twenty minutes had passed since he had gone down there.

A grimy sheet of paper was thrust under his nose. He read it:

Hello Walton, this is McLeod. Happy to report that experimental ship X-72 is returning home with all hands in good shape, after a remarkable one-year cruise of the galaxy. I feel like Ulysses returning to Ithaca, except we didn't have such a hard time of it.I imagine you'll be interested in this: we found a perfectly lovely and livable world in the Procyon system. No intelligent life at all, and incredibly fine climate. Pity old FitzMaugham couldn't have lived to hear about it. Be seeing you soon. McLeod.

I imagine you'll be interested in this: we found a perfectly lovely and livable world in the Procyon system. No intelligent life at all, and incredibly fine climate. Pity old FitzMaugham couldn't have lived to hear about it. Be seeing you soon. McLeod.

Walton's hands were still shaking as he pressed the actuator that would let him back into his office. He would have to call another meeting of the section chiefs again, to discuss the best method of presenting this exciting news to the world.

For one thing, they would have to explain away FitzMaugham's failure to reveal that the X-72 had been sent out over a year ago. That could be easily handled.

Then, there would have to be a careful build-up: descriptions of the new world, profiles of the heroes who had found it, etcetera. Someone was going to have to work out a plan for emigration ... unless the resourceful FitzMaugham had already drawn up such a plan and stowed it in Files for just this anticipated day.

And then, perhaps Lamarre could be called back now, and allowed to release his discovery. Plans buzzed in Walton's mind: in the event that people proved reluctant to leave Earth and conquer an unknown world, no matter how tempting the climate, it might be feasible to dangle immortality before themâ€”to restrict Lamarre's treatment to volunteer colonists, or something along that line. There was plenty of time to figure that out, Walton thought.

He stepped into his office and locked the door behind him. A glow of pleasure surrounded him; for once it seemed that things were heading in the right direction. He was happy, in a way, that FitzMaugham was no longer in charge. Now, with mankind on the threshold ofâ€”

Walton blinked.Did I leave that file drawer open when I left the office?he wondered. He was usually more cautious than that.

The file was definitely open now, as were the two cabinets adjoining it. Numbly he swung the cabinet doors wider, peered into the shadows, groped inside.

The drawers containing the documents pertaining to terraforming and to McLeod's space drive seemed intact. But the cabinet in which Walton had placed Lamarre's portfolioâ€”that cabinet was totally empty!

Someone's been in here, he thought angrily. And then the anger changed to agony as he remembered what had been in Lamarre's portfolio, and what would happen if that formula were loosed indiscriminately in the world.

The odd part of it, Walton thought, was that there was absolutely nothing he could do.

He could call Sellors and give him a roasting for not guarding his office properly, but that wouldn't restore the missing portfolio.

He could send out a general alarm, and thereby let the world know that there was such a thing as Lamarre's formula. That would be catastrophic.

Walton slammed the cabinet shut and spun the lock. Then, heavily, he dropped into his chair and rested his head in his arms. All the jubilation of a few moments before had suddenly melted into dull apprehension.

Suspects? Just twoâ€”Lamarre, and Fred. Lamarre because he was obvious; Fred because he was likely to do anything to hurt his brother.

"Give me Sellors in security," Walton said quietly.

Sellors' bland face appeared on the screen. He blinked at the sight of Walton, causing Walton to wonder just how ghastly his own appearance was; even with the executive filter touching up the transmitted image, sprucing him up and falsifying him for the public benefit, he probably looked dreadful.

"Sellors, I want you to send out a general order for a Dr. Lamarre. You'll find his appearance recorded on the entrance tapes for today; he came to see me earlier. The first name isâ€”ahâ€”Elliot. T. Elliot Lamarre, gerontologist. I don't know where he lives."

"What should I do when I find him, sir?"

"Bring him here at once. And if you catch him at home, slap a seal on his door. He may be in possession of some very important secret documents."

"Yes, sir."

"And get hold of the doorsmith who repaired my office door; I want the lock calibration changed at once."

"Certainly, sir."

The screen faded. Walton turned back to his desk and busied himself in meaningless paper work, trying to keep himself from thinking.

A few moments later the screen brightened again. It was Fred.

Walton stared coldly at his brother's image. "Well?"

Fred chuckled. "Why so pale and wan, dear brother? Disappointed in love?"

"What do you want?"

"An audience with His Highness the Interim Director, if it please His Grace." Fred grinned unpleasantly. "A private, audience, if you please, m'lord."

"Very well. Come on up here."

Fred shook his head. "Sorry, no go. There are too many tricky spy pickups in that office of yours. Let's meet elsewhere, shall we?"

"Where?"

"That club you belong to. The Bronze Room."

Walton sputtered. "But I can't leave the building now! There's no one whoâ€”"

"Now," Fred interrupted. "The Bronze Room. It's in the San Isidro, isn't it? Top of Neville Prospect?"

"All right," said Walton resignedly. "There's a doorsmith coming up here to do some work. Give me a minute to cancel the assignment and I'll meet you downstairs."

"You leave now," Fred said. "I'll arrive five minutes after you. And you won't need to cancel anything.Iwas the doorsmith."

Neville Prospect was the most fashionable avenue in all of New York City, a wide strip of ferroconcrete running up the West Side between Eleventh Avenue and the West Side Drive from Fortieth to Fiftieth Street. It was bordered on both sides by looming apartment buildings in which a man of wealth might have as many as four or five rooms to his suite; and at the very head of the Prospect, facing down-town, was the mighty San Isidro, a buttressed fortress of gleaming metal and stone whose mighty, beryllium-steel supports swept out in a massive arc five hundred feet in either direction.

On the hundred fiftieth floor of the San Isidro was the exclusive Bronze Room, from whose quartz windows might be seen all the sprawling busyness of Manhattan and the close-packed confusion of New Jersey just across the river.

The jetcopter delivered Walton to the landing-stage of the Bronze Room; he tipped the man too much and stepped within. A door of dull bronze confronted him. He touched his key to the signet plate; the door pivoted noiselessly inward, admitting him.

The color scheme today was gray: gray light streamed from the luminescent walls, gray carpets lay underfoot, gray tables with gray dishes were visible in the murky distance. A gray-clad waiter, hardly more than four feet tall, sidled up to Walton.

"Good to see you again, sir," he murmured. "You have not been here of late."

"No," Walton said. "I've been busy."

"A terrible tragedy, the death of Mr. FitzMaugham. He was one of our most esteemed members. Will you have your usual room today, sir?"

Walton shook his head. "I'm entertaining a guestâ€”my brother, Fred. We'll need a compartment for two. He'll identify himself when he arrives."

"Of course. Come with me, please."

The gnome led him through a gray haze to another bronze door, down a corridor lined with antique works of art, through an interior room decorated with glowing lumi-facts of remarkable quality, past a broad quartz window so clean as to be dizzyingly invisible, and up to a narrow door with a bright red signet plate in its center.

"For you, sir."

Walton touched his key to the signet plate; the door crumpled like a fan. He stepped inside, gravely handed the gnome a bill, and closed the door.

The room was tastefully furnished, again in gray; the Bronze Room was always uniformly monochromatic, though the hue varied with the day and with the mood of the city. Walton had long speculated on what the club precincts would be like were the electronic magic disconnected.

Actually, he knew, none of the Bronze Room's appurtenances had any color except when the hand in the control room threw the switch. The club held many secrets. It was FitzMaugham who had brought about Walton's admission to the club, and Walton had been deeply grateful.

He was in a room just comfortably large enough for two, with a single bright window facing the Hudson, a small onyx table, a tiny screen tastefully set in the wall, and a bar. He dialed himself a filtered rum, his favorite drink. The dark, cloudy liquid came pouring instantly from the spigot.

The screen suddenly flashed a wave of green, breaking the ubiquitous grayness. The green gave way to the bald head and scowling face of Kroll, the Bronze Room's door-man.

"Sir, there is a man outside who claims to be your brother. He alleges he has an appointment with you here."

"That's right, Kroll; send him in. Fulks will bring him to my room."

"Just one moment, sir. First it is needful to verify." Kroll's face vanished and Fred's appeared.

"Is this the man?" Kroll's voice asked.

"Yes," Walton said. "You can send my brother in."

Fred seemed a little dazed by the opulence. He sat gingerly on the edge of the foamweb couch, obviously attempting to appear blasÃ© and painfully conscious of his failure to do so.

"This is quite a place," he said finally.

Walton smiled. "A little on the palatial side for my tastes. I don't come here often. The transition hurts too much when I go back outside."

"FitzMaugham got you in here, didn't he?"

Walton nodded.

"I thought so," Fred said. "Well, maybe someday soon I'll be a member too. Then we can meet here more often. We don't see enough of each other, you know."

"Dial yourself a drink," Walton said. "Then tell me what's on your mindâ€”or were you just angling to get an invite up here?"

"It was more than that. But let me get a drink before we begin."

Fred dialed a Weesuer, heavy on the absinthe, and took a few sampling sips before wheeling around to face Walton. He said, "One of the minor talents I acquired in the course of my wanderings was doorsmithing. It's really not very difficult to learn, for a man who applies himself."

"You were the one who repaired my office door?"

Fred smirked. "I was. I wore a mask, of course, and my uniform was borrowed. Masks are very handy things. They make them most convincingly, nowadays. As, for instance, the one worn by the man who posed as Ludwig."

"What do you know aboutâ€”"

"Nothing.And that's the flat truth, Roy. I didn't kill FitzMaugham, and I don't know who did." He drained his drink and dialed another. "No, the old man's death is as much of a mystery to me as it is to you. But I have to thank you for wrecking the door so completely when you blasted your way in. It gave me a chance to make some repairs when I most wanted to."

Walton held himself very carefully in check. He knew exactly what Fred was going to say in the next few minutes, but he refused to let himself precipitate the conversation.

With studied care he rose, dialed another filtered rum for himself, and gently slid the initiator switch on the electroluminescent kaleidoscope embedded in the rear wall.

A pattern of lights sprang into beingâ€”yellow, pale rose, blue, soft green. They wove together, intertwined, sprang apart into a sharp hexagon, broke into a scatter-pattern, melted, seemed to fall to the carpet in bright flakes.

"Shut that thing off!" Fred snapped suddenly. "Come on! Shut it!Shut it!"

Walton swung around. His brother was leaning forward intently, eyes clamped tight shut. "Is it off?" Fred asked. "Tell me!"

Shrugging, Walton canceled the signal and the lights faded. "You can open your eyes, now. It's off."

Cautiously Fred opened his eyes. "None of your fancy tricks, Roy!"

"Trick?" Walton asked innocently. "What trick? Simple decoration, that's allâ€”and quite lovely, too. Just like the kaleidowhirls you've seen on video."

Fred shook his head. "It's not the same thing. How do I know it's not some sort of hypnoscreen? How do I know what those lights can do?"

Walton realized his brother was unfamiliar with wall kaleidoscopes. "It's perfectly harmless," he said. "But if you don't want it on, we can do without it."

"Good. That's the way I like it."

Walton observed that Fred's cool confidence seemed somewhat shaken. His brother had made a tactical error in insisting on holding their interview here, where Walton had so much the upper hand.

"May I ask again why you wanted to see me?" Walton said.

"There are those people," Fred said slowly, "who oppose the entire principle of population equalization."

"I'm aware of that. Some of them are members of this very club."

"Exactly. Some of them are. The ones I mean are the gentry, those still lucky enough to cling to land and home. The squire with a hundred acres in the Matto Grosso; the wealthy landowner of Liberia; the gentleman who controls the rubber output of one of the lesser Indonesian islands. These people, Roy, are unhappy over equalization. They know that sooner or later you and your Bureau will find out about them and will equalize them ... say, by installing a hundred Chinese on a private estate, or by using a private river for a nuclear turbine. You'll have to admit that their dislike of equalization is understandable."

"Everyone's dislike of equalization is understandable," Walton said. "I dislike it myself. You got your evidence of that two days ago. No one likes to give up special privileges."

"You see my point, then. There are perhaps a hundred of these men in close contact with each otherâ€”"

"What!"

"Ah, yes," Fred said. "A league. A conspiracy, it might almost be called. Very, very shady doings."

"Yes."

"I work for them," Fred said.

Walton let that soak in. "You're an employee of Popeek," he said. "Are you inferring that you're both an employee of Popeek and an employee of a group that seeks to undermine Popeek?"

Fred grinned proudly. "That's the position on the nose. It calls for remarkable compartmentalization of mind. I think I manage nicely."

Incredulously Walton said, "How long has this been going on?"

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