It couldn't have been three minutes since Phil's capture, yet it seemed that he had been listening to Mr. Billig for years. He was sitting apprehensively on a stool in a long low room to which he had been conducted by two men in sober sports togs—obviously a cut above company guards—whom Mr. Billig addressed as Harris and Hayes. Along one of the long sides of the room were windows and a doorway leading onto a balcony of some sort, beyond which yawned perplexing darkness. Harris and Hayes stood behind Phil while Billig paced in front of him.
Just now the voice that was like a tape played at triple speed, but not so high-pitched, was saying, "Have you ever pictured $10,000,000 concretely? Think of it this way: a yacht on the Amazon, bubble-dome cabin, your private copter, a blonde, a brunette, and a red-head, yourself absolute monarch of a very interesting microcosm. Doesn't it appeal to you?"
"But I didn't take the green cat," Phil replied quickly—Billig's speed was catching. "I don't know where it is."
"What do you want then?" Billig demanded. "Or like most people, are you afraid to say? Tell me, I've heard everything."
Phil opened his mouth, thought of Lucky, and said nothing.
"Hit him, Harris," Billig ordered, "and don't be all day about it!"
Pain bounced like a steel ball back and forth inside Phil's skull at Harris' dispassionate swipes. At the last one Phil felt his head go numb and his thoughts glassy. Harris' bank cashier face swam out of sight, to be replaced by Billig's smooth mask with its lurking host of wrinkles.
Billig produced the gun he'd been carrying when Phil was caught. He informed Phil, "I propose to cut your limbs off, one by one. The beam burns, which keeps you from bleeding too fast."
All Phil's glazed mind could think was how ludicrous the word "limb" was. He wondered if Billig considered him a tree. Billig's head persisted in circling Phil like a small planet, though that may only have been the room swimming. Suddenly Phil stuck out an arm.
"All right," he informed Billig, "begin with this. Don't hurt the leaves."
Billig lowered the gun. "You hit him too hard," he told Harris, "or else he likes it. There are other kinds of pain. Where's Brimstine? I told him he had only two minutes to find Jack. Hayes, frisk this man."
Slim fingers rippled through Phil's pockets and tossed Billig commonplace items. When the hand went for his right hand pocket, Phil had a belated memory and made a move to prevent it, but Harris grabbed his arms from behind.
Hayes carefully handed Billig the figurine of Mitzie Romadka in black, off-the-bosom frock.
Billig rattled softly to Hayes, "I'd swear this is Mary what's-her-name's work—the girl who used to do strip-tease dolls for us. She always had a touch and now it's got better." He fingered the doll delicately, studying the reactions in Phil's face. "Do you want her?" he asked suddenly. "Would it pain you to see her hurt?" He made as if to wring the doll's head off, then quickly set it on a table beside him and threw up his hands. "WhereisBrimstine!"
"Here," the latter announced, hulking into the room like a bear in a great hurry. "I've located Jack. And we've caught the girl the three hep-jerks blabbed about. She lined herself up with the dress-display robots and might have passed herself off as one, but she sneezed."
Mitzie was marched into the room, her hands twisted behind her by Dora, whose face wore a disdainful smile that now seemed spiced with cruelty. The analyst's daughter had lost her evening cape and her long dark hair hung half over one eye. She held her chin up, as one who has struggled, found it no use, yet not really submitted. She saw Phil and looked away from him proudly, as if her being caught had wiped out the problem into which he had plunged her.
"Ah, the original," Billig observed, looking up from the figurine, which he deftly pocketed. "Darling," he said, walking toward Mitzie, "would you care to be featured in coast-to-coast living ads, or sit for a line of ultra deluxe dress-display robots; would you like to be a handie star, ambassadress to Brazil, or become my girl Friday and be in on everything interesting that goes on in the world; would you take $10,000,000? Just tell us what you've done with the green cat."
Mitzie answered the five-second barrage with a shrug of her upper lip. "Darling, I'm serious," Billig assured her. "This is a lifetime opportunity and you're a very nice girl." And he made as if to caress her shoulder affectionately, but instead whipped around to catch Phil's reaction.
Jack Jones ran into the room and whisked to a stop. He glanced at Phil as if he didn't know him and then saluted Billig sardonically.
"What are you standing around for?" Billig demanded. "Get to work. Hayes, I want those three hep-jerks in here."
Phil tried to squirm away from Harris' seemingly casual grip. And then Jack's fingers were digging at nerves and pain was not a steel ball but a fiery plant's red hot roots and million rootlets finding an instant way through every crevice between the cells of his body. He heard himself squealing, "Romadka! Romadka!" The pain lessened and he babbled swiftly, "Dr. Romadka stole the cat. I saw him coming out of the room where the cage is, carrying his black bag. The cat must have been inside."
"Who's this Romadka?" Billig whipped at him.
"An analyst," Phil gasped weakly. He nodded at Jack Jones. "He can tell you about him."
"I never heard of the man," Jack asserted instantly.
"You did," Phil mumbled desperately. "You saw how he was after me tonight. You must have guessed he was after the green cat."
Jack shook his head curtly. "He's making it up," he assured Billig.
Across the room Brimstine put down a phone and called to Billig, "Benson says Greeley's acting cool as they come, still confident the raid will start when he said."
"Well, don't freeze!" Billig rapped exasperatedly at Jack. "Get back to work on him."
As the small terrible hands approached, Phil looked imploringly at Mitzie.
"Dr. Anton Romadka is my father," she said coldly, "reputed to be a great psychoanalyst. This hysteric you're wasting time on is one of his patients."
"Darling, why didn't you say so before?" Billig asked her joyfully. "Dora, let go of her wrists at once!" The violet blonde complied with a cynical hop of her slim eyebrows.
"Darling, it escaped my mind she was still doing that, I'm sorry," Billig assured Mitzie as he glided towards her, his feet moving almost as glibly as his tongue. "Darling, it's very clear to me now: this hysteric, as you accurately describe him, stole the cat on your father's orders and handed it to your father, whom I can see you don't like and who probably forced you to come along. Now just tell us where your father is, or where you think he is, darling, and you'll have, not one, but all of those things I mentioned to you a half-minute back."
"My father hasn't skill enough to burgle a banana-vending robot," Mitzie snapped at him. "You're as stupid and conceited and unbalanced as all men, only faster. You think because something clever has been done, a man must have done it. My father's a rotten analyst, but you could use a few sessions with him."
"Darling, we're not going to get anywhere if you talk that way," Billig assured her laughingly. "Realize it, darling, you're among friends and well-wishers." And he took her arm with a paternal amiability.
Mitzie's right hand was a blurred arc and Billig sashayed back with four bright red lines on his left cheek.
"Grab her, Dora!" Billig ordered. The violet blonde willingly wrapped her arms around Mitzie's waist and elbows. Mitzie avoided noticing it. Meanwhile, Billig was rapid firing, "I assumed she was disarmed, Brimstine. Get those claws off her." Brimstine grabbed Mitzie's right hand around the knuckles with one of his big paws and began to jerk off the needle-fanged thimbles. Billig waved off Harris, who had let go Phil to offer to minister to his boss's dripping cheek.
Billig paced back toward Mitzie. "Darling," he said, and for once the words came slow, "you're really wonderful, you're just the sort of charming vixen the sadisto-hackers dream up to torture the hero. But tonight I'm afraid you're going to have to reverse roles."
Phil's mysterious inward tormentor who had made him go up against Moe Brimstine at the Akeleys', now got to work again and despite the weakness of his pain-threaded muscles, forced him to start a staggering rush at Billig, meanwhile calling out, "Don't you touch her!"
Naturally Jack tripped him, caught him by the collar almost before he'd painfully smashed into the flooring, and slammed him back onto the stool.
At that moment, Hayes and four or five other men, the latter in the company guard costume of the half-headless man, marched a banged up Carstairs, Llewellyn and Buck into the far end of the room. Carstairs, who now had blood as well as hair trailing down his forehead, looked steadily at Mitzie.
"Thank you for this, Mitz," he said rather quietly.
Llewellyn and Buck each nodded his head.
"You take it for granted I skunked on you?" Mitzie asked. None of the three acted as if they'd heard the question.
Phil, watching Billig, noted a very slight shiver, smile, and widening of the eyes, although the boss man of Fun Incorporated wasn't looking at anything in particular.
"Take those boys down to the company garage," Billig called to Hayes, keeping his slashed cheek turned away. "I'll phone you orders about them in fifteen seconds." Then, as Hayes and the guards jumped to obey, Billig said to Mitzie in a voice just loud enough to reach Carstairs, "Thanks again, darling. That was a nice job."
Carstairs had time to give her one last deadly look before he was hurried out with the others.
"Come on, everybody," Billig said gayly, "we're going to have a little show. Darling, would you like to take my arm? I've quite forgotten that love tap. If you promise to be a good girl, I'll tell Dora to let go of you." Mitzie made no reply but Dora unwrapped her arms with lazy reluctance. "Come on, darling," Billig entreated, starting for the balcony. Mitzie didn't look at him, but she walked at his side. He didn't try to touch her. They moved fast. Billig looked back over his shoulder.
"Hurry up, everybody," he ordered exasperatedly. "Stop acting slow-motion!"
Brimstine, Dora and Harris quickly fell in behind them. Jack brought up the rear with Phil.
"I had to do that," Jack whispered in Phil's ear. "I couldn't fake it and trust you to fake reactions well enough to fool Billig. But for God's sake, don't spill anything more about Romadka. I know you're Juno's lover. Well, Romadka made me bring him here. His friends are at the house. They'll kill Mary and Sacheverell—Juno and Cookie, too—if he gets caught."
As Phil was trying to formulate some sort of answer to this, they followed the others onto the balcony. Its railing was split by a gateway, from which a metal stairway projected down and out into the darkness, its first dozen treads glimmering faintly.
Without warning Mitzie left Billig and darted down the stairs, taking them three at a time. Harris lunged after her, but Billig stopped him with a gesture. "She's doing what I want," he explained softly, "and five times faster than if you dragged her. Won't you ever understand it's speed I need?"
Brimstine was closely watching Mitzie, who was now no more than a glimmering moth flitting through a duller darkness. "She can't see the steps any more," he said with professional admiration. "That girl's good."
Billig shrugged and stepped to a control panel in the railing. He picked up a phone, then paused thoughtfully as if he were making sure it was a full fifteen seconds since he had spoken to Hayes and not a mere twelve or thirteen.
"Hayes?" Billig said, and then whispered rapidly. He paused for a moment, writhing his eyebrows, as though Hayes were being unbelievably slow in catching on. "Of course, of course!"
Then Billig touched a button and blinding light transformed the darkness into a huge, empty, gray garage, its floor some thirty feet below the balcony. There were all sorts of lines and signs indicating which way cars should move and park, only there weren't any cars. There were also a dozen open gateways in the gray walls, eight of them marked "Exit." The silvery stairs down which Mitzie had flown touched the center point of the garage's vast floor. A few paces away from that, Mitzie stood tiny and stock-still, as if blinded by the light.
Somewhere, far off, an electric motor was revving up.
"Ladies and gentlemen," Billig said to Dora, Brimstine, Harris, and Jack, but mostly to Phil, "this is the place where people park their cars while they watch the wrestling bouts. But now the wrestling's over and the cars are gone." He delicately touched his cheek, where the four furrows had almost stopped bleeding. "So now we can have the place for our little show. Mr. Gish, I must have the green cat. I believe you value that girl's beauty and life—"
But Phil, whose arms were gripped hard by Jack from behind, hardly heard him he was watching Mitzie so intently. She seemed to come out of her daze suddenly, at any rate she darted towards the nearest open gateway. Dark, close bars shot down and blocked it, as they did all the other gateways Phil could see. He looked at Billig and saw his dark fingers lifting from buttons. He looked back at Mitzie and saw her hesitate and then run back toward the silvery stairs. Billig touched another button and the stairs retracted, telescoping upward. Mitzie stood on the gray floor all alone.
The revving of the unseen motor grew louder. Billig leaned over the guard wall and looked thoughtfully at Mitzie, as if he were a cleverer Caligula, a more practical Nero. Then he turned back, and took the figurine of Mitzie out of his pocket, and spoke to Phil.
"Mr. Gish," he said, "I seriously want to know where the green cat is, or where your Dr. Romadka has taken it. Otherwise, how would you like this to happen to her down there?" And he jerked off a leg of the figurine. Phil could see the twin ragged cones of wax where the leg had parted. "Or this?" Billig jerked off an arm. "Or this, or this?"
At that moment an open topped black jeep came accelerating out from under the balcony. Phil saw there were three people in it, though for a moment he couldn't tell who. But Mitzie darted toward the car, calling out excitedly, "Carstairs!" The car came on. "You're wonderful!" Mitzie called. But then suddenly the car came forward faster and straight toward her, and she had to dive out of the way to keep from being hit.
The car started to swing around in a great loop. Mitzie picked herself up from the harsh floor.
"Orthis!" Billig hissed at Phil, and he ripped the figurine apart at the waist, while one thumb made a smashed flatness of the tiny breasts. "Now please tell me where's this Dr. Romadka."
"I don't know!" Phil yelled, struggling to get away from Jack, who maddeningly whispered in his ear, "That's right, don't spill a word."
"I'll remind you," Billig continued swiftly, taking something else from under his coat, "that it's much worse for her—or for anyone—to be hurt by people she idolizes than by people she hates. So tell me about the green cat. Look here, this is an ortho. I can cut down that car any moment you tell me."
But Phil, like all the others, was watching Mitzie. Having picked herself up, she didn't move. She simply stayed there, facing the oncoming car. When it was so close that for an instant Phil saw Mitzie's dark head against its chrome muzzle, it veered and missed her by a breath. Mitzie stood motionless as a statue, though her short skirt whipped out.
Then she turned at the waist and watched the retreating jeep.
"Chicken!" she jeered, loudly.
For an instant everyone on the balcony was very still. Then there was a dull banging, and Phil realized that Moe Brimstine was pounding the railing, and saying, "I tell you, that girl's good."
"Yes, she is," Billig buzzed at him curtly. Brimstine stopped his applause, looking ashamed.
"But," Billig continued smoothly, turning to Phil, "they're bound to get her, sooner or later, unless...." And he wiggled the large black gun he held in his small hand. "So you better talk."
The jeep swung round under the balcony in a much tighter loop and headed back, revving screamingly. Mitzie faced it, grinning, hands as light on her hips as before. Then, just as—from Phil's point of view—it had swallowed her up to the waist, she sprang to one side. Phil felt her foot must have brushed the tire. The jeep slammed through the air where she'd been.
"Dumb-bell!" Mitzie screamed.
Brimstine lifted his clenched fists above the railing, glanced at Billig, and with an effort dropped them to his sides. Phil realized his arms were numb, Jack was gripping them so tightly. Beyond Billig, Harris and Dora leaned forward over the guard rail, as abstracted as gamblers.
But Billig himself, though presumably a gambler, was neither still nor intent. "Look, Mr. Gish," he said rapidly, "I don't want to see this girl smashed myself, and Brimstine here is figuring on starring her in a knife throwing or dodge-the-car act. This is probably the last chance you have to save her. Where's Romadka? Where's the cat?"
Phil didn't even look at him.
A phone-light began to blink on the control panel. Billig ignored it. "Where's the cat?" he repeated.
But all Phil could think, as the black jeep turned very tightly by the far wall and as Mitzie pivoted to face it—all he could think was that this had happened before, in ancient Crete, where girls as slim waisted and dark haired as Mitzie had faced the black, charging bull and dodged it or vaulted or somersaulted over its cruel horns, their breasts as bare as Mitzie's, opposing the most tender thing in the world to the most terrible.
The phone-light continued to blink.
The jeep finished its tight turn, Llewellyn and Buck leaning out to balance it like a sailboat while Carstairs stuck steady as death behind the wheel. Then it shrieked toward Mitzie. She waited until it was almost as close as the time before, then sprang toward the left. Quickly, almost as if it were tied to her thoughts, the jeep veered toward the left, too. But Mitzie's feet, slamming down after that first jump, didn't carry her farther, but reversed her direction, carrying her back to the spot she'd first occupied.
Again the jeep slammed past her.
"Double dumb-bell!" Mitzie howled.
The jeep, screaming into another tight turn, vanished under the balcony. There was a grating crash, then a sick, rasping sound, as if the jeep had sideswiped the wall but was still going.
At the same moment a dark shouldered but pink topped figure walked out rapidly from under the balcony. It was carrying a black bag. It stopped, leaned over, set the black bag on the floor, and opened it.
The black jeep came out from under the balcony, limpingly but gaining speed.
Something green and small stuck its head out of the black bag and looked toward the jeep.
The jeep didn't stop, but it slowed, and Carstairs, Llewellyn and Buck tumbled out and sprinted away from the green head as if from horror itself.
The jeep continued very slowly and haltingly toward Mitzie, like a blinded, badly injured animal.
The pink topped figure walked rapidly and mechanically back under the balcony, as if it didn't understand the why of what it had been doing. Belatedly, Phil realized it must be Dr. Romadka.
The phone-light went on blinking.
The green cat leaped out of the black bag and lightly settled itself beside it.
"Stun it!" Billig knifed at Brimstine and Harris.
The green cat twisted its neck and looked up curiously.
Brimstine and Harris looked at Billig and each took a step and peered down over the railing and stopped stock-still. Behind them Dora was as pale and quiet as a ghost.
And then Phil felt it too—the same invisible golden wave of amiability and understanding as had quieted the quarrelers at the Akeleys', but now in a flood, a spring tide.
"Stun that thing down there!" Billig demanded. The hidden wrinkles were showing themselves twitchingly on his face and he was backing away from the railing as if he couldn't bear the golden wave.
Brimstine started to reach inside his coat, but instead picked up the phone beside the blinking light. After a moment he said quite casually, "The raid's begun, just as Greeley told us it would. The FBL are coming in everywhere."
"Stun it, I tell you! Get it somehow; it can save us," Billig ordered, frantically fanning the air in front of his face as if to beat off the golden wave.
Harris just looked at him. Brimstine slowly and puzzledly shook his head.
Billig gave a shuddering gasp and clapped his free hand over his mouth and nostrils, as if the golden wave were something breathed in with the air, and fought his way to the railing. With his other hand he raised the big gun until it was high above his shoulder.
A needle of blue light jutted from either end of the big gun and made smoking trenches in the opposite wall of the garage and the wall behind them. Then Billig brought the gun steadily downward, lengthening the forward and rearward trenches. The air smelled acid, as if laced with ozone. The blue beam dimmed the bright lights and made everything shadowy.
The green cat still looked up at Billig curiously. Billig didn't look straight back at it. The little muscles in his jaw and temple bulged around the hand clamping shut his mouth and nose.
The forward trench dug itself across the wall and floor, swung drunkenly past Mitzie and the doddering jeep, got ten feet from the green cat and hesitated. It swung this way and that, as if it had encountered a magic circle it couldn't pierce—and stopped.
Jack murmured, "Sash was right."
Billig gave a great gasp and began to squeal.
The blue beams winked out. The gun clanked on the floor. The squeal changed to a clucking and Billig swayed. Jack jumped to catch him.
Phil sprang forward and his fingers touched buttons he'd seen Billig touch. The bars in the garage gateways shot up. Phil was on the telescoped stairs almost before they began to move, and rode them to the ground through layers of stinging ozone and golden harmony. The jeep had trembled to a stop just short of Mitzie, who stared at it groggily, her whole figure slack, as if a puff of wind could have felled her.
When the stairs touched the floor, momentum carried Phil forward a half dozen steps but he kept his footing and circled back at a run. When he plunged into the area between the green cat and the spot where the jeep had been abandoned, he felt a shiver of sudden and extreme terror, which even as he felt it, began to fade.
But he hardly had time to ask himself whether that was what had stampeded Carstairs and the rest, for the next instant he was calling, "Lucky!" and Lucky was saying "Prrt!" and he was scooping up the unresisting cat, his fingers trembling as they touched the green fur, and darting back toward Mitzie and the jeep. Her groggy look had now become a dazed smile of triumph and pride.
He grabbed her by the elbow and pulled her toward the jeep. "Get in!" he shouted in her ear. "We're getting out of here. You're driving."
A little life seemed to come back into her as her hands touched the wheel. She kicked the starter as he scrambled in beside her, Lucky gently clutched to his chest. "Which way?" she asked thickly.
"Any exit gateway," he told her.
With a rather wheezy hum, the jeep started toward the nearest gateway. Phil felt a thinning of the golden peace around them, as if, he told himself, Lucky were resting. The jeep, though gaining a little speed, seemed to move as slowly as a school slideway. But looking back, he saw that the group on the balcony was still standing as motionless as dress display dummies with the power off—all except Billig, who was once again moving about rapidly.
"Get them," Phil could barely hear Billig's cracked voice implore, as he darted from one to the other. "Kill them."
The jeep nosed through the high doorway and started up a ramp.
"Dora!" Phil heard Billig yell. "Grab my ortho and kill them."
The effect of the golden wave must be wearing off, Phil thought, for just as the top of the gateway was cutting off his view he saw the violet blonde stoop rapidly behind the guard wall.
The next second a blue beam flashed, and smoke and starry splatter sprayed up just behind the jeep. The beam moved up and encountered the top of the gateway. It notched that, came a little closer to them, and then was stopped by the thickness of the wall. The ramp turned and Phil saw a half dozen men in the Fun Incorporated company guard uniform. Two of them had drawn their guns and the other four hadn't. They seemed to be arguing hurriedly about something. They turned and saw the jeep. The two with guns raised them and the others reached for theirs.
Then Lucky sat up on Phil's lap straight as the statuette of Bast, and Phil felt him let go of another of those great golden invisible waves. Phil could tell the moment it hit the guards from the sudden change in their tough faces. They watched the jeep with awe and incredulous grins as it went past.
Farther on they found themselves approaching an expanse of gray cold light, against which a party of some twenty heavily armed men was partly silhouetted, although they were advancing warily along the walls. They were carrying guns, nets and sprays that could swiftly immobilize men in plastic cocoons, and what looked like bird cages.
They leveled their weapons, but once again and mightier than ever, so mighty it made Phil shiver with understanding, the golden wave rolled forward to engulf them. Once again the jeep glided past astonished, troubled faces that smiled in spite of themselves. As the jeep rolled out into the cool, shadowy dawn, Phil stroked Lucky's soft, springy fur and murmured, "Little peace maker. You even gentled the FBL."
Lucky looked up at him coquettishly and then yawned tremendously and curled up on Phil's lap. The feeling of golden harmony subsided until only a ghost of it lingered.
"I know," Phil said, "you're tired from so much peace making." He suddenly felt extremely tired himself, yet he went on to say, in slurred syllables, "Lucky, I don't care whether you come from Egypt, Russia, or the jungles of the Amazon—you're good for the USA."
The jeep steadily turned corners, putting block after block of the empty, early morning, upper-level streets between it and Fun Incorporated. Phil wondered whether it could be traced by the electric eyes that were said to be at each intersection, but he forgot the question before it became a worry. Lucky was a plump green doughnut on his lap. He felt over-poweringly sleepy and wished he could gently slide into some universe lacking light, sound and gravity.
But before drifting off he glanced at Mitzie. Her face was set in hard, proud, sneering lines, although two tears were jiggling down her cheeks. Phil felt more annoyed than surprised or compassionate. No one, he told himself, had the right to indulge such a mood in Lucky's presence.
He decided that Mitzie needed to have certain truths rubbed in gently. "Our escape is nothing to puff ourselves up over," he said softly. "Lucky did it all. Though I admired your bravery dodging the jeep."
Mitzie didn't look at him, but she thinned her lips.
"The episode of the jeep was instructive," Phil went on, beginning to twist the angelic knife just a little. "It showed you exactly what sort of glorious criminal fellowship you had with those three hep-thugs. But now," he went on, tempering justice with mercy, "you've discovered that your romantic worship of evil isn't worth a fingersnap in the face of true love and understanding. Eh, Mitzie?"
Mitzie let the car jog listlessly to a stop. Phil was dimly aware that they were parking in a bumpy, blind end driveway in a neglected, shrubby square with tall buildings set around. He leaned back, smiling drowsily, his fingers playing with Lucky's springy fur. He was waiting complacently for Mitzie's sobs.
Instead, the seat jounced and the door of the jeep slammed.
He looked around. Mitzie was standing outside the jeep against a shadowy background of tangled shrubbery and misty, silent skyscrapers.
Suddenly she leaned forward toward him, bracing herself against the door with stiff arms. She inhaled gustily and her small, tender breasts lifted in their black satin half cups.
Now, he told himself, it must happen. She must yield, sobbing, to Lucky's power.
"I hate you, Phil," she said intensely. "You want to see me turn to jelly." New tears spurted from the inside corners of her eyes, but her expression grew fiercer. "Carstairs, Llewellyn and Buck may have tried to kill me, but at least they gave me a chance to be something. They allowed me the dignity of being hated. They didn't try to drown me in slop.
"I want glory," she went on in a voice that certainly should have sounded choked except she simply wouldn't permit it. "I want my kind of glory, no matter how cheap and selfish you think it is, because it's the only thing that's shining and brave in a shoddy, cowardly world. I want to spit in the world's eye and then face it, when it comes bleating for revenge, like I faced this jeep."
"I did think you were courageous there," Phil temporized, wondering why the devil Lucky's power, that had softened twenty men at a crack, was so slow in taking effect on a single misguided girl.
"Spare me any praise that's a cover for slop," Mitzie said scathingly. "Oh I know what that Sunday school beast there on your lap can do, and I know what you want to see happen. I have only one thing that's titanium in me, all the rest is stinking mush. You want to see that one thing break. No, worse, you want to see it soften. Well, I'm not going to let that happen." She stood up and took her hands off the door.
Suddenly Phil felt a kind of sleepy worry. He ran his hand over Lucky's fur, then shook him hesitatingly. "Wake up," he said uneasily.
Lucky merely purred. Or perhaps it was a small snore.
"Goodbye for good, Phil," Mitzie said, turning away.
"No, wait," Phil called suddenly, at last hunching groggily forward in his seat. "Don't go yet." He shook Lucky again, almost roughly. "Wake up," he demanded. "Stop her."
The small god hung in his hands like a limp green rag.
Phil put Lucky down on the seat beside him and started to get out of the car. But abruptly a wave of deep melancholy washed over him. He knew that something precious was slipping away from him, but he wasn't sure it was genuinely precious and he didn't know whether he had the right to stop it. Besides his god had failed him and he was still incredibly sleepy.
So he watched Mitzie slipping away from him as irrevocably as time, and did nothing except lift Lucky back on his lap. He watched her stride off along the misty shrubs like a proud and angry nymph, holding her back straight and her head very high, and also, he supposed, those charming and ridiculous breasts with which she insisted on facing the whole world.
For what seemed a long time he watched the dim, empty corner around which she had turned. He was frozen in a hypnotic daze that temporarily served for sleep. Now and then thoughts crossed his mind's dull expanse, but they were shadowy things and did not linger. Once it occurred to him that Lucky might have been unable to hold Mitzie because his earlier exertions had drained his powers; small gods couldn't be expected to exude several great golden waves without suffering some slight after effects.
It occurred to him that at this very moment he must be the object of furious searches by the Federal Bureau of Loyalty, Fun Incorporated's natty thugs, Romadka and his jolly friends, perhaps even good old Carstairs, Llewellyn and Buck. Yet he felt neither fear nor any inclination to form a plan. The dim corner he was watching grew brighter but stayed empty.
Four feet defined themselves in the doughnut-shaped pressure on his lap. Lucky stretched, shook himself, looked up at Phil with the brightest sort of eyes, and said, "Prrrt-prt."
"You're a fine sort of cat," Phil complained grumpily, his own eyes feeling anything but bright. "Going to sleep just when I needed you most."
Lucky disregarded these criticisms. "Prrrrt-prt," he repeated peremptorily.
But now that his hypnotic daze was broken, Phil once again felt over-poweringly sleepy. "I know that mew," he mumbled muzzily at the green blur beyond the shimmering fence of his eyelashes. "You're hungry. Well, I s'pose you deserve a feed after all the wonders you did. But I haven't got any cranberry sauce right now. I'll get you something to eat ... later ... on."
"Prrrt-prt!" Lucky demanded in the outraged tones of an honest workman who finds himself cheated of his pay.
But Phil was beyond reach of any appeal. "G'night," he told Lucky in the kindliest possible way and dropped off.
He dreamed of things far off and strange and ominous, though misty. He dreamed of dark fronded forests and small animals screeching. The screeches grew louder and he fled out of his dream altogether into the jeep parked in the blind end driveway in the little square.
For a moment he seemed to see the ghosts of the dark fronded trees and hear the echo of the dream screeches, but then he realized that the former were the square's unpruned shrubs, while the latter were the squeals and cries of schoolgirls scattering out of a building beyond.
He realized groggily that they must be coming from school—no, from afternoon school, since the sunlight wasn't slanting at all deeply into the square, and that he must have slept here undisturbed all day.
And then, he became aware that his lap and heart were cold and that Lucky was gone.
Phil's first impulse was to jump out of the jeep and hunt around. But the chill in his heart told him Lucky was farther away than that. Besides, the place was a regular jungle and one man could hunt through it forever for anything cat-size.
He did not recognize the square at all, but he guessed from the schoolgirls that he was in an intellectual residential neighborhood. At first he thought the school was one for girls, but then he noticed a few lone boys among the homeward-bound students and decided that most of the families in this area must be deliberately having as many girls as possible. When sex-determination had become possible through centrifuging human sperm to separate the male-producing and female-producing types, most parents decided to have sons, especially for their firstborn. They often told themselves they would have daughters later, but unfortunately small families were the rule. The resulting over-production of males had led to some ineffectual state laws forbidding sex-determination, an unsuccessful attempt at self-regulation by the medical profession, a lot of talk in Congress, and an almost fanatically determined movement among a class of thoughtful people to produce only daughters. This last class, besides seeking to balance the sex ratio, perhaps had in mind the fact or rumor that human parthenogenesis had been achieved. Phil remembered a Sunday afternoon video shock talk:Will Women Born of Virgins Become Our Only Intellectuals?
Other aspects of the neighborhood around the square fitted with his guess. There was an appearance of shabbiness, the skyscrapers were low, advertisements lifeless, traffic was light, there were no hot rods.
He let his gaze roam over the tiers of tiny flats, wondering where Lucky might have gone. As he did so, he turned on the jeep's radio.
"... while Mystery Man Billig, mastermind of Fun Incorporated, is believed to have fled the country. Tonight at 8:30 New Washington Time, President Barnes will address all us American folks, partly to silence the small, syndicate-inspired clamor at the outlawing of male-female wrestling and jukebox burlesque, but more to explain to an amazed citizenry the full reasons behind the charges brought this morning by the federal government against sixty-nine high officials. I predict—and remember this is just my personal libel-free guess, fellow-folks—that the president will reveal that Fun Incorporated has been peddling dream pills, temporary sterility tabs, and I'm as shocked and disgusted as you are, folks, female robots equipped for obscene functioning.
"Now here's an important flash on the cat story. The cats are not carrying an infection and are under no circumstances to be destroyed, whether owned, strayed, or alley. In fact, there's a stiff jail sentence waiting for any person destroying a cat. But all owned cats are to be brought to the nearest security station, while any person sighting a strayed or alley cat is directed to do the same. There's a stiff penalty for not doing the first, a one hundred dollar reward for doing the second. Get busy, kids! Why this sudden federal interest in cats? The National Health Service zips its lips. But your newscaster backs this highly responsible rumor: it has been discovered that a rare strain of cat carries a cancer destroying virus. Wouldn't it be nice, folkses, to know that, once full grown, you would never start to grow again, in any part or place?
"But remember this, dear audiers, and I'll say it to you in Martian: Zip-zap-zup! Meaning: Bring in the cats!
"Now as for this report, folks, that handie-supernova Zelda Zornia, vacationing in Brazil, did a south-of-the-equator handiecast advertising bathing jewelry; let me assure you clean living people...."
Phil cleared his mind, trying to put himself in Lucky's place, to feel the direction in which the cat had wandered off. His head swung doubtfully this way and that, like a compass needle or planchette, but finally came to rest. He climbed out of the jeep and walked straight ahead, not turning aside for the dusty, crackling shrubs, but pushing straight through them.
He parted a final straggly hedge and found himself looking across the empty street at a house quite as old as the Akeleys, but with free sky above it.
Built of ancient brick, it was three stories tall and looked as pompously respectable as a 19th century banker. It reposed sedately on a terrace that was as weedily overgrown as the square and that was surrounded by a high iron fence.
The only incongruous note was struck by a saucer-shaped object fully fifty feet across set on a framework atop the flat roof. Judging from the dull green of its underside, it might be made of copper. It looked almost as old as the house and quite as proper, as if the 19th century banker had decided to wear a green beret and dared anyone to notice it.
Phil crossed the street, mounted some steps and peered through the iron gate. He made out, beside the house's old-fashioned, knob door, a tarnished bronze plate which read: "Humberford Foundation."
He looked back uneasily. Where he figured the jeep to be, he could see the heads and black-clad shoulders of two men. The black reminded him unpleasantly of the sports togs worn by Billig and his yes men. They seemed to be arguing. One of them took a step up, as if he were getting into the jeep, but the other pulled him back and they hurried off—not in his direction, Phil noted with some relief.
He gave the iron gate a little push. It opened with a rusty "Harrumph" that made Phil shrink apologetically. But nothing else happened so after a minute he slipped through and began to peer around at the undergrowth and then to wander through it, softly calling "Lucky!"
Occasionally he looked back in the direction of the jeep and once he saw the radio-helmeted heads and blue shoulders of three policemen. He wondered if the next time he looked he'd see Dr. Romadka, or the Akeleys, or perhaps Carstairs, Llewellyn and Buck, and he shivered to think of how close he'd come to being caught—by someone.
But the next shock he got came from something nearer. He had rounded the house, after having poked through its equally lifeless and overgrown back yard, when he saw a dark haired man peering at him through the fence.
The most disturbing thing about the man was that he closely resembled the girl Phil had watched undress in the room across from his. The girl with hoofs. This man had the same vital, faun-like expression.
Phil froze. But the man merely yawned, turned away, and shuffled off, humming or hooting a little melody that gave Phil goosepimples because it reminded him of something in his dream.
For that matter, the whole experience was becoming very dreamlike to Phil: the silent house, the neglected garden, the futile searching, the melancholy memory of Mitzie's leave-taking, the powerful sense of a dead past. But the feeling that Lucky was near was still strong and after a bit Phil realized he would have to do something he had been shrinking from.
He reluctantly mounted the steps to the front portal, reached for the knob, and then, to put off the evil moment a little longer, called "Lucky!" a few times along the shallow porch to either side.
Someone behind him inquired pleasantly, "Are you looking for a cat?"
Phil spun around guiltily and found himself facing a very old man as tall and frail as a ghost, and apparently as silent as one, since Phil hadn't heard him coming up the walk. His thin, wrinkle-netted face, crowned by close cropped white hair, was hauntingly familiar. It had something of the grandeur of a pre-Christian ascetic, yet there was a note of Puckish humor in it, as if its owner had arrived at a wise second childhood. Although Phil's heart was pounding at the alarmingly accurate question, he found himself liking the man at first sight.
As he hesitated, the old man went on, "My interest, by the way, is purely academic—or else childish curiosity, which comes to the same thing." His eyes flashed impishly. "Is it by any chance a green cat?" he asked Phil rapidly. "No, you don't have to answer that question, at least not any more than you have already. I don't want to distress you. It's just that I have a mind that automatically makes the far-fetched deductions first."
He beamed at Phil, who, though flustered, found himself grinning.
"Perhaps you're a journalist," the oldster went on smoothly, "or at least we can pretend you are. Dr. Garnett always calls in the press when the Humberford Foundation makes a discovery, though I'm sorry to say the press stopped coming about twenty years ago. They'd quit thinking of para-psychology as newsworthy. But perhaps there's been time to breed a new race of journalists with a revived interest in esping and all the teles. In any case Garnett and the whole staff will be overjoyed at the presence of a pressman."
"You mean the Humberford Foundation investigates extrasensory perception and things like that?" Phil asked.
"You should know, since you've been sent here to get a story," the old man said reprovingly. "Still, reporters often haven't the foggiest idea what they've been sent out to report, so you're excused."
Phil found himself grinning again. He hadn't any notion of how the old man knew about Lucky or where he stood in the general picture, except that he felt strangely certain that the old man didn't have anything to do with the organizations out to get Lucky. And the oldster's mischievous pretense that Phil was a reporter might at least get him past the imposing door and let him spy around.
"So the Humberford Foundation has made a new discovery in para-psychology?" he said conversationally.
The other nodded. "Dr. Garnett was most excited. So much so that he didn't have time to tell me what it was all about, except that they'd started to get some amazing results—and just this morning. So I hurried over. Good esp is apt to go poof, so it's best to get it when it's hot. I have a standing order with Garnett to call me over the moment anything starts to flash. For that matter, I have the same orders with practically every scientific laboratory in the area—though the others don't always call me. But—thank Thoth!—Garnett isn't in a field that's under the benign aegis of security and he isn't at all security minded himself. In fact, I'm not certain he's ever heard of the FBL. So you may get a real scoop, Mr...?"
"Gish. Phil Gish."
The oldster's thin hand pressed his with a feathery touch. "Morton Opperly."
Phil stared at him for several seconds, then gasped, "The—?"
The other assented with an apologetic shrug. Phil let it sink in. This was Morton Opperly who had worked on the Manhattan Project, whose name had appeared beside Einstein's on the Physicists' Covenant, who had tried unsuccessfully to get himself jailed for refusal to do research during World War III, who had become a legend. Phil had always vaguely assumed he'd died years ago.
He gazed at the renowned physicist in happy awe. The question that rose effortlessly to his lips was a testimony to Opperly's ability to create an atmosphere of unlimited free discussion unknown since 1940.
"Mr. Opperly, what are orthos?"
"Orthos? That could be short for any number of scientific terms, Phil, but I bet you mean the ones that shoot. Those are ortho-fissionables. Trouble with ordinary fissionables—or fissionables under ordinary circumstances—is that the fragments and neutrons shoot off in all directions and the critical mass is large. But if you get the fissionable atoms all lined up with their axis of spin pointing in the same direction, then they all split in the same place and every neutron hits the nucleus of the atom next to it. Because of that last fact, the neutrons are all used up and the critical mass becomes minute. Half the fragments fly in one direction, half in the other, making it a very nasty and convenient weapon, except it has to backfire."
"How do you get the atoms lined up?" Phil asked eagerly.
"Temperature near absolute zero and an electric field," Opperly said, touching a button beside the doorway. "Simplest thing in the world. The new insulators can hold a gun magazine at one degree Kelvin for weeks, and carry enough fissionable pellets to give rapid fire, with the effect of a steady beam, for more than a minute. Planning to make yourself an ortho in your home workshop, Phil? I'm afraid they don't sell that kit. Everything I've been telling you is top security, death penalty and all that. But I'm getting so senile I don't understand security regulations. I'm apt to babble anything. I keep telling Bobbie T. he'll have to have me orthocuted some day, but like everyone else he refuses to take me seriously. That's the trick they used on me in WW3 and they've never forgot it."
"Bobbie T.?"
Opperly made another of his apologetic grimaces. "Barnes. President Robert T. Barnes. We were charter members of the Midwest Starship Society. Of course he was just a shaver then and now he's a besotted, scripture quoting fox, but shared dreams have a way of linking people permanently. I drop in on him now and then and flash my Starship badge. He's one of my pipelines to what's happening in the world, though the security services don't tell him too much. That's how I learned about the green cat."
Phil was nerving himself to ask Opperly just what he'd learned, when he heard footsteps behind him.
The man who looked like a brother of the girl with hoofs was standing in the gateway.
Just then the door of the mansion opened, revealing a scholarly appearing man whose face was twitching with excitement and nervousness. His coat had two bulging brief case pockets, while his vest was crammed with enough microbooks to make up a dozen encyclopedias, plus two micronotebooks with stylus, and a fountain pen besides. His hair was graying and thin, and he wore ancient pince-nez that twitched with his nose.
"Dr. Opperly!" He greeted in a high-pitched voice that expressed both fluster and delight. "You come at a whirling moment!"
"That's the way I like them, Hugo," Opperly told him. "Where's Garnett?"
But the other was looking at Phil, who decided the twitch was permanent. At the moment its owner was using it to express inquiry and mild apprehension.
"Oh," Opperly said casually, "this is Phil Gish of the press." His eyes twinkled. "Of the U. S. Newsmoon, in fact. Phil, this is Hugo Frobisher, Ph.Ch.—Chancellor of Philosophy, you know, the new higher degree. I'm just a lowly Ph.D. myself."
But Frobisher was beaming at Phil as if he were a donor with a $100,000 check. "This is most gratifying, Mr. Gish," he breathed. Then he whipped out a micronotebook and poised on its white field the stylus whose movements would be reproduced on one ten thousandth of the space on the tape inside. "The U. S. Newsmoon, you say?"
At that moment the man at the gate came clumping up behind them. Phil felt a gust of uneasiness, but the newcomer merely treated them all to a big, innocent grin that brought out all the handsomeness of his faun-like face.
"Me press, too," he announced happily. "Introducing to each you Dion da Silva. Much delight."
Frobisher seemed about to melt with gratification, though da Silva's gaiety was undoubtedly generally contagious. "What paper?" Frobisher asked.
Phil noted that Opperly was studying the newcomer intently. The latter was having trouble with Frobisher's question.
"Mean what?" he countered, drawing his shaggy eyebrows together in a frown.
"La Prensa," Opperly supplied suddenly. "Mr. da Silva representsLa Prensa."
"Is so. Thank you," da Silva confirmed.
Phil could have sworn that Opperly had never seen da Silva before and that da Silva had never heard ofLa Prensa.
However, Frobisher seemed to accept the explanation. "Come in, come in, gentlemen," he urged, fluttering backward. "I'm sure you'll first want to tour our little establishment and have a peek at all our projects. Story background, you know."
"I'm sure they'll want to go straight to Garnett and get the story itself," Opperly assured him. "Where is Winston anyway, Hugo?"
"To tell the truth, I haven't the faintest idea of Dr. Garnett's whereabouts," Frobisher replied with prim satisfaction. "Things have been popping everywhere since this morning. In every project. We'd have to tour the Foundation to find him in any case."
Opperly flashed Phil a look of humorous resignation. Dion da Silva pressed past Phil, flashing his wide white teeth at everyone and saying, "Is fine, fine." Phil's spirits rose. He felt certain that he was getting nearer to Lucky.
Inside, the Humberford Foundation was a gloomy Edwardian mansion to which had been sketchily grafted a pleasantly disorganized scientific enterprise. Glassed shelves of leatherbound books that hadn't been opened for decades were elbowed by trim microfilm files. Blackened portraits of John Junius Humberford and his ancestors looked down on machines for shuffling the eternal Rhine cards and on fluorescent screens-in-depth that blended a dozen recordings of a brain wave made from different angles into the shadowy semblance of a human thought. Stately drawing rooms that set one thinking of bustles and teacups instead held solemn faced, scantily clad girls with electrodes attached to twenty parts of their bodies. Laboratory technicians in loose smocks caught their heels in stair carpets a hundred years old.
But today there was an excitement that pushed the Edwardian half of the place far into the background and brightened the very grime on the walls. Chancellor Frobisher and his little train of visitors were not even noticed. Girls triumphantly calling Rhine cards stared past them unseeingly. Clairvoyants sketching objects being imagined by someone else three floors away didn't look up from their blackboards. A technician darted out with a large syringe and took air samples under their very noses without seeming to be aware of their presence. Correlating engines hummed and spat cards.
Phil was so busy peering about for his green cat that he heard little of what Frobisher was telling them.
Occasional high-pitched explanatory phrases floated back to Phil: "... her 117,318th run through the cards ... telepathic communion with lower animals ... perhaps some day share the thoughts of an amoeba.... No, I really don't know where Dr. Garnett is, I'm busy with important visitors, Miss Ames ... telekinesis will make handies obsolete...."
Plodding behind da Silva up the stairs to the top floor, Phil started to listen to Frobisher consecutively. The Chancellor of Philosophy was saying, "Now in the room I'm about to show you, an experiment incompletetelepathy is underway. When telepathy is perfected, it will be possible for two individuals to lay their minds side by side and compare all their thoughts and feelings in the raw, as it were."
"Is good!" da Silva interjected.
Frobisher frowned at the interruption before remembering it was a journalist talking. He went on smilingly, "In this case, however, we have only a preliminary stage: two individuals, by means of prolonged speech, writing, sketching, musical expression and so forth, are attempting to share their inmost thoughts to such an extent that they will tend to become telepathic, as seems to be the case with some husbands and wives." As they came to the top of the stairs, Frobisher continued a bit breathlessly, "Incidentally, the young man in this experiment is one of our most consistent espers, while the young lady is a handie bit player who graciously devotes her leisure time to science."
He paused with his hand on an ancient brass doorknob.
"Let's not disturb them, Hugo," Opperly suggested a bit faintly, leaning against the wall though he showed no other effects of the climb. "Sounds like rather an intimate experiment."
Frobisher shook his head. "As I say," he pronounced, "these two researchists are seeking to lay their minds side by side."
He opened the door, looked in, gasped, and hastily slammed it—though not before da Silva, peering over his shoulder, had emitted an appreciative and rather whinnying chortle.
"As I say, theirminds," Frobisher repeated, walking away from the door a bit unevenly. "Perhaps you're right, Dr. Opperly, we'd best not disturb them. Research is at times a strenuous affair." He looked apprehensively at the purported representative ofLa Prensa. "I trust, Señor da Silva—"
"Is very good!" da Silva assured him enthusiastically.
Frobisher looked at him blankly, shook himself a bit and said, briskly, "It now remains, gentlemen, to give you a glimpse of our crowning project—the one on the roof. If you'll just precede me up this circular staircase...."
"I think I'll stay here, Hugo," Opperly told him. "Touring research can be strenuous too."
"But I rather imagine Dr. Garnett must be on the roof."
"Then bring him down."
As Phil trudged up the musty cylinder lit by tiny bull's-eye windows, his feet clanking on worn metal treads, it occurred to him that Lucky certainly seemed to have been having a field day here, bringing people together in understanding and love and what not. In fact, it made him rather jealous the way Lucky was strewing his favors around.
From behind Chancellor Frobisher's fussy voice filtered up. "I should preface this ascent by saying that one of J. J. Humberford's chief motives in establishing the Foundation was the conviction that mankind will soon destroy itself unless some superior power intervenes. So we feel bound to apply what little knowledge of esping we have gained to seeking such intervention. Even if there is only one chance in a million of contacting a superior power somewhere in the universe, the stakes are so great that we must not overlook the chance. Incidentally, gentlemen, please watch out for the next to the last step. There isn't any."
Phil, who was just putting his foot on it, caught himself, took a bigger step, and the next moment was out on the roof. The sodium mirror that orbited around earth was pouring sunlight down, though hardly enough to explain the dark glasses Frobisher handed him and da Silva.
Phil briefly studied the verdigris underside of the saucer topping most of the roof. He noted the flimsy looking beams supporting it and frowningly inspected the tiny penthouse under its center. Then Frobisher was urging him and da Silva up a ladder that led to a small platform next to the rim of the saucer.
Reaching the platform, Phil instantly realized the need for the dark glasses. The interior of the saucer was polished to such a degree that even the sodium-reflected sunlight flashed from it with a pale brown blindingness. He clamped his eyes shut and quickly put on the black specs.
"As you are aware," Frobisher was saying, "the exact nature of thought waves is unknown. It may be that they move instantaneously, or at least at speeds far greater than that of light. We have yet to get a figure on them, although we have carefully timed thought-casts between here and Montevideo—but the human or physiological factor confounds us. They may not be waves at all. On the other hand it is possible that they are reflected and refracted like ordinary light."
"Is right," interjected da Silva, a vague blur beside Phil, who hadn't yet got over the first blinding glimpse of the saucer's interior.
"You believe so?" Frobisher questioned sharply.
La Prensa's faun-like representative shrugged his muscular shoulders. "Just guessing," he said.
"At any rate," Frobisher continued, "we are working on that latter supposition here. This copper structure is a parabolic mirror. Thought waves originating at its focus are concentrated into a beam which is directed upward into the sky toward any stellar planetary systems which may happen to lie above."
"Amazing," da Silva grunted. "Explains everything."
"What do you mean?" Frobisher asked sharply.
"Just humble before wonders of science," da Silva told him.
Frobisher nodded. "You're right," he said. "Who knows but what the message now being beamed, with its appeal for help from a war-threatened and deluded humanity, may some day or century be received by a truly mature and benign race, which will swiftly come to our aid? By the by, Mr. Gish, watch that railing. It's broken."
Phil jerked his hand away from the rusted pipe. "Yes," he said to Frobisher, "but how do these thought waves originate at the focus?"
"Just look," Frobisher told him. Phil squintingly studied the gleaming saucer through his dark glasses and it became less of a jumble of highlights. Projecting from a hole in the center of the bowl was a brownish-red blob wearing goggles that looked as if they were made of a darker glass than his own specs. The blob's lips moved and Phil heard a hauntingly familiar voice saying, of all things, "S-O-S, earth. S-O-S, earth."
"Our star esper," Frobisher chortled, "if you'll pardon a pun of which we're rather fond. To be sure, it's thought waves, not sound waves, he's originating, but it helps him esp if he says the message at the same time he thinks of it. He's a bit of an eccentric—a religious scholar—but that's the case with most of our best people."
At that moment Phil's vision, buffered by the dark glasses, became quite clear and he saw that the sweating head at the focus of the parabolic mirror was that of Sacheverell Akeley. At the same moment Sacheverell saw Phil and his sun-burned top disappeared from the saucer as swiftly as a hand puppet jerked below stage.
"He shouldn't do that," Frobisher said sharply. "There's at least twenty minutes of his duty remaining. Well, I presume you've seen all you'll need for your articles, gentlemen, so we'd best go down."
As Phil's foot touched the roof, Sacheverell Akeley darted up to him, sweat pouring off his ruddy-bronze forehead.
"What are you doing here?" Phil asked sharply. "How did you get away from them—Romadka's friends, I mean."
"They raced off a couple of hours after Romadka left," Sacheverell answered quickly. "Got a phone call. Incidentally, Romadka abducted three of our cats. As for me, I've worked here for ages. The important point is," he continued in an intense whisper, "thathe'shere, isn't he? I mean the Green One. I've never esped like this before, even at stars."
But before Phil could answer, Frobisher and da Silva glanced at them inquisitively. Phil and Sacheverell followed them down the metal staircase.
Reaching the top floor they found Opperly deep in conversation with a man who looked at least half out of this world. He was fat and had a beard, but his dull eyes seemed to be seeing twice as much as he was looking at. Sacheverell tugged at Phil's sleeve guardedly. "Garnett's frightfully espy," he whispered, his lips next to Phil's ear.
"But Winnie, how do you explain it?" Opperly was saying. "Why all this success with esping, in practically all your projects, all of a sudden?"
Garnett frowned. "Well, there is one unusual circumstance. Our lab technicians claim to have found hormones, or some sort of specialized protein molecules floating around in the air."
"What hormones?" Opperly asked quickly.
"Well," Garnett said, "they have had some difficulty identifying them." He hesitated. "The hormones seem to show a tremendous variability—almost chameleon-like."
Opperly smiled and threw Phil a twinkling gaze.
"Winnie, do you by any chance know," Opperly said, "whether an odd animal of some sort appeared at the Foundation early this morning?"
Phil felt Sacheverell's hand tighten on his biceps.
Dr. Garnett looked around puzzledly. Then his eyebrows shot up. "Yes," he said, "Ginny Ames found a green cat, a fashion mutant, I suppose, wailing at the door early this morning. We don't have much food here, but she tried it on some elderberry preserves and apparently it liked it. I believe the creature's still around."
"Winnie, don't you get any bulletins from Security?" Opperly asked incredulously. "Or from the FBL?"
Garnett shook his big head. "Not for the past ten years. Esp's so unpopular that even the government's forgot us."
"I see," Opperly said, his eyes glittering with interest. "In that case you haven't read anything about a mutant creature described as a green cat, that's believed to have super-human parapsychological powers and to have caused officials to go over to Russia and do all sorts of other things described as crazy? The public hasn't been told, but all the higher echelons—scientists, doctors, psychiatrists—have been getting bulletins on the subject, demanding that they report anything they know or have heard about a green cat. Even I've been told a little."
"Can you beat it," Garnett said disgustedly, "something involving esp and they consult everyone but us." Then he turned to Opperly like a man waking up. "Do you mean to suggest that this creature is responsible for the esp results we've been getting?"
Opperly nodded. "I do."
"But how, why?"
Opperly shrugged happily. "I don't know. I've merely been making some of those far-fetched guesses I've warned my young journalist friends about." And he smiled at Phil and da Silva.
"Guesses!" Garnett said. "Well, we'll soon find out." And he started past them toward the front end of the hall, his big feet stirring dust from the ancient carpet. "We'll have a look at this animal and see what we think about it. Miss Ames—!" he started to call, and then suddenly his face went half out of this world again and he stopped in mid-stride. "She thinks the same," he said so softly and so astonishedly that even Phil knew he must be esping. "She agrees with you, Op." The big face seemed to go a little further out of the world. "In fact, they all do. Practically everybody at the Foundation." The big face seemed to go out almost all the way, while the voice sank to a faint murmur. "In fact, you're right."
The door opened at the front end of the hall and a long nosed young lady in a lab smock stepped out and nodded gently at Garnett. Her brow smoothed and her eyes half closed, as if she were esping something to him, then she seemed to notice that there were visitors around. "Would you care to see this green animal with your outer eyes?" she asked.
"We sure would, Ginny," Garnett told her and started forward again. Phil wanted to burst out with all his information about Lucky, but da Silva forestalled him.
"Gentlemen," he said. "Think you understand better I supposed. Sorry underrate you. Best to tell you now—"
At that moment Lucky ambled out of the door from which Ginny had emerged. He strode lazily, like a self-confident green god. The long nosed girl closed the door behind him. Phil felt his spirits splurge suddenly, happily, familiarly.
Akeley squeezed Phil's upper arm. "It ishe!"
And almost at the same moment, a voice commanded from behind them, "Break to either side, everybody."
Phil obeyed the command and so did all the others.
Dave Greeley was standing at the head of the stairs. The representative of the FBL was looking both knowledgeable and competent, though even more gray haired and anxious than last night.
He nodded quickly at Opperly, said, "Pardon me, doctor," then leveled his stun-gun between the ranks of men crowding the wall and punched the trigger. But his nerves couldn't have been as good as Phil thought they were, for instead of the green cat collapsing, Miss Ames pitched over on her face, gasping wonderingly, "My leg—I can't feel it!"
Greeley grimaced and re-directed his stun-gun, as the dust mushroomed up from the carpet around Miss Ames. But at the same moment Phil felt the golden wave billowing out from Lucky. Greeley's face turned red and his fingers stiffly uncurled from the gun, as if invisible hands were prying them away, and it dropped to the floor.
At that moment another voice behind them, languorous and scornful, said, "Stay where you are, gentlemen. It would be dangerous to move your hands."
Dora Pannes stood at the head of the stairs. The violet blonde was simply dressed in a gray frock, while a large handbag swung carelessly from her shoulder, but she looked rather more beautiful than last night. In her slender hand was a great big ortho.
Phil didn't feel at all frightened, although a vague memory nagged momentarily at his mind. He knew she couldn't hurt anyone while Lucky was there. He was more interested in the reactions of the others.
But with one exception there weren't any reactions.
The exception was da Silva. He was staring at Dora Pannes with a hungry adoration.
Meanwhile the violet blonde was walking forward in a most business-like way. She didn't even glance at da Silva. As she passed Greeley, her free hand snatched sidewise like a lizard's tongue for the stun-gun, snatched again at a larger one inside his coat, dropped them both in her handbag, and kept going straight for the cat.
Now she'll begin to feel it, Phil told himself.
But she kept straight on. Lucky seemed to be studying her casually. Abruptly he sprang back onto the window sill, his green fur rose, his muzzle lengthened, and from it came a prolonged, spitting hiss.
The next moment Phil felt such a formless terror as he had never known before, as if all reality were about to be crunched in a single fist, as if the blackness between the stars were lashing down to strangle him. Dimly across the hall, he saw the waves of white wash along the ranked faces. He gazed fearfully at Lucky, as if the green cat had turned into a devil, and saw Dora Pannes coolly stooping to grab him. The cat started to streak past her, but Dora's hands were faster. Then the cat sprang straight at her face, claws raking, but Dora calmly detached him and shoved him in her handbag and shut it and started back. She looked quite as beautiful and composed as she had at the stair head. The blood hadn't started to flow from the scratches in her face.
As she passed da Silva, he looked up at her groggily. In his expression there was still the ghost of desire.
"You jerk," she said to him and walked on and went down the stairs.
Phil felt his heart hammering ten, eleven, twelve times, like a clock striking, and then he was racing downstairs and someone was pounding along after him.
He caromed off the open front door and stumbled down the steps in time to see a dark car roar off. Greeley was beside him now, barking orders into a pocket radio. From the other end of the street, another car shot in. Red plumes shot forward from under its hood as it rocket-braked to a heaving stop. Greeley piled into the back seat. Phil scrambled in after him.