He took the automatic elevator to the eighteenth floor. He didn't relish the idea of walking up to the roof, but taking the elevator would make the nightwatchman suspicious.
He didn't bother going to the office; he headed directly for the stairway and began his long climb—twenty-seven floors to the roof.
All through it, he kept up a running comment through his throat mike. "I wish I weighed about fifty pounds less; carrying two hundred and twenty pounds of blubber up these stairs isn't easy."
"Blubber, hooey!" the earphone interrupted. "Any man who's six-feet-three has a right to carry that much weight. Actually, you're a skinny-looking sort of goop."
Both men were exaggerating; Houston wasn't fat, but his broad, powerful frame couldn't be called skinny, either.
When he finally reached the roof, he paused and surveyed the wall of the Lasser Building, which towered high above him, spearing an additional thirty stories in the air. Up there, the lights on the sixtieth floor gleamed in the night.
The air was growing cooler, and the beginnings of a mist were forming. Houston hoped it wouldn't start to rain before he got inside.
The forty-sixth floor of the Lasser Building had no windows on this side, but there were plenty on the forty-seventh.
Leading up to them was an inviting looking fire escape, but Houston knew he didn't dare take that. By law, every fire escape was rigged with a fire alarm, in addition to the regular burglar alarm. He'd have to use another way.
The Lasser Building was a steel structure, shelled over with a bright blue anodized aluminum sheath. Only the day before, Houston, wearing the gray coverall of a power-line workman, had checked the wall to find the big steel beams beneath the aluminum. He had also installed certain other equipment; now he was going to make use of it.
Concealed in the louvres of the air-conditioner intake of the lower building was a specially constructed suit and several hundred feet of power line which was connected to the main line of the building.
In the darkness, Houston slipped on the suit. It was constructed somewhat like a light diving suit or a spacesuit, but without the helmet. In the toes, knees, and hands, were powerful electromagnets controlled by switches in the fingers of the gloves and powered by the current in the long line.
Houston stepped over to the blue aluminum wall, reached out a hand, and lowered one finger. Instantly, the powerful magnet anchored his hand to the wall, held by the dense magnetic field to the steel beam beneath the aluminum sheath. That one magnet alone could support his full body weight, and he had six magnets to work with.
Slowly, carefully, David Houston began to crawl up the wall.
Turn on a magnet in the right hand; lift up the left hand and anchor it higher; turn on the right hand and lift it even with the left, then anchor it again; do the same with both legs; then begin the process all over again, turning the magnets off and on in rotation.
Up and up he went. Past the forty-sixth floor, past the forty-seventh, the forty-eighth, and the forty-ninth. Not until he reached the fiftieth floor did he attempt to open one of the windows.
There was a magnetic lock inside the window, but Houston had taken that, too, into account. The powerful magnet in his right glove slid it aside easily. Houston lifted the window and stepped inside.
He had ten more floors to go.
He took off the suit and rolled it up into a tight package, then dropped it out the window. It landed with a barely audible thump. Houston took a deep breath, drew his stun gun, and headed for the stairway.
On the landing of the sixtieth floor of the Lasser Building, David Houston paused for a moment.
"Sounds like you're out of breath," said the voice in his ear.
"You try climbing all that way sometime," Houston whispered. "I'm no superman, you know."
"Shucks," said the voice, "you've disillusioned me. What now?"
"I'm going to try to get a little information," Houston told him. "Hold on."
On the other side of the door, he could hear faint sound, as if someone were moving around, but he could hear no voices.
Carefully, he sent out a probing thought, trying to see if he could attune his mind with that of someone inside without betraying himself.
He couldn't detect anything. The sixtieth floor covered a lot of space; if whoever was inside was too far away, their thoughts would be too faint to pick up unless Houston stepped up his own power, and he didn't want to do that.
Cautiously, he reached out a hand and eased open the door.
The hallway was brightly lit, but there was no one in sight. The unaccustomed light made Houston blink for a moment before his eyes adjusted to it; the hallways and landings below had been pitch dark, forcing him to use a penlight to find his way up.
He stepped into the hallway, closing the door behind him.
Now he could hear voices. He stopped to listen. The conversation was coming from an office down the hall—if it could be called a conversation.
There would be long periods of silence, then a word or two: "But not that way." "Until tomorrow." "Vacillates."
There were three different voices.
Houston moved on down the hall, his stun gun ready. A few yards from the door, he stopped again, and, very gently, he sent out another thought-probe, searching for the minds of those within, carefully forging his way.
And, at that crucial instant, a voice spoke in his ear.
"Houston! What's going on? You haven't said a thing for two full minutes!"
"I'm all right!" Houston snapped. Only the force of long training and habit kept him from shouting the words aloud instead of keeping them to a subvocal whisper.
"All right or not," said the other, "we're coming in in seven minutes, as ordered. Meanwhile, there's a news bulletin for you; the British division has picked up another Controller—a woman named Dorrine Kent. Two in one night ought to be a pretty good bag."
For a moment, Houston's mind was a meaningless blur.
Dorrine!
And then another voice broke through his shock.
"Dear me, sir! Calm yourself! You're positively fizzing!"
Houston jerked. Standing in the doorway of the office was Norcross Lasser, with a benign smile on his face and a deadly-looking .38 automatic in his hand. Behind him stood John Sager and Loris Pederson, their faces wary.
"Please drop that stun gun, Mr. Cop."
In those few moments, Houston had regained control of himself. He realized what had happened. The interruption of his thought-probe had startled him just a little, but that little had been enough to warn the Controller.
He wondered which of the three men was the actual Controller.
He began to lower his weapon, then, suddenly, with all the force and hatred he could muster, he sent a blistering, shocking thought toward the man with the gun.
Lasser staggered as though he'd been struck. His gun wavered, and Houston fired quickly with his stun gun. At the same time, Lasser's automatic went off.
The bullet went wild, and the stun beam didn't do much better. It struck Lasser's hand, paralyzing it, but it didn't knock out Lasser.
The mental battle that ensued only took a half second, but at the speed of thought, a lot of things can happen in a half second.
Houston realized almost instantaneously that he had made a vast mistake. He had badly underestimated the enemy.
There was no need to worry, now, about which one of the men was a Controller—all three of them were!
As soon as Sager and Pederson realized what had happened, they leaped—mentally—into the battle. Lasser, already weakened by the unexpected mental blow from Houston, lost consciousness when the others let loose their blasts because his mind was still linked with Houston's, and he absorbed a great deal of the mental energy meant for Houston's brain.
Houston, fully warned by now, held up a denial wall which screened his mind from the worst that Sager and Pederson could put out, but he knew he couldn't hold out for long.
"Come in—now!" he said hoarsely into the microphone.
"Stupid swine!" Sager susurrated sibilantly.
Pederson said nothing aloud, but his brain was blazing with fear and hatred. His gun hand jerked towards a holster under his arm. Lasser was still crumpling towards the floor.
The entire action had taken less than a second.
Houston tried to fire again with his stun gun, but it required every bit of concentration he could sum up to hold off the combined mental assaults of Sager and Pederson.
But they, too, were at somewhat of a disadvantage. In order to keep all their efforts concentrated on the PD policeman, both Controllers had to refrain from putting too much attention on their bodily motions. Pederson was still fumbling for his gun, and Sager hadn't yet started for his.
Lasser barely touched the floor before his consciousness began to return. The resulting fraction of a second of mental static afforded Houston a brief respite; it disturbed Pederson just as he was getting his fingers on the butt of his weapon.
Both Controllers were focusing their mental energies on Houston's brain, and during the brief respite, Houston made one vital mental adjustment. He allowed both thought-probes to fuse in a small part of his consciousness. They wentthroughhim and lashed back at the two Controllers.
Both of them had had their minds tuned to Houston's, and in that instant they found they, were also attuned to each other.
The resultant of the energy was shocking to Houston, but it was infinitely worse for Sager and Pederson, since neither of them had been expecting it. Pederson, who had already been slightly distracted, got the major brunt of the force. He managed to jerk his gun free, but his brain was already lapsing into unconsciousness.
Houston's fingers tightened on his own weapon. It fired once at Lasser, who was trying to lift himself from the floor. Then it swept up and coughed again, dropping Pederson. His pistol barked once, sending a singing ricochet along the hall.
Sager, who had staggered to one side when he and Pederson had short-circuited each other, had time to get behind the protection of the office door. He couldn't close it because Lasser's and Pederson's inert forms blocked the doorway, but at least it afforded protection against Houston's stun gun.
His thought came through to Houston:So the stupid Normals have a Controller working for them! Traitor!
You're the traitor, Houston thought coldly.You and your megalomaniac friends. It's madmen like you who have made telepaths hated and feared by the Normals.
And so they should hate and fear us, came the snarling mental answer.Within a few generations, we will have supplanted them. We will control Earth—not they.
The exchange had only taken a fraction of a second. Houston was already charging toward the open door, hoping to get inside before Sager could reach a weapon.
You call me a traitor, Houston thought,but you have been framing innocent Controllers, putting them into the hands of the PD Police.
That's a lie!the reply came hotly.We would never betray another telepath to the stupid Normals! If a telepath were so bullheaded as to get in our way, we'd dispose of him. But it would be Controller justice; we wouldn't turn him over to animals!
In one blazing moment, Houston realized that the Controller was telling the truth!
No mental communication can be expressed properly in words. In, behind, and around each statement, other, dimmer nuances of thought gleam through. Each thought tells the receiver much more than can be put down in crude verbal symbols.
Thus, Houston already knew that Lasser, Sager, and Pederson were the three top men in a world-wide clique of megalomaniac Controllers. This was the top of the madmen's organization; these three were thecreme de la cremeof the Normal human's real enemies.
He knew that there were twelve others scattered over Earth, and he knew where and who they were. That brief exchange had brought all the information into Houston's own mind as it leaked from the minds of the others. He knew it without thinking about how he knew it.
And they werenotthe ones who had been turning the sane Controllers over to the Psychodeviant Police!
Then who was? And why?
Houston was right back where he had started.
But that brief instant of confusion was Houston's downfall. Sager instantly realized that he had delivered, inadvertently, a telling blow to Houston's mind.
Physically, Houston had been propelling himself toward the open door. At the instant of the revelation, he had been part way through it. And at that moment, Sager acted.
He slammed all his weight violently against his side of the door, knocking Houston off balance as the door swung and struck him. He went down, and Sager was on top of him before he struck the floor.
It was the weirdest battle ever fought, but its true worth could only have been detected by another telepath. It was intense and brutal.
The men fought both physically and mentally. They struggled for possession of the stun gun, at the same time hurling emotion-charged shafts of mental energy at each other's brains.
The struggle lasted less than a minute. Somehow, Sager managed to get one hand on the gun, twisting it. Houston, trying to keep it out of Sager's hand, jerked it up between them.
It coughed once, sending a beam of supersonic energy into the bodies of both men.
The effect was the same as if they had both been crowned with baseball bats.
Little pinpoints of light against a sea of darkness.
I'm cold, Houston thought.And I'm sick.
He couldn't tell whether his eyes were open or closed—and he didn't much care.
He tried to move his arms and legs, found he couldn't, and gave it up.
He blinked.
My eyes must be open, he thought,if I can blink.
Well, then, if his eyes were open, why couldn't he see anything? All he could see were the little pinpoints of light against a background of utter blackness.
Like stars, he thought.
Stars? STARS!
With a sudden rush, total awareness came back to him, and he realized with awful clarity where he was.
He was chained, spread-eagled, on an asteroid in the Penal Cluster, nearly a hundred million miles from Earth.
It was easy to piece together what had happened. He dimly remembered that he had started to wake up once before. It was a vague, confused recollection, but he knew what had taken place.
The PD Police, coming in response to his call, had found all four men unconscious from the effects of the stun beam. Naturally, all of them had been taken into custody; the PD Police had to find out which one of the men was the Controller and which the controlled. That could easily be tested by waiting until they began to wake up; the resulting mental disturbances would easily identify the telepath.
Houston could imagine the consternation that must have resulted when the PD men found that all three suspects—andtheir brother officer—were Controllers.
And now here he was—tried, convicted, and sentenced while he was unconscious—doomed to spend the rest of his life chained to a rock floating in space.
A sudden chill of terror came over him. Why wasn't he asleep? Why wasn't he under hibernene?
It's their way of being funny, came a bitter thought.We're supposed to be under hibernene, but we're left to die, instead.
For a moment, Houston did not realize that the thought was not his own, so well did it reflect his own bitterness. It was bad enough to have to live out one's life under the influence of the hibernation drug, but it was infinitely worse to be conscious. Under hibernene, he would have known nothing; his sleeping mind in his comatose body would never have realized what had happened to him. But this way, he would remain fully awake while his body used up the air too fast and his stomach became twisted with hunger pangs which no amount of intravenous feeding could quell. Oh, he'd live, all right—for a few months—but it would be absolute hell while he lasted. Insanity and catatonia would come long before death.
That's a nasty thought; I wish you hadn't brought it up.
That wasn't his own thought! There was someone else out here!
Hell, yes, my friend; we're all out here.
"Where are you?" Houston asked aloud, just to hear his own voice. He knew the other couldn't hear the words which echoed so hollowly inside the bubble of the spacesuit helmet, but the thought behind them would carry.
"You mean with relation to yourself?" came the answer. "I don't know. I can see several rocks around me, but I can't tell which one you're on."
Houston could tell now that the other person was talking aloud, too. So great was the illusion carried to his own brain that it almost seemed as though he could hear the voice with his ears.
"Then there are others around us?" Houston asked.
"Sure. There were three of us: a Hawaiian named Jerry Matsukuo; a girl from Bombay, Sonali Siddhartha; and myself, Juan Pedro de Cadiz. Jerry and Sonali are taking a little nap. You're the first of your group to wake up."
"My group?"
"Certainly, my friend. There are five of you; the other four must still be unconscious."
Four? That would be Lasser, Sager, Pederson, and—and Dorrine!
Juan Pedro de Cadiz picked up the whole thought-process easily.
"The girl—I'm sorry," he said. "But the other three—of us all, I think, they deserve this."
"Juan!" came another thought-voice. "Have our newcomers awakened?"
"Just one of them, my sweet," replied the Spaniard. "Sonali, may I present Mr. David Houston. Mr. Houston, the lovely Sonali Siddhartha."
"Juano has a habit of jumping to conclusions, David," said the girl. "He's never even seen me, and I'm sure that after three weeks of being locked in this prison whatever beauty I may have had has disappeared."
"Your thoughts are beautiful, Sonali," said Juan Pedro, "and with us, that is all that counts."
"It is written," said a third voice, "that he who disturbs the slumber of his betters will wake somebody up. You people are giving me dreams, with your ceaseless mental chatter."
"Ah!" the Spaniard said. "Mr. Matsukuo, may I—"
"I heard, Romeo, I heard," said the Hawaiian. "An ex-cop, eh? I wonder if I like you? I'll take a few thousand years to think it over; in the meantime, you may treat me as a friend."
"I'll try to live down my reputation," said Houston.
It was an odd feeling. Physically, he was alone. Around him, he could see nothing but the blackness of space and the glitter of the stars. He knew that the sun must be shining on the back of his own personal asteroid, but he couldn't see it. As far as his body was concerned, there was nothing else in the universe but a chunk of pitted rock and a set of chains.
But mentally, he felt snug and warm, safe in the security of good friends. He felt—
"David! David! Help me! Oh, David, David, David!"
It was Dorrine, coming up from her slumber. Like a crashing blare of static across the neural band, her wakening mind burst into sudden telepathic activity.
Gently, Houston sent out his thoughts, soothing her mind as he had soothed Harris's mind weeks before. And he noticed, as he did it, that the other three were with him, helping. By the time Dorrine was fully awake, she was no longer frightened or panicky.
"You're wonderful people," she thought simply, after several minutes.
"To one so beautiful, how else could we be?" asked Juan Pedro.
"Ignore him, Dorrine," said Sonali, "he tells me the same thing."
"But not in the same way,amiga!" the Spaniard protested. "Not in the same way. The beauty of your mind, Sonali, is like the beauty of a mountain lake, cool and serene; the beauty of Dorrine is like the beauty of the sun—warm, fiery, and brilliant."
"By my beard!" snorted Matsukuo. "Such blather!"
"I'll be willing to wager my beautifulhaciendain the lovely countryside of Aragon against your miserable palm-leafnipishack on Oahu that you have no beard," said Juan Pedro.
"Hah!" said Matsukuo; "that's all I need now—Castles in Spain."
It was suddenly dizzying for Houston. Here were five people, doomed to slow, painful death, talking as though there were nothing to worry about. Within minutes, each had learned to know the others almost perfectly.
It was more than just the words each used. Talking aloud helped focus the thoughts more, but at the same time, thousands of little, personal, fringe ideas were present with the main idea transmitted in words. Houston had talked telepathically to Dorrine hundreds of times, but never before had so much fine detail come through.
Why? Was there something different about space that made mental communication so much more complete?
"No, not that, I think," said Matsukuo. "I believe it is because we have lost our fear—not of death; we still fear death—but of betrayal."
That was it. They knew they were going to die, and soon. They had already been sentenced; nothing further could frighten them. Always before, on Earth, they had kept their thoughts to themselves, fearing to broadcast too much, lest the Normals find them out. The little, personal things that made a human being a living personality were kept hidden behind heavy mental walls. The suppression worked subconsciously, even when they actually wanted to communicate with another Controller.
But out here, there was nothing to fear on that score. Why should they, who were already facing death, be afraid of anything now?
So they opened up—wide. And they knew each other as no group of human beings had ever known each other. Every human being has little faults and foibles that he may be ashamed of, that he wants to keep hidden from others. But such things no longer mattered out here, where they had nothing but imminent death and the emptiness of space—and each other.
Physically, they were miserable. To be chained in one position, with very little room to move around, for three weeks, as Sonali had been, was torture. Sonali had been there longer than the others—for three days, there had been no one but herself out there in the loneliness of space.
But now, even physical discomfort meant little; it was easy to forget the body when the mind was free.
"What of the others?" Dorrine asked. "Where are the ones who were sentenced before us?"
Houston thought of Robert Harris. What had happened to the young Englishman?
"Space is big," said Juan Pedro. "Perhaps they are too far away for our thoughts to reach them—or perhaps they are already dead."
"Let's not talk of death." Sonali Siddhartha's thought was soft. "We have so many things to do."
"We will have a language session," said Juan Pedro. "Si?"
Matsukuo chuckled. "Good! Houston, until you've tried to learn Spanish, Hindustani, Arabic, Japanese, and French all at once, you don't know what a language session is. We—"
The Hawaiian's thought was suddenly broken off by a shrieking burst of mental static.
The effect was similar to someone dropping a handful of broken glass into an electric meat grinder right in the middle of a Bach cantata.
It was Sager, coming out of his coma.
Almost automatically, the five contacted his mind to relax him as he awoke. They touched his mind—and were repelled!
Stay out of my mind!
With almost savage fury, the still half-conscious Sager hurled thoughts of hatred and fear at the five minds who had tried to help him. They recoiled from the burst of insane emotion.
"Leave him alone," Houston thought sharply. "He's a tough fighter."
At first, Sager was terrified when he learned what had happened to him. Then the terror was mixed with a boiling, seething hatred. A hatred of the Normals who had done this to him, and an even more terrible hatred for Houston, the "traitor."
The very emptiness of space itself seemed to vibrate with the surging violence of his hatred.
"I know," Houston told him, "you'd kill me if you could. But you can't, so forget it."
Not even the power of that hatred could touch Houston, protected as he was by the combined strength of the other four sane telepaths. He was comparatively safe.
Sager snarled like a trapped animal. "You're all insane! Look at you! The four of you, siding with a man who has betrayed us to the Normals! He—"
What Sager thought of Houston couldn't be put into words, and if it could no sane person would want to repeat the mad foulness in those words.
"This is unbearable!" Sonali thought softly.
"That's not a mind," said Dorrine, "it's a sewer."
"I suggest," said Matsukuo, "that we do a little probing. Let's find out what makes this thing tick."
"Stay out of my mind!" Sager screamed. "You have no right!"
"You seemed to think you had the right to probe into the helpless minds of Normals," said Juan Pedro coldly. "We should show you how it feels."
"But they're just animals!" Sager retorted. "I am a Controller!"
"You're a madman," said Matsukuo. "And we must find out what makes you mad."
Synchronizing perfectly, five minds began to probe at the walls that Sager had built up around his personality. And as they probed, Sager retreated behind ever thicker walls, howling in hatred and anguish.
On and on went the five, needling, pressing at every weak spot, trying to break him down. Outnumbered and overpowered, it seemed as though Sager had no chance.
But his insanity was stronger than they suspected. The barriers he built were harder, more opaque, and more impenetrable than any they had ever seen. The five pushed on, anyway, but their advance slowed tremendously.
Then, mentally, there was a sudden silence.
Sager?they thought.
No answer.
"That's finished it," said Houston. "He's retreated so far behind those mental barriers that he's cut himself off completely."
"He's not dead, is he?" Dorrine asked.
"Dead?" said Juan Pedro. "Not in the sense you mean. But I think he is catatonic now; he has lost all touch with the outside. He is as though he were still drugged; he is physically helpless, and mentally blanked out."
"There's one difference," Matsukuo said analytically. "And that is that, although he has cut himself off from us and from the rest of the universe, he is still conscious in some little, walled-in compartment of his mind. He has no one there but himself—and that, I think, is damned poor company."
They waited then. When Pederson awoke, they were ready for him. His hatred took a slightly different form from Sager's, but the effect was the same.
And so were the results when the five bore down on him.
Again they waited. Lasser was next.
At first, it looked as though Lasser would go the way of Sager and Pederson, ending up as a hopelessly insane catatonic. Like his cohorts before him, Lasser retreated under the full pressure of the thought-probes of the five, building stronger and stronger walls.
But, quite suddenly, all his defenses crumbled. The mental barriers went down, shattered and dissolving. Lasser's whole mind lay bare. Instead of fighting and hating, Lasser was begging, pleading for help.
Lasser was not basically insane. His mind was twisted and warped, but beneath the outer shell was a personality that had enough internal strength to be able to admit that it was wrong and ask for help instead of retreating into oblivion.
"This one—I think we can do something with," Matsukuo's thought whispered.
Eight bodies, uncomfortable and pain-wracked, floated in space, chained to tiny asteroids that drifted slowly in their orbits under the constant pull of the sun. Two of them contained minds that were locked irrevocably within prisons of their own building, sealed off forever from external stimuli, but their suffering was the greater for all that.
The other six, chained though their limbs might be, had minds that were free—free, even, of any but the most necessary of internal limitations.
Eight bodies, chained to eight lumps of pitted rock, spun endlessly in endless space.
And then the ship came.
The flare of its atomic rocket could be seen for over an hour before it reached the Penal Cluster. The six eyed it speculatively. Although only two of them were facing the proper direction to see it with their physical eyes, the impressions of those two were easily transmitted to the other four.
"Another load of captives," whispered Juan Pedro de Cadiz. "How many this time, I wonder?"
"How long have we been here?" asked Houston, not expecting any answer.
"Who knows?" It was Lasser. "What we need out here is a clock to tell us when we'll die."
"Our oxygen tanks are our clocks," said Sonali. "And they'll notify us when the time comes."
"I do believe you morbid-minded people are developing a sense of humor," said Matsukuo, "but I'm not sure I care for the style too much."
The flare of the rocket grew brighter as the decelerating ship approached the small cluster of rocks. At last the ship itself took form, shining in the eternal blaze of the sun. When the whiteness of the rocket blaze died suddenly, the ship was only a few dozen yards from Houston's own asteroid.
And then a mental voice came into the minds of the six prisoners.
"How do you feel, Controllers?"
Only Houston recognized that thought-pattern, but his recognition was transmitted instantly to the others.
"Reinhardt!"
Hermann Reinhardt, Division Chief of the Psychodeviant Police, the one man most hated and feared by Controllers, was himself a telepath!
"Naturally," said Reinhardt. "Someone had to take control of the situation. I was the only one who was in a position to do it."
His thoughts were neither hard nor cold; it was almost as if he were one of them—except for one thing. Only the words of his thoughts came through; there were none of the fringe thoughts that the six were used to in each other.
"That's true," thought Reinhardt. "You see, we have been at this a good deal longer than you." Then he directed his thoughts at members of the crew of the spaceship, but they could still be heard by the six prisoners. "All right, men, get those people off those rocks. We have to make room for another batch."
The airlock in the side of the ship opened, and a dozen spacesuited men leaped out. The propulsion units in their hands guided them toward the prison asteroids.
"Give them all anaesthetic except Sager and Pederson," Reinhardt ordered. "They won't need it." Then, with a note of apology, "I'm sorry we'll have to anaesthetize you, but you've been in one position so long that moving you will be rather painful. We have to get you to a hospital quickly."
The minds of the six prisoners were frantically pounding questions at the PD chief, but he gave them no answer. "No; wait until you're better."
The spacesuited rescuers went to the "back" of each asteroid and injected sleep-gas into the oxygen line that ran from the tank to the spacesuit of the prisoner.
Houston could smell the sweetish, pungent odor in his helmet. Just before he blacked out, he hurled one last accusing thought at Reinhardt.
"You'rethe one who's been framing Controllers!"
"Naturally, Houston," came the answer. "How else could I get you out here?"
Houston woke up in a hospital bed. He was weak and hungry, but he felt no pain. As he came up from unconsciousness, he felt a fully awake mind guiding him out of the darkness.
It was Reinhardt.
"You're a tough man, Houston," he said mentally. "The others won't wake up for a while yet."
He was sitting on a chair next to the bed, holding a smouldering cigarette in one hand. He looked strange, somehow, and it took Houston a moment to realize that there was a smile on that broad, normally expressionless face.
Houston focussed his eyes on the man's face. "I want an explanation, Reinhardt," he said aloud. "And it better be a damned good one."
"I give you free access to my mind," Reinhardt said. "See for yourself if my method wasn't the best one."
Houston probed. The explanation, if not the best, was better than any Houston could have thought of.
When the hatred of the normal-minded people of Earth had been turned against the Controllers because of the actions of a few megalomaniacs, it had become obvious that legal steps had to be taken to prevent mob violence.
It had been Reinhardt himself who had suggested the Penal method to the UN government. At first, he had simply thought of it as a method to keep the Controllers alive until he could think of something better. But when he had discovered, by accident, what a small group of Controllers, alone in space, could do, he had set up the present machinery.
As soon as a Controller was spotted, a careful frame-up was arranged. Then, when several had been found, they were arrested in quick succession and sent to the asteroids.
Always and invariably, they had done what Houston's group had done—the sane or potentially sane ones had improved themselves tremendously, while the megalomaniacs had lapsed into catatonia.
"Why couldn't it be done on Earth?" Houston asked.
"We tried it," Reinhardt said. "It didn't work. Safe, on Earth, surrounded by Normals, a Controller still feels the hatred around him. He can't open his mind completely. Only the certain knowledge of impending death, and a complete freedom from the hatred of Normals can free the mind.
"And that's why you couldn't be told beforehand; if you knew you were going to be rescued, you wouldn't open up."
Houston nodded. It made sense. "Where are we now?" he asked.
"Antarctica," said Reinhardt. "We've built an outpost here—almost self-sufficient. When you're in better shape physically, I'll show you around."
"Do you mean that everyone who's been arrested is here, in Antarctica?"
Reinhardt laughed. "No, not by a long shot. Most of us are back out in civilization, searching for new, undiscovered Controllers, so that we can frame them. And, of course, some of us—the insane ones—have died. They will themselves to die when the going gets too tough."
"Searching for recruits? Then the Group that Dorrine was working for was—"
Reinhardt shook his head. "No. They were going about it the wrong way, just as you thought. We picked up the whole lot of them last week; they're occupying the asteroids now."
"What do you do with the insane catatonics?"
"Put them under hibernene and keep them alive. We hope, someday, to figure out a method of restoring their sanity. Until then, let them sleep."
Houston narrowed his eyes. "How long have you known I was a Controller, Reinhardt?"
The Prussian smiled. "Ever since you first tried to probe me. Fortunately, my training enabled me to put up a shield that you couldn't penetrate; I seemed like a Normal to you.
"I kept you on because I knew you'd be useful in cracking Lasser and his gang when the time came. No one else could have done what you did that night."
"Thanks," Houston said sincerely. "What's going to happen now? After I get well, I mean."
"You'll do what the others have done. A little plastic surgery to change your face a trifle, a little record-juggling to give you a new identity, and you'll be ready to go back to work for the PD Police.
"If anyone recognizes you, it's easy to take over their minds just long enough to make them forget. We allow that much Controlling."
"And then what?" Houston wanted to know. "What happens in the long run?"
"In a way," said Reinhardt, "your friend Sager was right. The Controllers will eventually become the rulers of Earth. But not by force or trickery. We must just bide our time. More and more of us are being born all the time; the Normals are becoming fewer and fewer. Within a century, we will outnumber them—we will be the Normals, not they.
"But they'll never know what's going on. The last Normal will die without ever knowing that he is in a world of telepaths.
"By the time that comes about, we'll no longer need the Penal Cluster, since Controllers will be born into a world where there is no fear of non-telepaths."
"I wonder," Houston mused, "I wonder how this ability came about. Why is the human race acquiring telepathy so suddenly?"
Reinhardt shrugged. "I can give you many explanations—atomic radiation, cosmic rays, natural evolution. But none of them really explains it. They just make it easier to live with.
"I think something similar must have happened a few hundred thousand years ago, when Cro-Magnon man, our own ancestors, first developed true intelligence instead of the pseudo-intelligence, the highly developed instincts, of the Neanderthals and other para-men.
"Within a relatively short time, the para-men had died out, leaving the Cro-Magnon, with his true intelligence, to rule Earth."
Reinhardt stood up. "Why is it happening? We don't know. Maybe we never will know, any more than we know why Man developed intelligence." He shrugged. "Perhaps the only explanation we'll ever have is to call it the Will of God and let it go at that."
"Maybe that's the best explanation, after all," Houston said.
"Perhaps. Who knows?" Reinhardt crushed his cigarette out in a tray. "I'll go now, and let you get some rest. And don't worry; I'll have you notified as soon as Dorrine starts to come out of it."
"Thanks—Chief," Houston said as Reinhardt left the room.
David Houston lay back in his bed and closed his eyes.
For the first time in his life, he felt completely at peace—with himself, and with the Universe.
THE END
Transcriber's Note:This etext was produced fromAmazing StoriesSeptember 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note.