the import-export business, with a fewfingers in shipping and air transport."
"That's them," said Reinhardt. "Someone in that company, presumablysomeone at the top, is a Controller. And he's a very subtle, verydangerous man. Unlike the others, there is nothing hasty or overt in hisplans. But within a few years, if this goes on, he will have more powerthan the others ever dreamed of."
"And my job is to get him?" Houston asked.
Reinhardt nodded. "That's it. Get him. One way or another. You're incharge; I don't care how you do it, but this one Controller is moredangerous than any other we've come across, so get him."
Houston nodded slowly. "Okay. Can you give me all the data you have sofar?"
Reinhardt patted a heavy folder on his desk. "It's all here." Then hetapped the projected map on the screen. "That's the LasserBuilding--Church Street at Worth. Somewhere in there is the man we'relooking for."
* * * * *
David Houston spent the next six weeks gathering facts, trying todetermine the identity of the mysterious Controller at Lasser & Sons.Slowly, the evidence began to pile up.
At the same time, he worried over his own problem. Who was betrayingnon-criminal Controllers to the PD Police?
In that six-week period, two more men and a woman were arrested--one inSpain, one in India, and one in Hawaii.
There weren't very many Controllers on Earth, percentagewise. Of thethree and a half billion people on Earth, less than an estimatedone-thousandth of one percent were telepathic. But that made a grandtotal of some thirty-five thousand people.
Spread, as they were, all over the planet, it was rare that oneController ever met another. The intelligent ones didn't use theirpower; they remained concealed, even from each other.
But _someone_, somewhere, was finding them and betraying them to thePsychodeviant Police.
As more and more data came in on the Lasser case, Houston began to getan idea. If there were a really clever, highly intelligent, megalomaniacController, wouldn't it be part of his psychological pattern to attemptto get rid of the majority of Controllers, those who simply wanted tolead normal lives?
And, if so, wasn't it possible that both his cases--the official and theunofficial--might lead to the same place: Lasser & Sons?
It began to look as though Houston could kill both his birds at once, ifhe could just figure out when, how, and in what direction to throw thestone.
In the middle of the seventh week, a Controller in Manchester, England,was mobbed and torn to bits by an irate crowd before the PD Policecould get to him. There was no doubt in Houston's mind that this one wasa real megalomaniac; he had taken over another man's brain and forcedhim to commit suicide. The controlled man had taken a Webley automatic,put it to his temple, and blown his brains out.
The Controller's mistake was in not realizing what the sudden shock ofthat bullet, transmitted to him telepathically, could do to his ownmind. In the mental disorder that followed, he was spotted and killedeasily.
* * * * *
There was still no word from Dorrine. She had flown back to the States aweek after Houston had returned, but she had had to get back to Englandafter three days. Since then, he had had three letters, nothing more.And letters are a damned unsatisfactory way for a telepath to conduct alove affair.
The one other factor that entered in was The Group, the small band ofsane, reasonable telepaths who had begun to build themselves into anorganization--a sort of Mutual Protective Association.
Personally, Houston didn't think much of the idea; the Group didn't haveany real organization, and they refused to put one together. It wassupposed to be democratic, but it sometimes bordered on the anarchic.
He stayed with them more for companionship than any other reason. WhenDorrine had come back for her short stay, Houston had met with them andtried to get them to help him trace down the megalomaniac Controller whowas doing so much damage, but they'd balked at the idea. Their job, theyclaimed, was to get enough members so that they could protect themselvesfrom arrest by the Normals, and then just let things ride.
"After all," Dorrine had said, "things will work themselves out,darling; they always do."
"Not unless somebody helps them, they don't," Houston had snapped back."Someone has to do something."
"But, Dave, darling--we _are_ doing something! Don't you see?"
He didn't, but there was no convincing either the Group or Dorrine. Shewas passionately interested in the recruiting work she was doing, andshe thought that the Group was the answer to every Controller'stroubles.
And then she had rushed back to England. "I'll be back soon, Dave,"she'd said. "I think I have a lead on a girl in Liverpool."
So far, the girl hadn't been found. Controllers didn't like to givethemselves away to anyone, so they kept a tight screen up most of thetime.
It seemed as though everyone on Earth was in deadly fear all the time.The Normals feared losing their identities to Controllers, and theControllers feared death at the hands of the Normals.
And death or the Penal Cluster were their only choices if they werediscovered.
Houston worried about the risks Dorrine was taking, but there wasnothing he could do. She was doing what she thought was right, just ashe was; how could he argue with that?
Houston went on with his job, putting together facts and rumors andstatistical data analysis, searching out his quarry.
And, at the end of the eighth week, everything blew high, wide, andhellish.
* * * * *
It was late evening. A cool wind blew over New York, bringing with it ahint of the rain to come. Church Street, in lower Manhattan, was notcrowded, as it had been in the late afternoon, but neither was itentirely deserted. The cafes and bars did a lively business, but thetall, many-colored office buildings gaped at the street with blind anddarkened eyes. Only a few of the windows glowed whitely with fluorescentillumination.
In one of the small coffee shops, David Houston sat, smoking a cigaretteand stirring idly at a cup of cooling coffee.
Across the street was the Lasser Building; high up on the sixtiethfloor, a whole suite of offices was brightly lit. The rest of thebuilding was clothed in blackness.
Who was up there in that suite? Houston wasn't quite sure. He hadnarrowed his list of suspects down to three men: John Sager, LorisPederson, and Norcross Lasser, three top officials in the company. Sagerand Pederson were both vice-presidents of the firm; Sager was in chargeof the Foreign Exports department, while Pederson handled the actualshipping. Lasser, by virtue of being the grandson of the man who hadfounded the firm, was president of Lasser & Sons, Inc.
Lasser seemed like a poor choice as chief villain of the outfit; he wasa mild, bland man, quiet and friendly. Besides, his position made himan obvious suspect; naturally, the majority stockholder of the firmwould profit most by the increased power of the company. And, equallyobviously, a Controller wouldn't want to put himself in such an exposedposition.
Which made Lasser, in Houston's mind, a hell of a good suspect. Ifanything happened, Lasser could cover by claiming that he, too, had beencontrolled, and the chances were that he could get away with it. AController never did anything directly; their dirty work was done bysomeone else--a puppet under their mental control. At least, so ran thepopular misconception. If Lasser were the man, he stood a good chance ofgetting away with it, even if he were caught, provided he played hiscards right.
* * * * *
That reasoning still didn't eliminate Sager or Pederson. Either of themcould be the Controller. And there still remained the possibility thatsome unknown, unsuspected fourth person had the company of Lasser & Sonsunder his thumb.
That was what Houston intended to find out tonight.
He took a sip of his coffee, found it still reasonably hot.
Damn the megalomaniacs, anyway! Houston subconsciously tightened hisfists. He, personally, had more to fear from
the Normals than fromanother Controller. Normals could kill or imprison him, while aController would have a hard time doing either, directly.
But Houston could understand the Normal man; he could see how fear of aController could drive a man without the ability into a frenzied panic.He could understand, even forgive their actions, born and bred inignorance and fear.
No, the ones he hated were the ones who had conceived and fostered thatfear--the psychologically unstable megalomaniac Controllers. There wereonly a handful of them--probably not more than a few hundred or athousand. But because of them, every telepath on Earth found his life indanger, and every Normal found his life a hell of terror.
Let Dorrine and her do-nothing friends run around the globe recruitingmembers for their precious Group; that was all right for them.Meanwhile, David Houston would be doing something on a more basic actionlevel.
He glanced at his watch. Almost time.
"How's the deployment?" he whispered in his throat.
"We've got the building surrounded now," said the voice in his ear. "Youcan go in anytime."
"How about the roof?"
"That's taken care of, sir; we've got 'copter that can be on the top ofthe Lasser Building at any time you call. They can land within thirtyseconds of your signal."
"Okay," Houston said; "I'm going in now. Remember--no matter what I sayor do, no one is to leave that building if they're conscious. And keepyour eyes on me; if I act in the least peculiar, handcuff me--but don'tknock me out.
"And if I'm not back on time, come in anyway."
"Right."
* * * * *
Houston finished his coffee, dropped a coin on the counter, and headedfor the other side of the street.
The big problem was getting into the building itself. It was ringed withalarms; Lasser & Sons didn't want just anybody wandering in and out oftheir building.
So Houston had arranged a roundabout way. The building next to theLasser Building was a good deal smaller, only forty-five stories high. Aweek before, Houston had rented an office on the eighteenth floor ofthe building; on the door, he had already had a sign engraved: AjaxEnterprises.
It was a shame the office would never be used.
Houston walked straight to the next-door building and opened the frontdoor with his key. Inside, a night watchman lounged behind a desk,smoking a blackened briar. He looked up, smiled, and nodded.
"Evening, Mr. Griswold; working late tonight?"
Houston forced a smile he did not feel. "Just doing a little paperwork," he said.
He took the automatic elevator to the eighteenth floor. He didn't relishthe idea of walking up to the roof, but taking the elevator would makethe nightwatchman suspicious.
He didn't bother going to the office; he headed directly for thestairway and began his long climb--twenty-seven floors to the roof.
All through it, he kept up a running comment through his throat mike. "Iwish I weighed about fifty pounds less; carrying two hundred and twentypounds of blubber up these stairs isn't easy."
"Blubber, hooey!" the earphone interrupted. "Any man who'ssix-feet-three has a right to carry that much weight. Actually, you'rea skinny-looking sort of goop."
Both men were exaggerating; Houston wasn't fat, but his broad, powerfulframe couldn't be called skinny, either.
When he finally reached the roof, he paused and surveyed the wall of theLasser Building, which towered high above him, spearing an additionalthirty stories in the air. Up there, the lights on the sixtieth floorgleamed 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 thisside, but there were plenty on the forty-seventh.
Leading up to them was an inviting looking fire escape, but Houston knewhe didn't dare take that. By law, every fire escape was rigged with afire alarm, in addition to the regular burglar alarm. He'd have to useanother way.
The Lasser Building was a steel structure, shelled over with a brightblue anodized aluminum sheath. Only the day before, Houston, wearing thegray coverall of a power-line workman, had checked the wall to find thebig steel beams beneath the aluminum. He had also installed certainother equipment; now he was going to make use of it.
Concealed in the louvres of the air-conditioner intake of the lowerbuilding was a specially constructed suit and several hundred feet ofpower line which was connected to the main line of the building.
In the darkness, Houston slipped on the suit. It was constructedsomewhat like a light diving suit or a spacesuit, but without thehelmet. In the toes, knees, and hands, were powerful electromagnetscontrolled by switches in the fingers of the gloves and powered by thecurrent in the long line.
Houston stepped over to the blue aluminum wall, reached out a hand, andlowered one finger. Instantly, the powerful magnet anchored his hand tothe wall, held by the dense magnetic field to the steel beam beneath thealuminum sheath. That one magnet alone could support his full bodyweight, 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 ithigher; turn on the right hand and lift it even with the left, thenanchor it again; do the same with both legs; then begin the process allover 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 fiftiethfloor 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 asideeasily. 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 droppedit out the window. It landed with a barely audible thump. Houston took adeep breath, drew his stun gun, and headed for the stairway.
* * * * *
On the landing of the sixtieth floor of the Lasser Building, DavidHouston 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 nosuperman, 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. "Holdon."
On the other side of the door, he could hear faint sound, as if someonewere moving around, but he could hear no voices.
Carefully, he sent out a probing thought, trying to see if he couldattune 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 toofaint to pick up unless Houston stepped up his own power, and he didn'twant 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. Theunaccustomed light made Houston blink for a moment before his eyesadjusted 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 wascoming from an office down the hall--if it could be called aconversation.
There would be long periods of silence, then a word or two: "But notthat way." "Until tomorrow." "Vacillates."
There were three different voices.
Houston moved on down the hall, his stun gun ready. A few yards from thedoor, he stopped again, and, very gently, he sent out anotherthought-probe, searching for the minds of those within, carefullyforging 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 fullminutes!"
"I'm all right!" Houston snapped. Only the force of long training andhabit kept him from shouting the words aloud instead of keeping them toa 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 Britishdivision 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 NorcrossLasser, with a benign smile on his face and a deadly-looking .38automatic 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. Herealized what had happened. The interruption of his thought-probe hadstartled him just a little, but that little had been enough to warn theController.
He wondered which of the three men was the actual Controller.
He began to lower his weapon, then, suddenly, with all the force andhatred he could muster, he sent a blistering, shocking thought towardthe man with the gun.
Lasser staggered as though he'd been struck. His gun wavered, andHouston fired quickly with his stun gun. At the same time, Lasser'sautomatic went off.
The bullet went wild, and the stun beam didn't do much better. It struckLasser's hand, paralyzing it, but it didn't knock out Lasser.
The mental battle that ensued only took a half second, but at the speedof 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 aController--_all three of them were!_
As soon as Sager and Pederson realized what had happened, theyleaped--mentally--into the battle. Lasser, already weakened by theunexpected mental blow from Houston, lost consciousness when the otherslet 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'sbrain.
Houston, fully warned by now, held up a denial wall which screened hismind from the worst that Sager and Pederson could put out, but he knewhe 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 andhatred. His gun hand jerked towards a holster under his arm. Lasser wasstill 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 bitof concentration he could sum up to hold off the combined mentalassaults of Sager and Pederson.
But they, too, were at somewhat of a disadvantage. In order to keep alltheir efforts concentrated on the PD policeman, both Controllers had torefrain from putting too much attention on their bodily motions.Pederson was still fumbling for his gun, and Sager hadn't yet startedfor his.
Lasser barely touched the floor before his consciousness began toreturn. The resulting fraction of a second of mental static affordedHouston a brief respite; it disturbed Pederson just as he was gettinghis 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 hisconsciousness. They went _through_ him and lashed back at the twoControllers.
Both of them had had their minds tuned to Houston's, and in that instantthey found they, were also attuned to each other.
The resultant of the energy was shocking to Houston, but it wasinfinitely worse for Sager and Pederson, since neither of them had beenexpecting it. Pederson, who had already been slightly distracted, gotthe major brunt of the force. He managed to jerk his gun free, but hisbrain 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 andcoughed again, dropping Pederson. His pistol barked once, sending asinging ricochet along the hall.
Sager, who had staggered to one side when he and Pederson hadshort-circuited each other, had time to get behind the protection ofthe office door. He couldn't close it because Lasser's and Pederson'sinert forms blocked the doorway, but at least it afforded protectionagainst Houston's stun gun.
His thought came through to Houston: _So the stupid Normals have aController working for them! Traitor!_
_You're the traitor_, Houston thought coldly. _You and your megalomaniacfriends. It's madmen like you who have made telepaths hated and fearedby 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 controlEarth--not they._
* * * * *
The exchange had only taken a fraction of a second. Houston was alreadycharging toward the open door, hoping to get inside before Sager couldreach a weapon.
_You call me a traitor_, Houston thought, _but you have been framinginnocent Controllers, putting them into the hands of the PD Police_.
_That's a lie!_ the reply came hotly. _We would never betray anothertelepath to the stupid Normals! If a telepath were so bullheaded as toget in our way, we'd dispose of him. But it would be Controllerjustice; we wouldn't turn him over to animals!_
In one blazing moment, Houston realized that the Controller was tellingthe truth!
No mental communication can be expressed properly in words. In, behind,and around each statement, other, dimmer nuances of thought gleamthrough. Each thought tells the receiver much more than can be put downin crude verbal symbols.
Thus, Houston already knew that Lasser, Sager, and Pederson were thethree top men in a world-wide clique of megalomaniac Controllers. Thiswas the top of the madmen's organization; these three were the _creme dela creme_ of the Normal human's real enemies.
He knew that there were twelve others scattered over Earth, and he knewwhere and who they were. That brief exchange had brought all theinformation into Houston's own mind as it leaked from the minds of theothers. He knew it without thinking about how he knew it.
And they were _not_ the ones who had been turning the sane Controllersover 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. Sagerinstantly realized that he had delivered, inadvertently, a telling blowto Houston's mind.
Physically, Houston had been propelling himself toward the open door. Atthe instant of the revelation, he had been part way through it. And atthat 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 wentdown, and Sager was on top of him before he struck the floor.
It was the weirdest battle ever fought, but its true worth could onlyhave been detected by another telepath. It was intense and brutal.
The men fought both physically and mentally. They struggled forpossession of the stun gun, at the same time hurling emotion-chargedshafts of mental energy at each other's brains.
The struggle lasted less than a minute. Somehow, Sager managed to getone hand on the gun, twisting it. Houston, trying to keep it out ofSager's hand, jerked it up between them.
It coughed once, sending a beam of supersonic energy into the bodies ofboth men.
The effect was the same as if they had both been crowned with baseballbats.
* * * * *
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'tmuch 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 hecould see were the little pinpoints of light against a background ofutter blackness.
_Like stars_, he thought.
_Stars? STARS!_
With a sudden rush, total awareness came back to him, and he realizedwith 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 rememberedthat he had started to wake up once before. It was a vague, confusedrecollection, but he knew what had taken place.
The PD Police, coming in response to his call, had found all four menunconscious from the effects of the stun beam. Naturally, all of themhad been taken into custody; the PD Police had to find out which one ofthe men was the Controller and which the controlled. That could easilybe tested by waiting until they began to wake up; the resulting mentaldisturbances would easily identify the telepath.
Houston could imagine the consternation that must have resulted when thePD men found that all three suspects--_and_ their brother officer--wereControllers.
And now here he was--tried, convicted, and sentenced while he wasunconscious--doomed to spend the rest of his life chained to a rockfloating in space.
A sudden chill of terror came over him. Why wasn't he asleep? Why wasn'the under hibernene?
_It's their way of being funny_, came a bitter thought. _We're supposedto 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 tolive out one's life under the influence of the hibernation drug, but itwas infinitely worse to be conscious. Under hibernene, he would haveknown nothing; his sleeping mind in his comatose body would never haverealized what had happened to him. But this way, he would remain fullyawake while his body used up the air too fast and his stomach becametwisted with hunger pangs which no amount of intravenous feeding couldquell. Oh, he'd live, all right--for a few months--but it would beabsolute hell while he