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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Highways in Hiding, by George Oliver Smith
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Highways in Hiding
+
+Author: George Oliver Smith
+
+Release Date: February 6, 2007 [EBook #20519]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HIGHWAYS IN HIDING ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
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+
+
+
+
+                            HIGHWAYS IN HIDING
+
+                             GEORGE O. SMITH
+
+
+
+
+A LANCER BOOK   1967
+
+Copyright 1956 by George O. Smith
+_Highways in Hiding_ is based upon material originally copyrighted by
+Greenleaf Publishing Co., 1955.
+
+All rights reserved
+
+Library of Congress Catalog Card No.: 56-10457
+Printed in the U.S.A.
+_Cover painting by Roy G. Krenkel_
+
+LANCER BOOKS, INC., 185 MADISON AVENUE, NEW YORK, N.Y. 10016
+
+[Transcriber's note: This is a rule 6 clearance. PG has not been able
+to find a U.S. copyright renewal.]
+
+
+
+
+    _For my drinking uncle DON and, of course MARIAN_
+
+
+
+
+_Historical Note_
+
+
+In the founding days of Rhine Institute the need arose for a new
+punctuation mark which would indicate on the printed page that the
+passage was of mental origin, just as the familiar quotation marks
+indicate that the words between them were of verbal origin. Accordingly,
+the symbol # was chosen, primarily because it appears on every
+typewriter.
+
+Up to the present time, the use of the symbol # to indicate directed
+mental communication has been restricted to technical papers, term
+theses, and scholarly treatises by professors, scholars, and students of
+telepathy.
+
+Here, for the first time in any popular work, the symbol # is used to
+signify that the passage between the marks was mental communication.
+
+Steve Cornell, _M. Ing._
+
+
+
+
+STALEMATE
+
+
+Macklin said, "Please put that weapon down, Mr. Cornell. Let's not add
+attempted murder to your other crimes."
+
+"Don't force me to it, then," I told him.
+
+But I knew I couldn't do it. I hated them all. I wanted the whole
+Highways in Hiding rolled up like an old discarded carpet, with every
+Mekstrom on Earth rolled up in it. But I couldn't pull the trigger. The
+survivors would have enough savvy to clean up the mess before our bodies
+got cold, and the Highways crowd would be doing business at the same old
+stand. Without, I might add, the minor nuisance that people call Steve
+Cornell.
+
+What I really wanted was to find Catherine.
+
+And then it came to me that what I really wanted second of all was to
+possess a body of Mekstrom Flesh, to be a physical superman....
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+I came up out of the blackness just enough to know that I was no longer
+pinned down by a couple of tons of wrecked automobile. I floated on soft
+sheets with only a light blanket over me.
+
+I hurt all over like a hundred and sixty pounds of boil. My right arm
+was numb and my left thigh was aching. Breathing felt like being stabbed
+with rapiers and the skin of my face felt stretched tight. There was a
+bandage over my eyes and the place was as quiet as the grave. But I knew
+that I was not in any grave because my nose was working just barely well
+enough to register the unmistakable pungent odor that only goes with
+hospitals.
+
+I tried my sense of perception, but like any delicate and critical
+sense, perception was one of the first to go. I could not dig out beyond
+a few inches. I could sense the bed and the white sheets and that was
+all.
+
+Some brave soul had hauled me out of that crack-up before the fuel tank
+went up in the fire. I hope that whoever he was, he'd had enough sense
+to haul Catherine out of the mess first. The thought of living without
+Catherine was too dark to bear, and so I just let the blackness close
+down over me again because it cut out all pain, both physical and
+mental.
+
+The next time I awoke there was light and a pleasant male voice saying,
+"Steve Cornell. Steve, can you hear me?"
+
+I tried to answer but no sound came out. Not even a hoarse croak.
+
+The voice went on, "Don't try to talk, Steve. Just think it."
+
+#Catherine?# I thought sharply, because most medicos are telepath, not
+perceptive.
+
+"Catherine is all right," he replied.
+
+#Can I see her?#
+
+"Lord no!" he said quickly. "You'd scare her half to death the way you
+look right now."
+
+#How bad off am I?#
+
+"You're a mess, Steve. Broken ribs, compound fracture of the left tibia,
+broken humerus. Scars, mars, abrasions, some flashburn and post-accident
+shock. And if you're interested, not a trace of Mekstrom's Disease."
+
+#Mekstrom's Disease--?# was my thought of horror.
+
+"Forget it, Steve. I always check for it because it's been my specialty.
+Don't worry."
+
+#Okay. So how long have I been here?#
+
+"Eight days."
+
+#Eight days? Couldn't you do the usual job?#
+
+"You were pretty badly ground up, Steve. That's what took the time. Now,
+suppose you tell me what happened?"
+
+#Catherine and I were eloping. Just like most other couples do since
+Rhine Institute made it difficult to find personal privacy. Then we
+cracked up.#
+
+"What did it?" asked the doctor. "Perceptives like you usually sense
+danger before you can see it."
+
+#Catherine called my attention to a peculiar road sign, and I sent my
+perception back to take another dig. We hit the fallen limb of a tree
+and went over and over. You know the rest.#
+
+"Bad," said the doctor. "But what kind of a sign would call your
+interest so deep that you didn't at least see the limb, even if you were
+perceiving the sign?"
+
+#Peculiar sign,# I thought. Ornamental wrought iron gizmo with curlicues
+and a little decorative circle that sort of looks like the Boy Scout
+tenderfoot badge suspended on three spokes. One of the spokes were
+broken away; I got involved because I was trying to guess whether it had
+been shot away by some vandal who missed the central design.
+Then--blooie!#
+
+"It's really too bad, Steve. But you'll be all right in a while."
+
+#Thanks, doctor. Doctor? Doctor--?#
+
+"Sorry, Steve. I forget that everybody is not telepath like I am. I'm
+James Thorndyke."
+
+Much later I began to wake up again, and with better clarity of mind, I
+found that I could extend my esper as far as the wall and through the
+door by a few inches. It was strictly hospital all right; sere white and
+stainless steel as far as my esper could reach.
+
+In my room was a nurse, rustling in starched white. I tried to speak,
+croaked once, and then paused to form my voice.
+
+"Can--I see--How is--? Where is?" I stopped again, because the nurse was
+probably as esper as I was and required a full sentence to get the
+thought behind it. Only a telepath like the doctor could have followed
+my jumbled ideas. But the nurse was good. She tried:
+
+"Mr. Cornell? You're awake!"
+
+"Look--nurse--"
+
+"Take it easy. I'm Miss Farrow. I'll get the doctor."
+
+"No--wait. I've been here eight days--?"
+
+"But you were badly hurt, you know."
+
+"But the doctor. He said that she was here, too."
+
+"Don't worry about it, Mr. Cornell."
+
+"But he said that she was not badly hurt."
+
+"She wasn't."
+
+"Then why was--is--she here so long?"
+
+Miss Farrow laughed cheerfully. "Your Christine is in fine shape. She is
+still here because she wouldn't leave until you were well out of danger.
+Now stop fretting. You'll see her soon enough."
+
+Her laugh was light but strained. It sounded off-key because it was as
+off-key as a ten-yard-strip of baldfaced perjury. She left in a hurry
+and I was able to esper as far as outside the door, where she leaned
+back against the wood and began to cry. She was hating herself because
+she had blown her lines and she knew that I knew it.
+
+And Catherine had never been in this hospital, because if she had been
+brought in with me, the nurse would have known the right name.
+
+Not that it mattered to me now, but Miss Farrow was no esper or she'd
+have dug my belongings and found Catherine's name on the license. Miss
+Farrow was a telepath; I'd not called my girl by name, only by an
+affectionate mental image.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+I was fighting my body upright when Doctor Thorndyke came running.
+"Easy, Steve," he said with a quiet gesture. He pushed me gently back
+down in the bed with hands that were as soft as a mother's, but as firm
+as the kind that tie bow knots in half-inch bars. "Easy," he repeated
+soothingly.
+
+"Catherine?" I croaked pleadingly.
+
+Thorndyke fingered the call button in some code or other before he
+answered me. "Steve," he said honestly, "you can't be kept in ignorance
+forever. We hoped it would be a little longer, when you were stronger--"
+
+"Stop beating around!" I yelled. At least it felt like I was yelling,
+but maybe it was only my mind welling.
+
+"Easy, Steve. You've had a rough time. Shock--" The door opened and a
+nurse came in with a hypo all loaded, its needle buried in a fluff of
+cotton. Thorndyke eyed it professionally and took it; the nurse faded
+quietly from the room. "Take it easy, Steve. This will--"
+
+"No! Not until I know--"
+
+"Easy," he repeated. He held the needle up before my eyes. "Steve," he
+said, "I don't know whether you have enough esper training to dig the
+contents of this needle, but if you haven't, will you please trust me?
+This contains a neurohypnotic. It won't put you under. It will leave you
+as wide awake as you are now, but it will disconnect your running gear
+and keep you from blowing a fuse." Then with swift deftness that amazed
+me, the doctor slid the needle into my arm and let me have the full
+load.
+
+I was feeling the excitement rise in me because something was wrong, but
+I could also feel the stuff going to work. Within half a minute I was in
+a chilled-off frame of mind that was capable of recognizing the facts
+but not caring much one way or the other.
+
+When he saw the stuff taking hold, Thorndyke asked, "Steve, just who is
+Catherine?"
+
+The shock almost cut through the drug. My mind whirled with all the
+things that Catherine was to me, and the doctor followed it every bit of
+the way.
+
+"Steve, you've been under an accident shock. There was no Catherine with
+you. There was no one with you at all. Understand that and accept it. No
+one. You were alone. Do you understand?"
+
+I shook my head. I sounded to myself like an actor reading the script of
+a play for the first time. I wanted to pound on the table and add the
+vigor of physical violence to my hoarse voice, but all I could do was to
+reply in a calm voice:
+
+"Catherine was with me. We were--" I let it trail off because Thorndyke
+knew very well what we were doing. We were eloping in the new definition
+of the word. Rhine Institute and its associated studies had changed a
+lot of customs; a couple intending to commit matrimony today were
+inclined to take off quietly and disappear from their usual haunts until
+they'd managed to get intimately acquainted with one another. Elopement
+was a means of finding some personal privacy.
+
+We should have stayed at home and faced the crude jokes that haven't
+changed since Pithecanthropus first discovered that sex was funny. But
+our mutual desire to find some privacy in this modern fish-bowl had put
+me in the hospital and Catherine--where--?
+
+"Steve, listen to me!"
+
+"Yeah?"
+
+"I know you espers. You're sensitive, maybe more so than telepaths. More
+imagination--"
+
+This was for the birds in my estimation. Among the customs that Rhine
+has changed was the old argument as to whether women or men were
+smarter. Now the big argument was whether espers or telepaths could get
+along better with the rest of the world.
+
+Thorndyke laughed at my objections and went on: "You're in accident
+shock. You piled up your car. You begin to imagine how terrible it would
+have been if your Catherine had been with you. Next you carefully build
+up in your subconscious mind a whole and complete story, so well put
+together that to you it seems to be fact."
+
+But, #--how could anyone have taken a look at the scene of the accident
+and not seen traces of woman? My woman.#
+
+"We looked," he said in answer to my unspoken question. "There was not a
+trace, Steve."
+
+#Fingerprints?#
+
+"You'd been dating her."
+
+#Naturally!#
+
+Thorndyke nodded quietly. "There were a lot of her prints on the remains
+of your car. But no one could begin to put a date on them, or tell how
+recent was the latest, due to the fire. Then we made a door to door
+canvas of the neighborhood to be sure she hadn't wandered off in a daze
+and shock. Not even a footprint. Nary a trace." He shook his head
+unhappily. "I suppose you're going to ask about that travelling bag you
+claim to have put in the trunk beside your own. There was no trace of
+any travelling bag."
+
+"Doctor," I asked pointedly, "if we weren't together, suppose you tell
+me first why I had a marriage license in my pocket; second, how come I
+made a date with the Reverend Towle in Midtown; and third, why did I
+bother to reserve the bridal suite in the Reignoir Hotel in Westlake? Or
+was I nuts a long time before this accident. Maybe," I added, "after
+making reservations, I had to go out and pile myself up as an excuse for
+not turning up with a bride."
+
+"I--all I can say is that there was not a trace of woman in that
+accident."
+
+"You've been digging in my mind. Did you dig her telephone number?"
+
+He looked at me blankly.
+
+"And you found what, when you tried to call her?"
+
+"I--er--"
+
+"Her landlady told you that Miss Lewis was not in her apartment because
+Miss Lewis was on her honeymoon, operating under the name of Mrs. Steve
+Cornell. That about it?"
+
+"All right. So now you know."
+
+"Then where the hell is she, Doc?" The drug was not as all-powerful as
+it had been and I was beginning to feel excitement again.
+
+"We don't know, Steve."
+
+"How about the guy that hauled me out of that wreck? What does he say?"
+
+"He was there when we arrived. The car had been hauled off you by block
+and tackle. By the time we got there the tackle had been burned and the
+car was back down again in a crumpled mass. He is a farmer by the name
+of Harrison. He had one of his older sons with him, a man about
+twenty-four, named Phillip. They both swore later that there was no
+woman in that car nor a trace of one."
+
+"Oh, he did, did he?"
+
+Dr. Thorndyke shook his head slowly and then said very gently. "Steve,
+there's no predicting what a man's mind will do in a case of shock. I've
+seen 'em come up with a completely false identity, all the way back to
+childhood. Now, let's take your case once more. Among the other
+incredible items--"
+
+"Incredible?" I roared.
+
+"Easy. Hear me out. After all, am I to believe your unsubstantiated
+story or the evidence of a whole raft of witnesses, the police detail,
+the accident squad, and the guys who hauled you out of a burning car
+before it blew up? As I was saying, how can we credit much of your tale
+when you raved about one man lifting the car and the other hauling you
+out from underneath?"
+
+I shrugged. "That's obviously a mistaken impression. No one could--"
+
+"So when you admit that one hunk of your story is mistaken--"
+
+"That doesn't prove the rest is false!"
+
+"The police have been tracking this affair hard," said the doctor
+slowly. "They've gotten nowhere. Tell me, did anyone see you leave that
+apartment with Miss Lewis?"
+
+"No," I said slowly. "No one that knew us."
+
+Thorndyke shook his head unhappily. "That's why we have to assume that
+you are in post-accident shock."
+
+I snorted angrily. "Then explain the license, the date with the
+reverend, the hotel reservation?"
+
+Thorndyke said quietly, "Hear me out, Steve. This is not my own idea
+alone, but the combined ideas of a number of people who have studied the
+human mind--"
+
+"In other words, I'm nuts?"
+
+"No. Shock."
+
+"Shock?"
+
+He nodded very slowly. "Let's put it this way. Let's assume that you
+wanted this marriage with Miss Lewis. You made preparations, furnished
+an apartment, got a license, made a date with a preacher, reserved a
+honeymoon suite, and bought flowers for the bride. You take off from
+work, arrive at her door, only to find that Miss Lewis has taken off for
+parts unknown. Maybe she left you a letter--"
+
+"Letter!"
+
+"Hear me out, Steve. You arrive at her apartment and find her gone. You
+read a letter from her saying that she cannot marry you. This is a
+rather deep shock to you and you can't face it. Know what happens?"
+
+"I blow my brains out along a country road at ninety miles per hour."
+
+"Please, this is serious."
+
+"It sounds incredibly stupid to me."
+
+"You're rejecting it in the same way you rejected the fact that Miss
+Lewis ran away rather than marry you."
+
+"Do go on, Doctor."
+
+"You drive along the same road you'd planned to take, but the
+frustration and shock pile up to put you in an accident-prone frame of
+mind. You then pile up, not consciously, but as soon as you come upon
+something like that tree limb which can be used to make an accident
+authentic."
+
+"Oh, sure."
+
+Thorndyke eyed me soberly. "Steve," he asked me in a brittle voice, "you
+won't try to convince me that any esper will let physical danger of that
+sort get close enough to--"
+
+"I've told you how it happened. My attention was on that busted sign!"
+
+"Fine. More evidence to the fact that Miss Lewis was with you? Now
+listen to me. In accident-shock you'd not remember anything that your
+mind didn't want you to recall. Failure is a hard thing to take. So now
+you can blame your misfortune on that accident."
+
+"So now you tell me how you justify the fact that Catherine told
+landladies, friends, bosses, and all the rest that she was going to
+marry me a good long time before I was ready to be verbal about my
+plans?"
+
+"I--"
+
+"Suppose I've succeeded in bribing everybody to perjure themselves.
+Maybe we all had it in for Catherine, and did her in?"
+
+Thorndyke shrugged. "I don't know," he said. "I really don't know,
+Steve. I wish I did."
+
+"That makes two of us," I grunted. "Hasn't anybody thought of arresting
+me for kidnapping, suspicion of murder, reckless driving and cluttering
+up the highway with junk?"
+
+"Yes," he said quietly. "The police were most thorough. They had two of
+their top men look into you."
+
+"What did they find?" I asked angrily. No man likes to have his mind
+turned inside out and laid out flat so that all the little wheels,
+cables and levers are open to the public gaze. On the other hand, since
+I was not only innocent of any crime but as baffled as the rest of them,
+I'd have gone to them willingly to let them dig, to see if they could
+dig past my conscious mind into the real truth.
+
+"They found that your story was substantially an honest one."
+
+"Then why all this balderdash about shock, rejection, and so on?"
+
+He shook his head. "None of us are supermen," he said simply. "Your
+story was honest, you weren't lying. You believe every word of it. You
+saw it, you went through it. That doesn't prove your story true."
+
+"Now see here--"
+
+"It does prove one thing; that you, Steve Cornell, did not have any
+malicious, premeditated plans against Catherine Lewis. They've checked
+everything from hell to breakfast, and so far all we can do is make
+long-distance guesses as to what happened."
+
+I snorted in my disgust. "That's a telepath for you. Everything so
+neatly laid out in rows of slats like a snow fence. Me--I'm going to
+consult a scholar and have him really dig me deep."
+
+Thorndyke shook his head. "They had their top men, Steve. Scholar
+Redfern and Scholar Berks. Both of them Rhine Scholars, _magna cum
+laude_."
+
+I blinked as I always do when I am flabbergasted. I've known a lot of
+doctors of this and that, from medicine to languages. I've even known a
+scholar or two, but none of them intimately. But when a doctor of psi is
+invited to take his scholarte at Rhine, that's it, brother; I pass.
+
+Thorndyke smiled. "You weren't too bad yourself, Steve. Ran twelfth in
+your class at Illinois, didn't you?"
+
+I nodded glumly. "I forgot to cover the facts. They'd called all the
+bright boys out and collected them under one special-study roof. I
+majored in mechanical ingenuity not psi. Hoped to get a D. Ing. out of
+it, at least, but had to stop. Partly because I'm not ingenious enough
+and partly because I ran out of cash."
+
+Doctor Thorndyke nodded. "I know how it is," he said. I realized that he
+was leading me away from the main subject gently, but I couldn't see how
+to lead him back without starting another verbal hassle. He had me cold.
+He could dig my mind and get the best way to lead me away, while I
+couldn't read his. I gave up. It felt better, too, getting my mind off
+this completely baffling puzzle even for a moment. He caught my thoughts
+but his face didn't twitch a bit as he picked up his narrative smoothly:
+
+"I didn't make it either," he said unhappily. "I'm psi and good. But I'm
+telepath and not esper. I weasled my way through pre-med and medical by
+main force and awkwardness, so to speak." He grinned at me sheepishly.
+"I'm not much different than you or any other psi. The espers all think
+that perception is superior to the ability to read minds, and vice
+versa. I was going to show 'em that a telepath can make Scholar of
+Medicine. So I 'pathed my way through med by reading the minds of my
+fellows, who were all good espers. I got so good that I could read the
+mind of an esper watching me do a delicate dissecting job, and move my
+hands according to his perception. I could diagnose the deep ills with
+the best of them--so long as there was an esper in the place."
+
+"So what tripped you up?"
+
+"Telepaths make out best dealing with people. Espers do better with
+things."
+
+"Isn't medicine a field that deals with people?"
+
+He shook his head. "Not when a headache means spinal tumor, or
+indigestion, or a bad cold. 'Doctor,' says the patient, 'I've a bad ache
+along my left side just below the ribs,' and after you diagnose, it
+turns out to be acute appendicitis. You see, Steve, the patient doesn't
+know what's wrong with him. Only the symptoms. A telepath can follow the
+patient's symptoms perfectly, but it takes an esper to dig in his guts
+and perceive the tumor that's pressing on the spine or the striae on his
+liver."
+
+"Yeah."
+
+"So I flopped on a couple of tests that the rest of the class sailed
+through, just because I was not fast enough to read their minds and put
+my own ability to work. It made 'em suspicious and so here I am, a mere
+doctor instead of a scholar."
+
+"There are fields for you, I'm sure."
+
+He nodded. "Two. Psychiatry and psychology, neither of which I have any
+love for. And medical research, where the ability to grasp another
+doctor or scholar's plan, ideas and theories is slightly more important
+than the ability to dig esper into the experiments."
+
+"Don't see that," I said with a shake of my head.
+
+"Well, Steve, let's take Mekstrom's Disease, for instance."
+
+"Let's take something simple. What I know about Mekstrom's Disease could
+be carved on the head of a pin with a blunt butter knife."
+
+"Let's take Mekstrom's. That's my chance to make Scholar of Medicine,
+Steve, if I can come up with an answer to one of the minor questions.
+I'll be in the clinical laboratory where the only cases present are
+those rare cases of Mekstrom's. The other doctors, espers every one of
+them, and the scholars over them, will dig the man's body right down to
+the last cell, looking and combing--you know some of the better espers
+can actually dig into the constituency of a cell?--but I'll be the
+doctor who can collect all their information, correlate it, and maybe
+come up with an answer."
+
+"You picked a dilly," I told him.
+
+It was a real one, all right. Otto Mekstrom had been a mechanic-tech at
+White Sands Space Station during the first flight to Venus, Mars and
+Moon round-trip with landings. About two weeks after the ship came home,
+Otto Mekstrom's left fingertips began to grow hard. The hardening
+crawled up slowly until his hand was like a rock. They studied him and
+worked over him and took all sorts of samples and made all sorts of
+tests until Otto's forearm was as hard as his hand. Then they amputated
+at the shoulder.
+
+But by that time, Otto Mekstrom's toes on both feet were getting solid
+and his other hand was beginning to show signs of the same. On one side
+of the creepline the flesh was soft and normal, but on the other it was
+all you could do to poke a sharp needle into the skin. Poor Otto ended
+up a basket case, just in time to have the damned stuff start all over
+again at the stumps of his arms and legs. He died when hardening reached
+his vitals.
+
+Since that day, some twenty-odd years ago, there had been about thirty
+cases a year turn up. All fatal, despite amputations and everything else
+known to modern medical science. God alone knew how many unfortunate
+human beings took to suicide without contacting the big Medical Research
+Center at Marion, Indiana.
+
+Well, if Thorndyke could uncover something, no one could claim that a
+telepath had no place in medicine. I wished him luck.
+
+I did not see Thorndyke again in that hospital. They released me the
+next day and then I had nothing to do but to chew my fingernails and
+wonder what had happened to Catherine.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+I'd rather not go into the next week and a half in detail. I became
+known as the bridegroom who lost his bride, and between the veiled
+accusations and the half-covered snickers, life was pretty miserable. I
+talked to the police a couple-three times, first as a citizen asking for
+information and ending up as a complainant against party or parties
+unknown. The latter got me nowhere. Apparently the police had more lines
+out than the Grand Bank fishing fleet and were getting no more nibbles
+than they'd get in the Dead Sea. They admitted it; the day had gone when
+the police gave out news reports that an arrest was expected hourly,
+meaning that they were baffled. The police, with their fine collection
+of psi boys, were willing to admit when they were really baffled. I
+talked to telepaths who could tell me what I'd had for breakfast on the
+day I'd entered pre-school classes, and espers who could sense the color
+of the clothing I wore yesterday. I've a poor color-esper, primitive so
+to speak. These guys were good, but no matter how good they were,
+Catherine Lewis had vanished as neatly as Ambrose Bierce.
+
+I even read Charles Fort, although I have no belief in the supernatural,
+and rather faint faith in the Hereafter. And people who enter the
+Hereafter leave their remains behind for evidence.
+
+Having to face Catherine's mother and father, who came East to see me,
+made me a complete mental wreck.
+
+It is harder than you think to face the parents of a woman you loved,
+and find that all you can tell them is that somehow you fouled your
+drive, cracked up, and lost their daughter. Not even dead-for-sure.
+Death, I think, we all could have faced. But this uncertainty was
+something that gnawed at the soul's roots and left it rotting.
+
+To stand there and watch the tears in the eyes of a woman as she asks
+you, "But can't you remember, son?" is a little too much, and I don't
+care to go into details.
+
+The upshot of it was, after about ten days of lying awake nights and
+wondering where she was and why. Watching her eyes peer out of a metal
+casting at me from a position sidewise of my head. Nightmares, either
+the one about us turning over and over and over, or Mrs. Lewis pleading
+with me only to tell her the truth. Then having the police inform me
+that they were marking this case down as "unexplained." I gave up. I
+finally swore that I was going to find her and return with her, or I was
+going to join her in whatever strange, unknown world she had entered.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The first thing I did was to go back to the hospital in the hope that
+Dr. Thorndyke might be able to add something. In my unconscious
+ramblings there might be something that fell into a pattern if it could
+be pieced together.
+
+But this was a failure, too. The hospital super was sorry, but Dr.
+Thorndyke had left for the Medical Research Center a couple of days
+before. Nor could I get in touch with him because he had a six-week
+interim vacation and planned a long, slow jaunt through Yellowstone,
+with neither schedule nor forwarding addresses.
+
+I was standing there on the steps hoping to wave down a cruising
+coptercab when the door opened and a woman came out. I turned to look
+and she recognized me. It was Miss Farrow, my former nurse.
+
+"Why, Mr. Cornell, what are you doing back here?"
+
+"Mostly looking for Thorndyke. He's not here."
+
+"I know. Isn't it wonderful, though? He'll get his chance to study for
+his scholarte now."
+
+I nodded glumly. "Yeah," I said. It probably sounded resentful, but it
+is hard to show cheer over the good fortune of someone else when your
+own world has come unglued.
+
+"Still hoping," she said. It was a statement and not a question.
+
+I nodded slowly. "I'm hoping," I said. "Someone has the answer to this
+puzzle. I'll have to find it myself. Everyone else has given up."
+
+"I wish you luck," said Miss Farrow with a smile. "You certainly have
+the determination."
+
+I grunted. "It's about all I have. What I need is training. Here I am, a
+mechanical engineer, about to tackle the job of a professional detective
+and tracer of missing persons. About all I know about the job is what I
+have read. One gets the idea that these writers must know something of
+the job, the way they write about it. But once you're faced with it
+yourself, you realize that the writer has planted his own clues."
+
+Miss Farrow nodded. "One thing," she suggested, "have you talked to the
+people who got you out from under your car yet?"
+
+"No, I haven't. The police talked to them and claimed they knew nothing.
+I doubt that I can ask them anything that the police have not satisfied
+themselves about."
+
+Miss Farrow looked up at me sidewise. "You won't find anything by asking
+people who have never heard of you."
+
+"I suppose not."
+
+A coptercab came along at that moment, and probably sensing my
+intention, he gave his horn a tap. I'd have liked to talk longer with
+Miss Farrow, but a cab was what I wanted, so with a wave I took it and
+she went on down the steps to her own business.
+
+I had to pause long enough to buy a new car, but a few hours afterward I
+was rolling along that same highway with my esper extended as far as I
+could in all directions. I was driving slowly, this time both alert and
+ready.
+
+I went past the scene of the accident slowly and shut my mind off as I
+saw the black-burned patch. The block was still hanging from an overhead
+branch, and the rope that had burned off was still dangling, about two
+feet of it, looped through the pulleys and ending in a tapered, burned
+end.
+
+I turned left into a driveway toward the home of the Harrisons and went
+along a winding dirt road, growing more and more conscious of a dead
+area ahead of me.
+
+It was not a real dead zone, because I could still penetrate some of the
+region. But as far as really digging any of the details of the rambling
+Harrison house, I could get more from my eyesight than from any sense of
+perception. But even if they couldn't find a really dead area, the
+Harrisons had done very well in finding one that made my sense of
+perception ineffective. It was sort of like looking through a light fog,
+and the closer I got to the house the thicker it became.
+
+Just about the point where the dead area was first beginning to make its
+effect tell, I came upon a tall, browned man of about twenty-four who
+had been probing into the interior of a tractor up to the time he heard
+my car. He waved, and I stopped.
+
+"Mr. Harrison?"
+
+"I'm Phillip. And you are Mr. Cornell."
+
+"Call me Steve like everybody else," I said. "How'd you guess?"
+
+"Recognized you," he said with a grin. "I'm the guy that pulled you
+out."
+
+"Thanks," I said, offering a hand.
+
+He chuckled. "Steve, consider the hand taken and shook, because I've
+enough grime to muss up a regiment."
+
+"It won't bother me," I said.
+
+"Thanks, but it's still a gesture, and I appreciate it, but let's be
+sensible. I know you can wash, but let's shake later. What can I do for
+you?"
+
+"I'd like a first-hand account, Phil."
+
+"Not much to tell. Dad and I were pulling stumps over about a thousand
+feet from the wreck. We heard the racket. I am esper enough to dig that
+distance with clarity, so we knew we'd better bring along the block and
+tackle. The tractor wouldn't go through. So we came on the double, Dad
+rigged the tackle and hoisted and I took a running dive, grabbed and
+hauled you out before the whole thing went _Whoosh!_ We were both lucky,
+Steve."
+
+I grunted a bit but managed to nod with a smile.
+
+"I suppose you know that I'm still trying to find my fiancee?"
+
+"I'd heard tell," he said. He looked at me sharply. I'm a total blank as
+a telepath, like all espers, but I could tell what he was thinking.
+
+"Everybody is convinced that Catherine was not with me," I admitted.
+"But I'm not. I know she was."
+
+He shook his head slowly. "As soon as we heard the screech of brakes and
+rubber we esped the place," he said quietly. "We dug you, of course. But
+no one else. Even if she'd jumped as soon as that tree limb came into
+view, she could not have run far enough to be out of range. As for
+removing a bag, she'd have had to wait until the slam-bang was over to
+get it out, and by the time your car was finished rolling, Dad and I
+were on the way with help. She was not there, Steve."
+
+#You're a goddam liar!#
+
+Phillip Harrison did not move a muscle. He was blank telepathically. I
+was esping the muscles in his stomach, under his loose clothing, for
+that first tensing sign of anger, but nothing showed. He had not been
+reading my mind.
+
+I smiled thinly at Phil Harrison and shrugged.
+
+He smiled back sympathetically, but behind it I could see that he was
+wishing that I'd stop harping on a dead subject. "I sincerely wish I
+could be of help," he said. In that he was sincere. But somewhere,
+someone was not, and I wanted to find out who it was.
+
+The impasse looked as though it might go on forever unless I turned away
+and left. I had no desire to leave. Not that Phil could help me, but
+even though this was a dead end, I was loath to leave the place because
+it was the last place where I had been close to Catherine.
+
+The silence between us must have been a bit strained at this point, but
+luckily we had an interruption. I perceived motion, turned and caught
+sight of a woman coming along the road toward us.
+
+"My sister," said Phil. "Marian."
+
+Marian Harrison was quite a girl; if I'd not been emotionally tied to
+Catherine Lewis, I'd have been happy to invite myself in. Marian was
+almost as tall as I am, a dark, brown-haired woman with eyes of a
+startling, electricity colored blue. She was about twenty-two, young and
+healthy. Her skin was tanned toast brown so that the bright blue eyes
+fairly sparked out at you. Her red mouth made a pleasing blend with the
+tan of her skin and her teeth gleamed white against the dark when she
+smiled.
+
+Insultingly, I made some complimentary but impolite mental observations
+about her figure, but Marion did not appear to notice. She was no
+telepath.
+
+"You're Mr. Cornell," she said, "I remembered you," she said quietly.
+"Please believe us, Mr. Cornell, when we extend our sympathy."
+
+"Thanks," I said glumly. "Please understand me, Miss Harrison. I
+appreciate your sympathy, but what I need is action and information and
+answers. Once I get those, the sympathy won't be needed."
+
+"Of course I understand," she replied instantly. "We are all aware that
+sympathy is a poor substitute. All the world grieving with you doesn't
+turn a stitch to help you out of your trouble. All we can do is to wish,
+with you, that it hadn't happened."
+
+"That's the point," I said helplessly. "I don't even know what
+happened."
+
+"That makes it even worse," she said softly. Marian had a pleasant
+voice, throaty and low, that sounded intimate even when talking about
+something pragmatic. "I wish we could help you, Steve."
+
+"I wish someone could."
+
+She nodded. "They asked me about it, too, even though I was not present
+until afterward. They asked me," she said thoughtfully, "about the
+mental attitude of a woman running off to get married. I told them that
+I couldn't speak for your woman, but that I might be able to speak for
+me, putting myself in the same circumstances."
+
+She paused a moment, and her brother turned idly back to his tractor and
+fitted a small end wrench to a bolt-head and gave it a twist. He seemed
+to think that as long as Marian and I were talking, he could well afford
+to get along with his work. I agreed with him. I wanted information, but
+I did not expect the entire world to stop progress to help me. He spun
+the bolt and started on another, lost in his job while Marian went on:
+
+"I told them that your story was authentic--the one about the bridal
+nightgown." A very slight color came under the deep tan. "I told them
+that I have one, too, still in its wrapper, and that someday I'd be
+planning marriage and packing a go-away bag with the gown shaken out and
+then packed neatly. I told them that I'd be doing the same thing no
+matter whether we were having a formal church wedding with a four-alarm
+reception and all the trimmings or a quiet elopement such as you were. I
+told them that it was the essentials that count, not the trimmings and
+the tinsel. My questioner's remark was to the effect that either you
+were telling the truth, or that you had esped a woman about to marry and
+identified her actions with your own wishes."
+
+"I know which," I said with a sour smile. "It was both."
+
+Marian nodded. "Then they asked me if it were probable that a woman
+would take this step completely unprepared and I laughed at them. I told
+them that long before Rhine, women were putting their nuptial affairs in
+order about the time the gentleman was beginning to view marriage with
+an attitude slightly less than loathing, and that by the time he popped
+the question, she'd been practicing writing her name as 'Mrs.' and
+picking out the china-ware and prospective names for the children, and
+that if any woman had ever been so stunned by a proposal of marriage
+that she'd take off without so much as a toothbrush, no one in history
+had ever heard of her."
+
+"Then you begin to agree with me?"
+
+She shrugged. "Please," she said in that low voice, "don't ask me my
+opinion of your veracity. You believe it, but all the evidence lies
+against you. There was not a shred of woman-trace anywhere along your
+course, from the point along the road where you first caught sight of
+the limb that threw you to the place where you piled up. Nor was there a
+trace anywhere in a vast circle--almost a half mile they searched--from
+the crack-up. They had doctors of psi digging for footprints, shreds of
+clothing, everything. Not a trace."
+
+"But where did she go?" I cried, and when I say 'cried' I mean just
+that.
+
+Marian shook her head very slowly. "Steve," she said in a voice so low
+that I could hardly hear her over the faint shrill of bolts being
+unscrewed by her brother, "so far as we know, she was never here. Why
+don't you forget her--"
+
+I looked at her. She stood there, poised and a bit tensed as though she
+were trying to force some feeling of affectionate kinhood across the gap
+that separated us, as though she wanted to give me both physical and
+mental comfort despite the fact that we were strangers on a ten-minute
+first-meeting. There was distress in her face.
+
+"Forget her--?" I ground out. "I'd rather die!"
+
+"Oh Steve--no!" One hand went to her throat and the other came out to
+fasten around my forearm. Her grip was hard.
+
+I stood there wondering what to do next. Marian's grip on my arm relaxed
+and she stepped back.
+
+I pulled myself together. "I'm sorry," I told her honestly. "I'm putting
+you through a set of emotional hurdles by bringing my problems here. I'd
+better take them away."
+
+She nodded very slowly. "Please go. But please come back once you get
+yourself squared away, no matter how. We'd all like to see you when you
+aren't all tied up inside."
+
+Phil looked up from the guts of the tractor. "Take it easy, Steve," he
+said. "And remember that you do have friends here."
+
+Blindly I turned from them and stumbled back to my car. They were a pair
+of very fine people, firm, upright. Marian's grip on my arm had been no
+weaker than her sympathy, and Phil's less-emotional approach to my
+trouble was no less deep, actually. It was as strong as his good right
+arm, loosening the head bolts of a tractor engine with a small
+adjustable wrench.
+
+I'd be back. I wanted to see them again. I wanted to go back there with
+Catherine and introduce them to her. But I was definitely going to go
+back.
+
+I was quite a way toward home before I realized that I had not met the
+old man. I bet myself that Father Harrison was quite the firm, active
+patriarch.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+The days dragged slowly. I faced each morning hopefully at first, but as
+the days dragged on and on, I began to feel that each morning was
+opening another day of futility, to be barely borne until it was time to
+flop down in weariness. I faced the night in loneliness and in anger at
+my own inability to do something productive.
+
+I pestered the police until they escorted me to the door and told me
+that if I came again, they'd take me to another kind of door and loose
+thereafter the key. I shrugged and left disconsolately, because by that
+time I had been able to esp, page by page, the entire file that dealt
+with the case of "Missing Person: Lewis, Catherine," stamped "Inactive,
+but not Closed."
+
+I hated the words.
+
+But as the days dragged out, one after another, with no respite and no
+hope, my raw nervous system began to heal. It was probably a case of
+numbness; you maul your thumb with a hammer and it will hurt just so
+long before it stops.
+
+I was numb for a long time. I remember night after night, lying awake
+and staring into the darkness at the wall I knew was beside me, and I
+hated my esper because I wanted to project my mind out across some
+unknown space to reach for Catherine's mind. If we'd both been telepaths
+we could cross the universe to touch each other with that affectionate
+tenderness that mated telepaths always claim they have.
+
+Instead I found myself more aware of a clouded-veil perception of Marian
+Harrison as she took my arm and looked into my face on that day when I
+admitted that I found little worth living for.
+
+I knew what that meant--nothing. It was a case of my subconscious mind
+pointing out that the available present was more desirable than the
+unavailable not-present. At first I resented my apparent inconstancy in
+forming an esper projection of Marian Harrison when I was trying to
+project my blank telepathic inadequacy to Catherine. But as the weeks
+faded into the past, the shock and the frustration began to pale and I
+found Marian's projective image less and less an unwanted intrusion and
+more and more pleasant.
+
+I had two deeply depressed spells in those six weeks. At the end of the
+fourth week I received a small carton containing some of my personal
+junk that had been in Catherine's apartment. A man can't date his girl
+for weeks without dropping a few things like a cigarette lighter, a tie
+clip, one odd cuff-link, some papers, a few letters, some books, and
+stuff both valuable and worthless that had turned up as gifts for one
+reason or another. It was a shock to get this box and its arrival
+bounced me deep into a doldrum-period of three or four days.
+
+Then at the end of the sixth week I received a card from Dr. Thorndyke.
+It contained a lithograph in stereo of some scene in Yellowstone other
+than Old Faithful blowing its stack.
+
+On the message side was a cryptic note:
+
+     _Steve: I just drove along that road in the right side of the
+     picture. It reminded me of yours, so I'm writing because I want to
+     know how you are making out. I'll be at the Med-Center in a couple
+     of weeks, you can write me there.
+
+     Jim Thorndyke._
+
+I turned the postcard over and eyed it critically. Then I got it. Along
+the roadside was a tall ornamental standard of wrought iron. The same
+design as the road signs along that fatal highway of mine.
+
+I sat there with a magnifying glass on the roadsign; its stereo image
+standing up alongside the road in full color and solidity. It took me
+back to that moment when Catherine had wriggled against my side,
+thrilling me with her warmth and eagerness.
+
+That put me down a few days, too.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Another month passed. I'd come out of my shell quite a bit in the
+meantime. I now felt that I could walk in a bar and have a drink without
+wondering whether all the other people in the place were pointing at me.
+I'd cut myself off from all my previous friends, and I'd made no new
+friends in the weeks gone by. But I was getting more and more lonely and
+consequently more and more inclined to speak to people and want friends.
+
+The accident had paled from its original horror; the vital scene
+returned only infrequently. Catherine was assuming the position of a
+lost love rather than a sweetheart expected to return soon. I remembered
+the warmth of her arms and the eagerness of her kiss in a nostalgic way
+and my mind, especially when in a doze, would play me tricks. I would
+recall Catherine, but when she came into my arms, I'd be holding Marian,
+brown and tawny, with her electric blue eyes and her vibrant nature.
+
+But I did nothing about it. I knew that once I had asked Marian Harrison
+for a date I would be emotionally involved. And then if--no,
+when--Catherine turned up I would be torn between desires.
+
+I would wake up and call myself all sorts of a fool. I had seen Marian
+for a total of perhaps fifteen minutes--in the company of her brother.
+
+But eventually dreaming loses its sting just as futile waiting and
+searching does, and I awoke one morning in a long and involved debate
+between my id and my conscience. I decided at that moment that I would
+take that highway out and pay a visit to the Harrison farm. I was
+salving my slightly rusty conscience by telling myself that it was
+because I had never paid my respects to Father Harrison, but not too
+deep inside I knew that if Father were missing and Daughter were present
+I'd enjoy my visit to the farm with more relish.
+
+But my id took a licking because the doorbell rang about nine o'clock
+that morning and when I dug the doorstep I came up with two gentlemen
+wearing gold badges in leather folders in their jacket pockets.
+
+I opened the door because I couldn't have played absent to a team
+consisting of one esper and one telepath. They both knew I was home.
+
+"Mr. Cornell, we'll waste no time. We want to know how well you know
+Doctor James Thorndyke."
+
+I didn't blink at the bluntness of it. It is standard technique when an
+esper-telepath team go investigating. The telepath knew all about me,
+including the fact that I'd dug their wallets and identification cards,
+badges and the serial numbers of the nasty little automatics they
+carried. The idea was to drive the important question hard and first; it
+being impossible to not-think the several quick answers that pop through
+your mind. What I knew about Thorndyke was sketchy enough but they got
+it all because I didn't have any reason for covering up. I let them know
+that, too.
+
+Finally, #That's about all,# I thought. #Now--why?#
+
+The telepath half of the team answered. "Normally we wouldn't answer,
+Mr. Cornell, unless you said it aloud. But we don't mind letting you
+know which of us is the telepath this time. To answer, you are the last
+person to have received any message from Thorndyke."
+
+"I--what?"
+
+"That postcard. It was the last contact Thorndyke made with anyone. He
+has disappeared."
+
+"But--"
+
+"Thorndyke was due to arrive at The Medical Research Center in Marion,
+Indiana, three weeks ago. We've been tracking him ever since he failed
+to turn up. We've been able to retrace his meanderings very well up to a
+certain point in Yellowstone. There the trail stops. He had a telephoned
+reservation to a small hotel; there he dropped out of sight. Now, Mr.
+Cornell, may I see that postcard?"
+
+"Certainly." I got it for them. The esper took it over to the window and
+eyed it in the light, and as he did that I went over to stand beside him
+and together we espered that postcard until I thought the edges would
+start to curl. But if there were any codes, concealed writings or any
+other form of hidden meaning or message in or on that card, I didn't dig
+any.
+
+I gave up. I'm no trained investigator. But I knew that Thorndyke was
+fairly well acquainted with the depth of my perceptive sense, and he
+would not have concealed anything too deep for me.
+
+Then the esper shook his head. He handed me the card. "Not a trace."
+
+The telepath nodded. He looked at me and smiled sort of thin and
+strained. "We're naturally interested in you, Mr. Cornell. This seems to
+be the second disappearance. And you know nothing about either."
+
+"I know," I said slowly. The puzzle began to go around and around in my
+head again, all the way back to that gleaming road and the crack-up.
+
+"We'll probably be back, Mr. Cornell. You don't mind?"
+
+"Look," I told them rather firmly, "if this puzzle can be unwound, I'll
+be one of the happiest men on the planet. If I can do anything to help,
+just say the word."
+
+They left after that and so did I. I was still going to pay my visit to
+the Harrison farm. Another wild goose chase, but somewhere along this
+cockeyed row there was an angle. Honest people who are healthy and
+fairly happy with good prospects ahead of them do not just drop out of
+sight without a trace.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A couple of hours later I was making a good pace along the highway
+again. It was getting familiar to me.
+
+I could not avoid letting my perceptive sense rest on the sign as I
+drove past. Not long enough to put me in danger, but long enough to
+discover to my surprise that someone had taken the trouble to repair the
+broken spoke. Someone must have been a perfectionist. The break was so
+slight that it seemed like calling in a mechanic because the ashtray in
+the car is full.
+
+Then I noticed other changes that time had caused.
+
+The burned scar was fading in a growth of tall weeds. The limb of the
+tree that hung out over the scene, from which block and tackle had hung,
+was beginning to lose its smoke-blackened appearance. The block was gone
+from the limb.
+
+_Give us a year_, I thought, _and the only remaining scar will be the
+one on my mind, and even that will be fading_.
+
+I turned into the drive, wound around the homestead road, and pulled up
+in front of the big, rambling house.
+
+It looked bleak. The front lawn was a bit shaggy and there were some
+wisps of paper on the front porch. The venetian blinds were down and
+slatted shut behind closed windows. Since it was summer by now, the
+closed windows and the tight door, neither of which had flyscreens
+installed, quickly gave the fact away. The Harrisons were gone.
+
+Another disappearance?
+
+I turned quickly and drove to the nearest town and went to the post
+office.
+
+"I'm looking for the Harrison family," I told the man behind the wicket.
+
+"Why, they moved several weeks ago."
+
+"Moved?" I asked with a blank-sounding voice.
+
+The clerk nodded. Then he leaned forward and said in a confidential
+whisper, "Heard a rumor that the girl got a touch of that spacemen's
+disease."
+
+"Mekstrom's?" I blurted.
+
+The clerk looked at me as if I'd shouted a dirty word. "She was a fine
+girl," he said softly. "It's a shame."
+
+I nodded and he went into the back files. I tried to dig alone behind
+him, but the files were in a small dead area in the rear of the
+building. I swore under my breath although I'd expected to find files in
+dead areas. Just as Rhine Institute was opened, the Government combed
+the countryside for dead or cloudy areas for their secret and
+confidential files. There had been one mad claim-staking rush with the
+Government about six feet ahead of the rest of the general public,
+business and the underworld.
+
+He came back with a sorrowful look. "They left a concealed address," he
+said.
+
+I felt like flashing a twenty at him like a private eye did in the old
+tough-books, but I knew it wouldn't work. Rhine also made it impossible
+for a public official to take a bribe. So instead, I tried to look
+distressed.
+
+"This is extremely important. I'd say it was a matter of life and
+death."
+
+"I'm sorry. A concealed forwarding address is still concealed. If you
+must get in touch with them, you might drop them a letter to be
+forwarded. Then if they care to answer, they'll reply to your home."
+
+"Later," I told him. "I'll probably be back to mail it direct from
+here."
+
+He waved at the writing desk. I nodded and left.
+
+I drove back to the ex-Harrison Farm slowly, thinking it over.
+Wondering. People did not just go around catching Mekstrom's Disease,
+from what little I knew of it. And somehow the idea of Marian Harrison
+withering away or becoming a basket case, or maybe taking the painless
+way out was a thought that my mind kept avoiding except for occasional
+flashes of horror.
+
+I drove in toward the farmhouse again and parked in front of the
+verandah. I was not sure of why I was there except that I wanted to
+wander through it to see what I could find before I went back to the
+post-office to write that card or letter.
+
+The back of the house was locked with an old-fashioned slide bolt that
+was turned with what they used to call an "E" key. I shrugged, oiled my
+conscience and found a bit of bent wire. Probing a lock like that would
+have been easy for a total blank; with esper I lifted the simple keepers
+and slid back the bolt almost as swiftly as if I had used a proper key.
+
+This was no case of disappearance. In every one of the fourteen rooms
+were the unmistakable signs of a deliberate removal. Discarded stuff was
+mixed with the odds and ends of packing case materials, a scattered
+collection of temporary nails, a half-finished but never used box filled
+with old clothing.
+
+I pawed through this but found nothing, even though I separated it from
+the rest to help my esper dig it without interference.
+
+I roamed the house slowly letting my perception wander from point to
+point. I tried to time-dig the place but that was futile. I didn't have
+enough perception.
+
+I caught only one response. It was in one of the upper bedrooms. But
+then as I stopped in the room where Marian had slept, I began again to
+doubt my senses. It could have been esper, but it was more likely that
+I'd caught the dying traces of perfume.
+
+Then I suddenly realized that the entire premises were clear to me!
+
+An esper map of the world looked sort of like a mottled sky, with bright
+places and cloudy patches strewn in disorder across it. A mottled sky,
+except that the psi-pattern usually does not change. But this house had
+been in a murky area, if not dead. Now it was clear.
+
+I left the house and went to the big combination barn and garage. It was
+as unsatisfying as the house had been. Phillip Harrison, or someone, had
+had a workshop out there. I found the bench and a small table where
+bolt-holes, oil marks, and other traces said that there had been one of
+those big combination woodworking machines there, the kind that combines
+circular saw, drill, lathe, planer, router, dado, and does everything.
+There had been some metal-working stuff there, too, but nothing as
+elaborate as the woodshop. Mostly things like hacksaws and an electric
+drill, and a circular scar where a blowtorch had been sitting.
+
+I don't know why I kept on standing there esping the abandoned set-up.
+Maybe it was because my esper dug the fact that there was something
+there that I should know about, but which was so minute or remote that
+the impression did not come through. I stood there puzzled at my own
+reluctance to leave until something satisfied that almost imperceptible
+impression.
+
+Idly I leaned down and picked up a bit of metal from the floor and
+fumbled it in my hand nervously. I looked around the place with my eyes
+and saw nothing. I gave the whole garage a thorough scanning with my
+esper and got zero for my trouble.
+
+Finally I snarled at myself for being an imbecile, and left.
+
+Everyone has done what I did, time and time again. I do not recall
+anything of my walk back to the car, lost in a whirl of thoughts, ideas,
+plans and questions. I would probably have driven all the way back to my
+apartment with my mind in that whirligig, driving by habit and training,
+but I was shaken out of it because I could not start my car by poking
+that bit of metal in the lock. It did not fit.
+
+I laughed, a bit ashamed of my preoccupation, and flung the bit of metal
+into the grass, poked my key in the lock--
+
+And then I was out pawing the grass for that piece of metal.
+
+For the small piece of metal I had found on the floor of the abandoned
+workshop was the spoke of that road sign that had been missing when
+Catherine and I cracked up!
+
+I drove out along the highway and stopped near one of the standards. I
+esped the sign, compared my impression against my eyesight. I made sure.
+
+That bit of metal, a half inch long and a bit under a quarter inch in
+diameter, with both ends faintly broken-ragged, was identical in size
+and shape to the unbroken spokes in the sign!
+
+Then I noticed something else. The trefoil ornament in the middle did
+not look the same as I recalled them. I took Thorndyke's card out of my
+pocket and looked at the stereo. I compared the picture against the real
+thing before me and I knew that I was right.
+
+The trefoil gizmo was a take-off on the fleur-de-lis or the Boy Scout
+Tenderfoot badge, or the design they use to signify North on a compass.
+But the lower flare of the leaves was wider than any of the more
+familiar emblems; almost as wide as the top. It took a comparison to
+tell the difference between one of them right-side-up and another one
+upside-down. One assumes for this design that the larger foils are
+supposed to be up. If that were so, then the ones along that road out
+there in or near Yellowstone were right-side-up, while the ones along my
+familiar highway were upside-down.
+
+I goaded myself. #Memory, have these things been turned or were they
+always upside-down?#
+
+The last thing I did as I turned off the highway was to stop and let my
+esper dig that design once more. I covered the design itself, let my
+perception roam along the spokes, and then around the circlet that
+supported the spokes that held the trefoil emblem.
+
+Oh, it was not obvious. It was designed in, so to speak. If I were asked
+even today for my professional opinion I would have to admit that the
+way the circlet snapped into the rest of the ornamental scrollwork was a
+matter of good assembly design, and not a design deliberately created so
+that the emblem could be turned upside down.
+
+In fact, if it had not been for that tiny, broken spoke I found on the
+floor of the Harrison garage, never in a million years would I have
+considered these road signs significant.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At the post office I wrote a letter to Phillip Harrison:
+
+     _Dear Phil:_
+
+     _I was by your old place today and was sorry to find that you had
+     moved. I'd like to get in touch with you again. If I may ask,
+     please send me your forwarding address. I'll keep it concealed if
+     you like, or I'll reply through the post office, concealed
+     forward._
+
+     _As an item of interest, did you know that your house has lost its
+     deadness? A medium-equipped esper can dig it with ease. Have you
+     ever heard of the psi-pattern changing before?_
+
+     _Ah, and another item, that road sign with the busted spoke has
+     been replaced. You must be a bum shot, not to hit that curlicue in
+     the middle. I found the spoke you hit on the floor of your garage,
+     if you'd like it for a souvenir of one close miss._
+
+     _Please write and let me know how things are going. Rumor has it
+     that Marian contracted Mekstrom's and if you will pardon my
+     mentioning a delicate subject, I am doing so because I really want
+     to help if I am able. After all, no matter how lightly you hold it,
+     I still owe you my life. This is a debt I do not intend to forget._
+
+     _Sincerely,_
+
+     _Steve Cornell._
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+I did not go to the police.
+
+They were sick of my face and already considering me a candidate for the
+paranoid ward. All I would have to do is go roaring into the station to
+tell them that I had uncovered some deep plot where the underground was
+using ornamental road signs to conceal their own network of roads and
+directions, and that the disappearance of Catherine Lewis, Dr. Thorndyke
+and the removal of the Harrisons were all tied together.
+
+Instead, I closed my apartment and told everyone that I was going to
+take a long, rambling tourist jaunt to settle my nerves; that I thought
+getting away from the scene might finish the job that time and rest had
+started.
+
+Then I started to drive. I drove for several days, not attempting to
+pace off miles, but covering a lot of aimless-direction territory. I was
+just as likely to spend four hours going North on one highway, and then
+take the next four coming back South on a parallel highway, and
+sometimes I even came back to the original starting place. After a week
+I had come no farther West than across that sliver of West Virginia into
+Eastern Ohio. And in Eastern Ohio I saw some more of the now familiar
+and suspicious road signs.
+
+The emblem was right side up, and the signs looked as though they had
+not been up long.
+
+I followed that road for seventy-five miles, and as I went the signs
+kept getting newer and newer until I finally came to a truck loaded with
+pipe, hardware, and ornamental ironwork. Leading the truck was one of
+those iron mole things.
+
+I watched the automatic gear hoist one of the old pipe and white and
+black enamel roadsigns up by its roots, and place it on a truck full of
+discards. I watched the mole drive a corkscrew blade into the ground
+with a roaring of engine and bucking of the truck. It paused, pulled
+upward to bring out the screw and its load of dirt, stones and gravel.
+The crew placed one of the new signs in the cradle and I watched the
+machine set the sign upright, pour the concrete, tamp down the earth,
+and then move along down the road.
+
+There was little point in asking questions of the crew, so I just took
+off and drove to Columbus as hard as I could make it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Shined, cleaned, polished, and very conservatively dressed, I presented
+myself to the State Commissioner of Roads and Highways. I toyed briefly
+with the idea of representing myself as a minor official from some
+distant state like Alaska or the Virgin Islands, inquiring about these
+signs for official reasons. But then I knew that if I bumped into a hot
+telepath I'd be in the soup. On the other hand, mere curiosity on the
+part of a citizen, well oiled with compliments, would get me at the very
+least a polite answer.
+
+The Commissioner's fifth-under-secretary bucked me down the hall;
+another office bucked me upstairs. A third buck-around brought me to the
+Department of Highways Marking and Road Maps.
+
+A sub-secretary finally admitted that he might be able to help me. His
+name was Houghton. But whether he was telepath or esper did not matter
+because the Commission building was constructed right in the middle of a
+dead area.
+
+I still played it straight. I told him I was a citizen of New York,
+interested in the new road signs, Ohio was to be commended, et cetera.
+
+"I'm glad you feel that way," he said beaming.
+
+"I presume these signs cost quite a bit more than the stark, black and
+white enamel jobs?"
+
+"On the contrary," he said with pride. "They might, but mass-production
+methods brought the cost down. You see, the enamel jobs, while we buy
+several thousand of the plates for any highway, must be set up, stamped
+out, enamelled, and so on. The new signs are all made in one plant as
+they are needed; I don't suppose you know, but the highway number and
+any other information is put on the plate from loose, snap-in letters.
+That means we can buy so many thousand of this or that letter or number,
+and the necessary base plates and put them together as needed. They
+admitted that they were still running at a loss, but if they could get
+enough states interested, they'd eventually come out even, and maybe
+they could reduce the cost. Why, they even have a contingent-clause in
+the contract stating that if the cost were lowered, they would make a
+rebate to cover it. That's so the first users will not bide their time
+instead of buying now."
+
+He went on and on and on like any bureaucrat. I was glad we were in a
+dead area because he'd have thrown me out of his office for what I was
+thinking.
+
+Eventually Mr. Houghton ran down and I left.
+
+I toyed around with the idea of barging in on the main office of the
+company but I figured that might be too much like poking my head into a
+hornet's nest.
+
+I pocketed the card he gave me from the company, and I studied the
+ink-fresh road map, which he had proudly supplied. It pointed out in a
+replica panel of the fancy signs, that the State of Ohio was beautifying
+their highways with these new signs at no increased cost to the
+taxpayer, and that the dates in green on the various highways here and
+there gave the dates when the new signs would be installed. The bottom
+of the panel gave the Road Commissioner's name in boldface with
+Houghton's name below in slightly smaller print.
+
+I smiled. Usually I get mad at signs that proclaim that such and such a
+tunnel is being created by Mayor So-and-so, as if the good mayor were
+out there with a shovel and hoe digging the tunnel. But this sort of
+thing would have been a worthy cause if it hadn't been for the sinister
+side.
+
+I selected a highway that had been completed toward Cincinnati and made
+my way there with no waste of time.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The road was new and it was another beaut. The signs led me on, mile
+after mile and sign after sign.
+
+I did not know what I was following, and I was not sure I knew what I
+was looking for. But I was on the trail of something and a bit of
+activity, both mental and physical, after weeks of blank-wall
+frustration made my spirits rise and my mental equipment sharper. The
+radio in the car was yangling with hillbilly songs, the only thing you
+can pick up in Ohio, but I didn't care. I was looking for something
+significant.
+
+I found it late in the afternoon about half-way between Dayton and
+Cincinnati. One of the spokes was missing.
+
+Fifty yards ahead was a crossroad.
+
+I hauled in with a whine of rubber and brakes, and sat there trying to
+reason out my next move by logic. Do I turn with the missing spoke, or
+do I turn with the one that is not missing?
+
+Memory came to my aid. The "ten o'clock" spoke had been missing back
+there near the Harrison farm. The Harrisons had lived on the left side
+of the highway. One follows the missing spoke. Here the "two o'clock"
+spoke was missing, so I turned to the right along the crossroad until I
+came to another sign that was complete.
+
+Then, wondering, I U-turned and drove back across the main highway and
+drove for about five miles watching the signs as I went. The ones on my
+right had that trefoil emblem upside down. The ones on my left were
+right side up. The difference was so small that only someone who knew
+the significance would distinguish one from the other. So far as I could
+reason out, it meant that what I sought was in the other direction. When
+the emblem was upside down I was going away from, and when right side
+up, I was going toward.
+
+Away from or toward what?
+
+I U-turned again and started following the signs.
+
+Twenty miles beyond the main highway where I'd seen the sign that
+announced the turn, I came upon another missing spoke. This indicated a
+turn to the left, and so I slowed down until I came upon a homestead
+road leading off toward a farmhouse.
+
+I turned, determined to make like a man lost and hoping that I'd not
+bump into a telepath.
+
+A few hundred yards in from the main road I came upon a girl who was
+walking briskly toward me. I stopped. She looked at me with a quizzical
+smile and asked me if she could be of any help.
+
+Brashly, I nodded. "I'm looking for some old friends of mine," I said.
+"Haven't seen them for years. Named Harrison."
+
+She smiled up at me. "I don't know of any Harrison around here." Her
+voice had the Ohio twang.
+
+"No?"
+
+"Just where do they live?"
+
+I eyed her carefully, hoping my glance did not look like a wolf eyeing a
+lamb. "Well, they gave me some crude directions. Said I was to turn at
+the main highway onto this road and come about twenty miles and stop on
+the left side when I came upon one of those new road signs where someone
+had shot one of the spokes out."
+
+"Spokes? Left side--" She mumbled the words and was apparently mulling
+the idea around in her mind. She was not more than about seventeen,
+sun-tanned and animal-alive from living in the open. I wondered about
+her. As far as I was concerned, she was part and parcel of this whole
+mysterious affair. No matter what she said or did, it was an obvious
+fact that the hidden road sign directions pointed to this farm. And
+since no one at seventeen can be kept in complete ignorance of the
+business of the parents, she must be aware of some of the ramifications.
+
+After some thought she said, "No, I don't know of any Harrisons."
+
+I grunted. I was really making the least of this, now that I'd arrived.
+
+"Your folks at home?" I asked.
+
+"Yes," she replied.
+
+"I think I'll drop in and ask them, too."
+
+She shrugged. "Go ahead," she said with the noncommittal attitude of
+youth. "You didn't happen to notice whether the mailbox flag was up, did
+you?"
+
+I hadn't, but I espied back quickly and said, "No, it isn't."
+
+"Then the mailman hasn't been to deliver," she said. "Mind if I ride
+back to the house with you, mister?"
+
+"Hop in."
+
+She smiled brightly and got in quickly. I took off down the road toward
+the house at an easy pace. She seemed interested in the car, and finally
+said, "I've never been in a car like this before. New?"
+
+"Few weeks," I responded.
+
+"Fast?"
+
+"If you want to make it go fast. She'll take this rocky road at fifty,
+if anyone wants to be so foolish."
+
+"Let's see."
+
+I laughed. "Nobody but an idiot would tackle a road like this at fifty."
+
+"I like to go fast. My brother takes it at sixty."
+
+That, so far as I was concerned, was youthful exaggeration. I was busy
+telling her all the perils of fast driving when a rabbit came barrelling
+out of the bushes along one side and streaked across in front of me.
+
+I twitched the wheel. The car went out of the narrow road and up on the
+shoulder, tilting quite a bit. Beyond the rabbit I swung back into the
+road, but not before the youngster had grabbed my arm to keep from being
+tossed all over the front seat.
+
+Her grip was like a hydraulic vise. My arm went numb and my fingers went
+limp on the wheel. I struggled with my left hand to spin the wheel to
+keep on the narrow, winding road and my foot hit the brake to bring the
+car down, but fast.
+
+Taking a deep breath as we stopped, I shook my right hand by holding it
+in my left at the wrist. I was a mass of tingling pins and needles
+because she had grabbed me just above the elbow. It felt as though it
+would have taken only a trifle more to pinch my arm off and leave me
+with a bloody stump.
+
+"Sorry, mister," she said breathlessly, her eyes wide open. Her face was
+white around the corners of the mouth and at the edges of her nose. The
+whiteness of the flesh under the deep tan gave her a completely
+frightened look, far more than the shake-up could have produced.
+
+I reached over and took her hand. "That's a mighty powerful grip you--"
+
+The flesh of her hand was hard and solid. Not the meaty solidity of good
+tone, fine training and excellent health. It was the solidity of a--all
+I could think of at the time was a green cucumber. I squeezed a bit and
+the flesh gave way only a trifle. I rubbed my thumb over her palm and
+found it solid-hard instead of soft and yielding.
+
+I wondered.
+
+I had never seen a case of Mekstrom's Disease--before.
+
+I looked down at the hand and said, "Young lady, do you realize that you
+have an advanced case of Mekstrom's Disease?"
+
+She eyed me coldly. "Now," she said in a hard voice. "I know you'll come
+in."
+
+Something in my make-up objects violently to being ordered around by a
+slip of a girl. I balance off at about one-sixty. I guessed her at about
+two-thirds of that, say one-ten or thereabouts--
+
+"One-eight," she said levelly.
+
+#A telepath!#
+
+"Yes," she replied calmly. "And I don't mind letting you know it, so
+you'll not try anything stupid."
+
+#I'm getting the heck out of here!#
+
+"No, you're not. You are coming in with me."
+
+"Like heck!" I exploded.
+
+"Don't be silly. You'll come in. Or shall I lay one along your jaw and
+carry you?"
+
+I had to try something, anything, to get free. Yet--
+
+"Now you're being un-bright," she told me insolently. "You should know
+that you can't plan any surprise move with a telepath. And if you try a
+frontal attack I'll belt you so cold they'll have to put you in the oven
+for a week."
+
+I just let her ramble for a few seconds because when she was rattling
+this way she couldn't put her entire mental attention on my thoughts. So
+while she was yaking it off, I had an idea that felt as though it might
+work.
+
+She shut up like a clam when she realized that her mouthing had given me
+a chance to think, and I went into high gear with my perception:
+
+#Not bad--for a kid. Growing up fast. Been playing hookey from momma,
+leaving off your panties like the big girls do. I can tell by the
+elastic cord marks you had 'em on not long ago.#
+
+Seventeeners have a lot more modesty than they like to admit. She was
+stunned by my cold-blooded catalog of her body just long enough for me
+to make a quick lunge across her lap to the door handle on her side.
+
+I flipped it over and gave her a shove at the same time. She went bottom
+over appetite in a sprawl that would have jarred the teeth loose in a
+normal body and might have cracked a few bones. But she landed on the
+back of her neck, rolled and came to her feet like a cat.
+
+I didn't wait to close the door. I just tromped on the go-pedal and the
+car leaped forward with a jerk that slammed the door for me. I roared
+forward and left her just as she was making another grab.
+
+How I hoped to get out of there I did not know. All I wanted was
+momentary freedom to think. I turned this way and that to follow the
+road until I came to the house. I left the road, circled the house with
+the turbine screaming like a banshee and the car taking the corners on
+the outside wheels. I skidded into a turn like a racing driver and
+ironed my wheels out flat on the takeaway, rounded another corner and
+turned back into the road again going the other way.
+
+She was standing there waiting for me as I pelted past at a good sixty,
+and she reached out one girder-strong arm, latched onto the frame of the
+open window on my side, and swung onto the half-inch trim along the
+bottom of the car-body like a switchman hooking a freight car.
+
+She reached for the steering wheel with her free hand.
+
+I knew what was to happen next. She'd casually haul and I'd go off the
+road into a tree or pile up in a ditch, and while the smoke was clearing
+out of my mind, she'd be untangling me from the wreck and carting me
+over her shoulder, without a scratch to show for her adventure.
+
+I yanked the wheel--whip! whap!--cutting an arc. I slammed past a tree,
+missing it by half an inch. I wiped her off the side of the car like a
+mailbag is clipped from the fast express by the catch-hook.
+
+I heard a cry of "Whoof!" as her body hit the trunk of the tree. But as
+I regained the road and went racing on to safety, I saw in the rear view
+mirror that she had bounced off the tree, sprawled a bit, caught her
+balance, and was standing in the middle of the road, shaking her small
+but very dangerous fist at my tail license plate.
+
+I didn't stop driving at one-ten until I was above Dayton again. Then I
+paused along the road to take stock.
+
+Stock? What the hell did I know, really?
+
+I'd uncovered and confirmed the fact that there was some secret
+organization that had a program that included their own highway system,
+concealed within the confines of the United States. I was almost certain
+by this time that they had been the prime movers in the disappearance of
+Catherine and Dr. Thorndyke. They--
+
+I suddenly re-lived the big crack-up.
+
+Willingly now, no longer rejecting the memory, I followed my
+recollection as Catherine and I went along that highway at a happy pace.
+With care I recalled every detail of Catherine, watching the road
+through my mind and eyes, how she'd mentioned the case of the missing
+spoke, and how I'd projected back to perceive that which I had not been
+conscious of.
+
+Reminding myself that it was past, I went through it again,
+deliberately. The fallen limb that blocked the road, my own horror as
+the wheels hit it. The struggle to regain control of the careening car.
+
+As a man watching a motion picture, I watched the sky and the earth turn
+over and over, and I heard my voice mouthing wordless shouts of fear.
+Catherine's cry of pain and fright came, and I listened as my mind
+reconstructed it this time without wincing. Then the final crash, the
+horrid wave of pain and the sear of the flash-fire. I went through my
+own horror and self condemnation, and my concern over Catherine. I
+didn't shut if off. I waded through it.
+
+Now I remembered something else.
+
+Something that any normal, sensible mind would reject as an
+hallucination. Beyond any shadow of a doubt there had been no time for a
+man to rig a block and tackle on a tree above a burning automobile in
+time to get the trapped victims out alive. And even more certain it was
+that no normal man of fifty would have had enough strength to lift a car
+by its front bumper while his son made a rush into the flames.
+
+That tackle had been rigged and burned afterward. But who would reject a
+block and tackle in favor of an impossibly strong man? No, with the
+tackle in sight, the recollection of a man lifting that overturned
+automobile like a weight lifter pressing up a bar bell would be buried
+in any mind as a rank hallucination. Then one more item came driving
+home hard. So hard that I almost jumped when the idea crossed my mind.
+
+Both Catherine and Dr. Thorndyke had been telepaths.
+
+A telepath close to any member of his underground outfit would divine
+their purpose, come to know their organization, and begin to grasp the
+fundamentals of their program. Such a person would be dangerous.
+
+On the other hand, an esper such as myself could be turned aside with
+bland remarks and a convincing attitude. I knew that I had no way of
+telling lie from truth and that made my problem a lot more difficult.
+
+From the facts that I did have, something smelled of overripe seafood.
+Government and charities were pouring scads of dough into a joint called
+the Medical Research Center. To hear the scholars of medicine tell it,
+Mekstrom's Disease was about the last human frailty that hadn't been
+licked to a standstill. They boasted that if a victim of practically
+anything had enough life left in him to crawl to a telephone and use it,
+his life could be saved. They grafted well. I'd heard tales of things
+like fingers, and I know they were experimenting on hands, arms and legs
+with some success. But when it came to Mekstrom's they were stopped
+cold. Therefore the Medical Research Center received a walloping batch
+of money for that alone; all the money that used to go to the various
+heart, lung, spine and cancer funds. It added up well.
+
+But the Medical Research Center seemed unaware that some group had
+solved their basic problem.
+
+From the books I've read I am well aware of one of the fundamental
+principles of running an underground: _Keep it underground!_ The Commie
+menace in these United States might have won out in the middle of the
+century if they'd been able to stay a secret organization. So the
+Highways in Hiding could stay underground and be an efficient
+organization only until someone smoked them out.
+
+That one was going to be me.
+
+But I needed an aide-de-camp. Especially and specifically I needed a
+trained telepath, one who would listen to my tale and not instantly howl
+for the nut-hatch attendants. The F.B.I. were all trained investigators
+and they used esper-telepath teams all the time. One dug the joint while
+the other dug the inhabitant, which covered the situation to a
+faretheewell.
+
+It would take time to come up with a possible helper. So I spent the
+next hour driving toward Chicago, and by the time I'd crossed the
+Ohio-Indiana line and hit Richmond, I had a plan laid out. I placed a
+call to New York and within a few minutes I was talking to Nurse Farrow.
+
+I'll not go into detail because there was a lot of mish-mash that is not
+particularly interesting and a lot more that covered my tracks since I'd
+parted company with her on the steps of the hospital. I did not, of
+course, mention my real purpose over the telephone and Miss Farrow could
+not read my mind from New York.
+
+The upshot of the deal was that I felt that I needed a nurse for a
+while, not that I was ill, but that I felt a bit woozy now and then
+because I hadn't learned to slow down. I worked too fast and too long
+and my condition was not up to it yet. This Miss Farrow allowed as being
+quite possible. I repeated my offer to pay her at the going prices for
+registered nurses with a one-month guarantee, paid in advance. That
+softened her quite a bit. Then I added that I'd videograph her a check
+large enough to cover the works plus a round trip ticket. She should
+come out and have a look, and if she weren't satisfied, she could return
+without digging into her own pocket. All she'd lose was one day, and it
+might be a bit of a vacation if she enjoyed flying in a jetliner at
+sixty thousand feet.
+
+The accumulation of offers finally sold her and she agreed to
+arrange a leave of absence. She'd meet me in the morning of the
+day-after-tomorrow, at Central Airport in Chicago.
+
+I videographed the check and then took off again, confident that I'd be
+able to sell her on the idea of being the telepath half of my amateur
+investigation team.
+
+Then because I needed some direct information, I turned West and crossed
+the line into Indiana, heading toward Marion. So far I had a lot of
+well-placed suspicions, but until I was certain, I could do no more than
+postulate ideas. I had to know definitely how to identify Mekstrom's
+Disease, or at least the infected flesh. I have a fairly good recall;
+all I needed now was to have someone point to a Case and say flatly that
+this was a case of Mekstrom's Disease. Then I'd know whether what I'd
+seen in Ohio was actually one hundred percent Mekstrom.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+I walked into the front office with a lot of self-assurance. The Medical
+Center was a big, rambling place with a lot of spread-out one- and
+two-story buildings that looked so much like "Hospital" that no one in
+the world would have mistaken them for anything else. The main building
+was by the road, the rest spread out behind as far as I could see;
+beyond my esper range even though the whole business was set in one of
+the clearest psi areas that I'd even been in.
+
+I was only mildly worried about telepaths. In the first place, the only
+thing I had to hide was my conviction about a secret organization and
+how part of it functioned. In the second place, the chances were good
+that few, if any, telepaths were working there, if the case of Dr.
+Thorndyke carried any weight. That there were some telepaths, I did not
+doubt, but these would not be among the high-powered help.
+
+So I sailed in and faced the receptionist, who was a good-looking
+chemical-type blonde with a pale skin, lovely complexion and figure to
+match. She greeted me with a glacial calm and asked my business.
+
+Brazenly I lied. "I'm a freelance writer and I'm looking for material."
+
+"Have you an assignment?" she asked without a trace of interest in the
+answer.
+
+"Not this time. I'm strictly freelance. I like it better this way
+because I can write whatever I like."
+
+Her glacial air melted a bit at the inference that my writing had not
+been in vain. "Where have you been published?" she asked.
+
+I made a fast stab in the dark, aiming in a direction that looked safe.
+"Last article was one on the latest archeological findings in Assyria.
+Got my source material direct from the Oriental Institute in Chicago."
+
+"Too bad I missed it," she said, looking regretful. I had to grin, I'd
+carefully avoided giving the name of the publication and the supposed
+date. She went on, "I suppose you would not be happy with the usual
+press release?"
+
+"Handouts contain material, all right, but they're so confounded trite
+and impersonal. People prefer to read anecdotes about the people rather
+than a listing of facts and figures."
+
+She nodded at that. "Just a moment," she said. Then she addressed her
+telephone in a voice that I couldn't hear. When she finished, she smiled
+in a warmish-type manner as if to indicate that she'd gone all out in my
+behalf and that I'd be a heel to forget it. I nodded back and tried to
+match the tooth-paste-ad smile. Then the door opened and a man came in
+briskly.
+
+He was a tall man, as straight as a ramrod, with a firm jaw and a
+close-clipped moustache. He had an air like a thin-man's Captain Bligh.
+When he spoke, his voice was as clipped and precise as his moustache; in
+fact it was so precise that it seemed almost mechanical.
+
+"I am Dr. Lyon Sprague," he clipped. "What may I do for you?"
+
+"I'm Steve Cornell," I said. "I'm here after source material for a
+magazine article about Mekstrom's Disease. I'd prefer not to take my
+material from a handout."
+
+"Do you hope to get more?" he demanded.
+
+"I usually do. I've seen your handouts; I could get as much by taking
+last year's medical encyclopedia. Far too dry, too uninteresting, too
+impersonal."
+
+"Just exactly what do you have in mind?"
+
+I eyed him with speculation. Here was not a man who would take kindly to
+imaginative conjecture. So Dr. Lyon Sprague was not the man I'd like to
+talk to. With an inward smile, I said, "I have a rather new idea about
+Mekstrom's that I'd like to discuss with the right party."
+
+He looked down at me, although our eyes were on the same level. "I doubt
+that any layman could possibly come up with an idea that has not been
+most thoroughly discussed here among the research staff."
+
+"In cold words you feel that no untrained lunk has a right to have an
+idea."
+
+He froze. "I did not say that."
+
+"You implied, at least, that suggestions from outsiders were not
+welcome. I begin to understand why the Medical Center has failed to get
+anywhere with Mekstrom's in the past twenty years."
+
+"What do you mean?" he snapped.
+
+"Merely that it is the duty of all scientists to listen to every
+suggestion and to discard it only after it has been shown wrong."
+
+"Such as--?" he said coldly, with a curl of his eyebrows.
+
+"Well, just for instance, suppose some way were found to keep a victim
+alive during the vital period, so that he would end up a complete
+Mekstrom Human."
+
+"The idea is utterly fantastic. We have no time for such idle
+speculation. There is too much foggy thinking in the world already. Why,
+only last week we had a Velikovsky Adherent tell us that Mekstrom's had
+been predicted in the Bible. There are still people reporting flying
+saucers, you know. We have no time for foolish notions or utter
+nonsense."
+
+"May I quote you?"
+
+"Of course not," he snapped stiffly. "I'm merely pointing out that
+non-medical persons cannot have the grasp--"
+
+The door opened again and a second man entered. The new arrival had
+pleasant blue eyes, a van dyke beard, and a good-natured air of
+self-confidence and competence. "May I cut in?" he said to Dr. Sprague.
+
+"Certainly. Mr. Cornell, this is Scholar Phelps, Director of the Center.
+Scholar Phelps, this is Mr. Steve Cornell, a gentleman of the press," he
+added in a tone of voice that made the identification a sort of nasty
+name. "Mr. Cornell has an odd theory about Mekstrom's Disease that he
+intends to publish unless we can convince him that it is not possible."
+
+"Odd theory?" asked Scholar Phelps with some interest. "Well, if Mr.
+Cornell can come up with something new, I'll be most happy to hear him
+out."
+
+Dr. Lyon Sprague decamped with alacrity. Scholar Phelps smiled after
+him, then turned to me and said, "Dr. Sprague is a diligent worker,
+businesslike and well-informed, but he lacks the imagination and the
+sense of humor that makes a man brilliant in research. Unfortunately,
+Dr. Sprague cannot abide anything that is not laid out as neat as an
+interlocking tile floor. Now, Mr. Cornell, how about this theory of
+yours?"
+
+"First," I replied, "I'd like to know how come you turn up in the nick
+of time."
+
+He laughed good-naturedly. "We always send Dr. Sprague out to interview
+visitors. If the visitor can be turned away easily, all is well and
+quiet. Dr. Sprague can do the job with ease. But if the visitor, like
+yourself, Mr. Cornell, proposes something that distresses the good Dr.
+Sprague and will not be loftily dismissed, Dr. Sprague's blood pressure
+goes up. We all keep a bit of esper on his nervous system and when the
+fuse begins to blow, we come out and effect a double rescue."
+
+I laughed with him. Apparently the Medical Center staff enjoyed needling
+Dr. Sprague. "Scholar Phelps, before I get into my theory, I'd like to
+know more about Mekstrom's Disease. I may not be able to use it in my
+article, but any background material works well with writers of fact
+articles."
+
+"You're quite right. What would you like to know?"
+
+"I've heard, too many times, that no one knows anything at all about
+Mekstrom's. This is unbelievable, considering that you folks have been
+working on it for some twenty years."
+
+He nodded. "We have some, but it's precious little."
+
+"It seems to me that you could analyze the flesh--"
+
+He smiled. "We have. The state of analytical chemistry is well advanced.
+We could, I think, take a dry scraping out of the cauldron used by
+MacBeth's witches, and determine whether Shakespeare had reported the
+formula correctly. Now, young man, if you think that something is added
+to the human flesh to make it Mekstrom's Flesh, you are wrong. Standard
+analysis shows that the flesh is composed of exactly the same chemicals
+that normal flesh contains, in the same proportion. Nothing is added,
+as, for instance, in the case of calcification."
+
+"Then what is the difference?"
+
+"The difference lies in the structure. By X-ray crystallographic method,
+we have determined that Mekstrom's Flesh is a micro-crystalline
+formation, interlocked tightly." Scholar Phelps looked at me
+thoughtfully. "Do you know much about crystallography?"
+
+As a mechanical engineer I did, but as a writer of magazine articles I
+felt I should profess some ignorance, so I merely said that I knew a
+little about the subject.
+
+"Well, Mr. Cornell, you may know that in the field of solid geometry
+there are only five possible regular polyhedrons. Like the laws of
+topology that state that no more than four colors need be used to print
+a map on a flat surface, or that no more than seven colors are required
+to print separate patches on a toroid, the laws of solid geometry prove
+that no more than five regular polyhedrons are possible. Now in
+crystallography there are only thirty-two possible classes of crystal
+lattice construction. Of these only thirty have ever been discovered in
+nature. Yet we know how the other two would appear if they did emerge in
+natural formation."
+
+I knew it all right but I made scribblings in my notebooks as if the
+idea were of interest. Scholar Phelps waited patiently until I'd made
+the notation.
+
+"Now, Mr. Cornell, here comes the shock. Mekstrom's Flesh is one of the
+other two classes."
+
+This was news to me and I blinked.
+
+Then his face faded into a solemn expression. "Unfortunately," he said
+in a low voice, "knowing how a crystal should form does not help us much
+in forming one to that class. We have no real control over the
+arrangement of atoms in a crystal lattice. We can prevent the crystal
+formation, we can control the size of the crystal as it forms. But we
+cannot change the crystal into some other class."
+
+"I suppose it's sort of like baking a cake. Once the ingredients are
+mixed, the cake can be big or small or shaped to fit the pan, or you can
+spoil it complete. But if you mix devil's food, it either comes out
+devil's food or nothing."
+
+"An amusing analogy and rather correct. However I prefer the one used
+years ago by Dr. Willy Ley, who observed that analysis is fine, but you
+can't learn how a locomotive is built by melting it down and analyzing
+the mess."
+
+Then he went on again. "To get back to Mekstrom's Disease and what we
+know about it. We know that the crawl goes at about a sixty-fourth of an
+inch per hour. If, for instance, you turned up here with a trace on your
+right middle finger, the entire first joint would be Mekstrom's Flesh in
+approximately three days. Within two weeks your entire middle finger
+would be solid. Without anesthesia we could take a saw and cut off a bit
+for our research."
+
+"No feeling?"
+
+"None whatever. The joints knit together, the arteries become as hard as
+steel tubing and the heart cannot function properly--not that the heart
+cares about minor conditions such as the arteries in the extremities,
+but as the Mekstrom infection crawls up the arm toward the shoulder the
+larger arteries become solid and then the heart cannot drive the blood
+through them in its accustomed fashion. It gets like an advanced case of
+arteriosclerosis. Eventually the infection reaches and immobilizes the
+shoulder; this takes about ninety days. By this time, the other
+extremities have also become infected and the crawl is coming up all
+four limbs."
+
+He looked at me very solemnly at that. "The rest is not pretty. Death
+comes shortly after that. I can almost say that he is blessed who
+catches Mekstrom's in the left hand for them the infection reaches the
+heart before it reaches other parts. Those whose initial infection is in
+the toes are particularly cursed, because the infection reaches the
+lower parts of the body. I believe you can imagine the result,
+elimination is prevented because of the stoppage of peristalsis. Death
+comes of autointoxication, which is slow and painful."
+
+I shuddered at the idea. The thought of death has always bothered me.
+The idea of looking at a hand and knowing that I was going to die by the
+calendar seemed particularly horrible.
+
+Taking the bit between my teeth, I said, "Scholar Phelps, I've been
+wondering whether you and your Center have ever considered treating
+Mekstrom's by helping it?"
+
+"Helping it?" he asked.
+
+"Sure. Consider what a man might be if he were Mekstrom's all the way
+through."
+
+He nodded. "You would have a physical superman," he said. "Steel-strong
+muscles driving steel-hard flesh covered by a near impenetrable skin.
+Perhaps such a man would be free of all minor pains and ills. Imagine a
+normal bacterium trying to bore into flesh as hard as concrete. Mekstrom
+Flesh tends to be acid-resistant as well as tough physically. It is not
+beyond the imagination to believe that your Mekstrom Superman might live
+three times our frail four-score and ten. But--"
+
+Here he paused.
+
+"Not to pull down your house of cards, this idea is not a new one. Some
+years ago we invited a brilliant young doctor here to study for his
+scholarate. The unfortunate fellow arrived with the first traces of
+Mekstrom's in his right middle toe. We placed about a hundred of our
+most brilliant researchers under his guidance, and he decided to take
+this particular angle of study. He failed; for all his efforts, he did
+not stay his death by a single hour. From that time to the present we
+have maintained one group on this part of the problem."
+
+It occurred to me at that moment that if I turned up with a trace of
+Mekstrom's I'd be seeking out the Highways in Hiding rather than the
+Medical Center. That fast thought brought a second: Suppose that Dr.
+Thorndyke learned that he had a trace, or rather, the Highways found it
+out. What better way to augment their medical staff than to approach the
+victim with a proposition: You help us, work with us, and we will save
+your life.
+
+That, of course, led to the next idea: That if the Highways in Hiding
+had any honest motive, they'd not be hidden in the first place and
+they'd have taken their cure to the Medical Center in the second. Well,
+I had a bit of something listed against them, so I decided to let my
+bombshell drop.
+
+"Scholar Phelps," I said quietly, "one of the reasons I am here is that
+I have fairly good evidence that the cure for Mekstrom's Disease does
+exist, and that it produces people of ultrahard bodies and superhuman
+strength."
+
+He smiled at me with the same tolerant air that father uses on the
+offspring who comes up with one of the standard juvenile plans for
+perpetual motion.
+
+"What do you consider good evidence?"
+
+"Suppose I claimed to have seen it myself."
+
+"Then I would say that you had misinterpreted your evidence," he replied
+calmly. "The flying saucer enthusiasts still insist that the things they
+see are piloted by little green men from Venus, even though we have been
+there and found Venus to be absolutely uninhabited by anything higher
+than slugs, grubs, and little globby animals like Tellurian leeches."
+
+"But--"
+
+"This, too, is an old story," he told me with a whimsical smile. "It
+goes with the standard routine about a secret organization that is
+intending to take over the Earth. The outline has been popular ever
+since Charles Fort. Now--er--just tell me what you saw."
+
+I concocted a tale that was about thirty-three percent true and the rest
+partly distorted. It covered my hitting a girl in Ohio with my car, hard
+enough to clobber her. But when I stopped to help her, she got up and
+ran away unhurt. She hadn't left a trace of blood although the front
+fender of the car was badly smashed.
+
+He nodded solemnly. "Such things happen," he said. "The human body is
+really quite durable; now and then comes the lucky happenstance when the
+fearful accident does no more than raise a slight bruise. I've read the
+story of the man whose parachute did not open and who lived to return it
+to the factory in person, according to the old joke. But now, Mr.
+Cornell, have you ever considered the utter impossibility of running any
+sort of secret organization in this world of today. Even before Rhine it
+was difficult. You'll be adding to your tale next--some sort of secret
+sign, maybe a form of fraternity grip, or perhaps even a world-wide
+system of local clubs and hangouts, all aimed at some dire purpose."
+
+I squirmed nervously for a bit. Scholar Phelps was too close to the
+truth to make me like it, because he was scoffing. He went right on
+making me nervous.
+
+"Now before we get too deep, I only want to ask about the probable
+motives of such an organization. You grant them superhuman strength,
+perhaps extreme longevity. If they wanted to take over the Earth,
+couldn't they do it by a show of force? Or are they mild-mannered
+supermen, only quietly interested in overrunning the human race and
+waiting out the inevitable decline of normal homo sapiens? You're not
+endowing them with extraterrestrial origin, are you?"
+
+I shook my head unhappily.
+
+"Good. That shows some logic, Mr. Cornell. After all, we know now that
+while we could live on Mars or Venus with a lot of home-sent aid, we'd
+be most uncomfortable there. We could not live a minute on any planet of
+our solar system without artificial help."
+
+"I might point out that our hypothetical superman might be able to stand
+a lot of rough treatment," I blurted.
+
+"Oh, this I'll grant if your tale held any water at all. But let's
+forget this fruitless conjecture and take a look at the utter
+impossibility of running such an organization. Even planting all of
+their secret hangouts in dead areas and never going into urban centers,
+they'd still find some telepath or esper on their trail. Perhaps a team.
+Let's go back a step and consider, even without psi training, how long
+such an outfit could function. It would run until the first specimen had
+an automobile accident on, say Times Square; or until one of them
+walked--or ran--out of the fire following a jetliner crash."
+
+He then spared me with a cold eye. "Write it as fiction, Mr. Cornell.
+But leave my name out of it. I thought you were after facts."
+
+"I am. But the better fact articles always use a bit of speculation to
+liven it up."
+
+"Well," he grunted, "one such fanciful suggestion is the possibility of
+such an underground outfit being able to develop a 'cure' while we
+cannot. We, who have had the best of brains and money for twenty years."
+
+I nodded, and while I did not agree with Phelps, I knew that to insist
+was to insult him to his face, and get myself tossed out.
+
+"You do seem to have quite a set-up here," I said, off-hand.
+
+At this point Phelps offered to show me around the place, and I
+accepted. Medical Center was far larger than I had believed at first; it
+spread beyond my esper range into the hills beyond the main plant. The
+buildings were arranged in a haphazard-looking pattern out in the back
+section; I say "looking" because only a psi-trained person can dig a
+pattern. The wide-open psi area did not extend for miles. Behind the
+main buildings it closed down into the usual mottled pattern and the
+medical buildings had been placed in the open areas. Dwellings and
+dormitories were in the dark places. A nice set-up.
+
+I did not meet any of the patients, but Phelps let me stand in the
+corridor outside a couple of rooms and use my esper on the flesh. It was
+both distressing and instructive.
+
+He explained, "The usual thing after someone visits this way, is that
+the visitor goes out itching. In medical circles this is a form of what
+we call 'Sophomore's Syndrome.' Ever heard of it?"
+
+I nodded. "That's during the first years at pre-med. Knowing all too
+little of medicine, every disease they study produces the same symptoms
+that the student finds in himself. Until tomorrow, when they study the
+next. Then the symptoms in the student change."
+
+"Right. So in order to prevent 'Sophomore's Syndrome' among visitors we
+usually let them study the real thing. Also," he added seriously, "we'd
+like to have as many people as possible recognize the real thing as
+early as possible. Even though we can't do anything for them at the
+present time, someday we will."
+
+He stopped before a closed door. "In here is a girl of eighteen, doomed
+to die in a month." His voice trailed off as he tapped on the door of
+the room.
+
+I froze. A few beads of cold sweat ran down my spine, and I fought
+myself into a state of nervous calmness. I put the observation away,
+buried it as deep as I could, tried to think around it, and so far as I
+knew, succeeded.
+
+The tap of Scholar Phelps' finger against the door panel was the
+rap-rap-rap sound characteristic of hard-tanned leather tapping wood.
+
+Scholar Phelps was a Mekstrom!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I paid only surface attention to the rest of my visit. I thanked my
+personal gods that esper training had also given me the ability to
+dissemble. It was impossible to not think of something but it is
+possible to keep the mind so busy with surface thoughts that the
+underlying idea does not come through the interference.
+
+Eventually I managed to leave the Medical Center without exciting
+anyone, and when I left I took off like a skyrocket for Chicago.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+Nurse Gloria Farrow waved at me from the ramp of the jetliner, and I ran
+forward to collect her baggage. She eyed me curiously but said no more
+than the usual greetings and indication of which bag was hers.
+
+I knew that she was reading my mind like a psychologist all the time,
+and I let her know that I wanted her to. I let my mind merely ramble on
+with the usual pile of irrelevancies that the mind uses to fill in blank
+spaces. It came up with a couple of notions here and there but nothing
+definite. Miss Farrow followed me to my car without saying a word, and
+let me install her luggage in the trunk.
+
+Then, for the first time, she spoke: "Steve Cornell, you're as healthy
+as I am."
+
+"I admit it."
+
+"Then what is this all about? You don't need a nurse!"
+
+"I need a competent witness, Miss Farrow."
+
+"For what?" She looked puzzled. "Suppose you stay right here and start
+explaining."
+
+"You'll listen to the bitter end?"
+
+"I've two hours before the next plane goes back. You'll have that time
+to convince me--or else. Okay?"
+
+"That's a deal." I fumbled around for a beginning, and then I decided to
+start right at the beginning, whether it sounded cockeyed or not.
+
+Giving information to a telepath is the easiest thing in the world.
+While I started at the beginning, I fumbled and finally ended up by
+going back and forth in a haphazard manner, but Miss Farrow managed to
+insert the trivia in the right chronological order so that when I
+finished, she nodded with interest.
+
+I posed the question: #Am I nuts?#
+
+"No, Steve," she replied solemnly. "I don't think so. You've managed to
+accept data which is obviously mingled truth and falsehood, and you've
+managed to question the validity of all of it."
+
+I grunted. "How about the crazy man who questions his own sanity, using
+this personal question as proof of his sanity since real nuts _know_
+they're sane?"
+
+"No nut can think that deep into complication. What I mean is that they
+cannot even question their own sanity in the first premise of postulated
+argument. But forget that, what I wanted to know is where you intend to
+go from here."
+
+I shook my head unhappily. "When I called you I had it all laid out like
+a roadmap. I was going to show you proof and use you as an impartial
+observer to convince someone else. Then we'd go to the Medical Center
+and hand it to them on a platter. Since then I've had a shock that I
+can't get over, or plan beyond. Scholar Phelps is a Mekstrom. That means
+that the guy knows what gives with Mekstrom's Disease and yet he is
+running an outfit that professes to be helpless in the face of this
+disease. For all we know Phelps may be the head of the Highways in
+Hiding, an organization strictly for profit of some sort at the expense
+of the public welfare."
+
+"You're certain that Phelps is a Mekstrom?"
+
+"Not absolutely positive. I had to close my mind because there might be
+a telepath on tap. But I can tell you that nobody with normal flesh-type
+fingers ever made that solid rap."
+
+"A fingernail?"
+
+I shook my head at her. "That's a click. With an ear at all you'd note
+the difference."
+
+"I'll accept it for the moment. But lacking your original plan, what are
+you going to do now?"
+
+"I'm not sure beyond showing you the facts. Maybe I should call up that
+F.B.I. team that called on me after Thorndyke's disappearance and put it
+in their laps."
+
+"Good idea. But why would Scholar Phelps be lying? And beyond your basic
+suspicions, what can you prove?"
+
+"Very little. I admit that my evidence is extremely thin. I saw Phillip
+Harrison turning head bolts on a tractor engine with a small end wrench.
+It should require a crossbar socket and a lot of muscle. Next is the
+girl in Ohio who should be a bloody mess from the way she was treated.
+Instead she got up and tried to chase me. Then answer me a puzzler: Did
+the Harrisons move because Marian caught Mekstrom's, or did they move
+because they felt that I was too close to discovering their secret? The
+Highway was relocated after that, you'll recall."
+
+"It sounds frightfully complicated, Steve."
+
+"You bet it does," I grunted. "So next I meet a guy who is supposed to
+know all the answers; a man dedicated to the public welfare, medicine,
+and the ideal of Service. A man sworn to the Hippocratic Oath. Or," I
+went on bitterly, "is it the Hypocritic Oath?"
+
+"Steve, please--"
+
+"Please, Hell!" I stormed. "Why is he quietly sitting there in Mekstrom
+hide while he is overtly grieving over the painful death of his fellow
+man?"
+
+"I wouldn't know."
+
+"Well, I'm tired of being pushed around," I growled.
+
+"Pushed around?" she asked quietly.
+
+With a trace of scorn, I said, "Miss Farrow, I can see two possible
+answers. Either I am being pushed around for some deliberate reason, or
+I'm too smart, too cagey and too dangerous for them to handle directly.
+It takes only about eight weeks for me to reluctantly abandon the second
+in favor of the first."
+
+"But what makes you think you are being pushed?" she wanted to know.
+
+"You can't tell me that I am so important that they couldn't erase me as
+easily as they did Catherine and Dr. Thorndyke. And now that his name
+comes up, let's ask why any doctor who once met a casual patient would
+go to the bother of sending a postcard with a message on it that is
+certain to cause me unhappiness. He's also the guy who nudged me by
+calling my attention to my so-called 'shock hallucination' about Father
+Harrison lifting my car while Phillip Harrison raced into the fire to
+make the rescue. Add it up," I told her sharply. "Next he is invited to
+Medical Center to study Mekstrom's. Only instead of landing there, he
+sends me a postcard with one of the Highways in the picture, after which
+he disappears."
+
+Miss Farrow nodded thoughtfully. "It is all tied up with your Highways
+and your Mekstrom People."
+
+"That isn't all," I said. "How come the Harrisons moved so abruptly?"
+
+"You're posing questions that I can't answer," complained Miss Farrow.
+"And I'm not one hundred percent convinced that you are right."
+
+"You are here, and if you take a look at what I'll show you, you'll be
+convinced. We'll put it this way, to start: Something cockeyed is going
+on. Now, one more thing I can add, and this is the part that confuses
+me: Everything that has been done seems to point to me. So far as I can
+see they are operating just as though they want me to start a big hassle
+that will end up by getting the Highways out of their Hiding."
+
+"Why on earth would they be doing that?" she wanted to know.
+
+"I don't have the foggiest notion. But I do have that feeling and there
+is evidence pointing that way. They've let me in on things that normally
+they'd be able to conceal from a highly trained telepath. So I intend to
+go along with them, because somewhere at the bottom of it all we'll find
+the answer."
+
+She nodded agreement.
+
+Now I started up the car, saying, "I'm going to find us one of the
+Highways in Hiding, and we'll follow it to one of the way stations. Then
+you'll see for yourself that there is something definitely fishy going
+on."
+
+"This I'd like to see," she replied quietly. Almost too quietly. I took
+a dig at her as I turned the car out through a tight corner of the lot
+onto the road. She was sitting there with a noncommittal expression on
+her face and I wondered why. She replied to my thought: "Steve, you must
+face one thing. Anything you firmly believe will necessarily pass across
+your mind as fact. So forgive me if I hold a few small doubts until I
+have a chance to survey some of the evidence at first hand."
+
+"Sure," I told her. "The first bit won't be hard."
+
+I drove eagerly across Illinois into Iowa watching for road signs. I
+knew that once I convinced someone else, it would be easier to convince
+a third, and a fourth, and a fiftieth until the entire world was out on
+the warpath. We drove all day, stopping for chow now and then, behaving
+like a couple out on a vacation tour. We stopped in a small town along
+about midnight and found a hotel without having come upon any of the
+hidden highways.
+
+We met at breakfast, talked our ideas over mildly, and took off again.
+We crossed into Nebraska about noon and continued to meander until late
+in the afternoon when we came upon our first giveaway road sign.
+
+"There," I told her triumphantly.
+
+She nodded. "I see the sign, Steve. That much I knew. Now all you have
+to do is to show me the trial-blazes up in that emblem."
+
+"Unless they've changed their method," I told her, "this one leads West,
+slightly south of." I stopped the car not many yards from the sign and
+went over it with my sense of perception. #You'll note the ease with
+which the emblem could be turned upside down,# I interjected. #Note the
+similar width of the top and bottom trefoil, so that only a trained and
+interested observer can tell the difference.#
+
+I drove along until we saw one on the other side of the road and we
+stopped again, giving the sign a thorough going over. #Note that the
+signs leading away from the direction are upside down,# I went on. I
+didn't say a word, I was using every ounce of energy in running my
+perception over the sign and commenting on its various odds and ends.
+
+#Now,# I finished, #we'll drive along this Highway in Hiding until we
+come to some intersection or hideout. Then you'll be convinced.#
+
+She was silent.
+
+We took off along that road rather fast and we followed it for miles,
+passing sign after sign with its emblem turned up along the right side
+of the road and turned upside-down when the sign was on the left.
+
+Eventually we came to a crossing highway, and at that I pointed
+triumphantly. "Note the missing spoke!" I said with considerable
+enthusiasm. "Now, Miss Farrow, we shall first turn against it for a few
+miles and then we shall U-turn and come back along the cross highway
+with it."
+
+"I'm beginning to be convinced, Steve."
+
+We turned North against the sign and went forty or fifty miles, just to
+be sure. The signs were all against us. Eventually I turned into a gas
+station and filled the carte up to the scuppers. As we turned back
+South, I asked her, "Any more comment?"
+
+She shook her head. "Not yet."
+
+I nodded. "If you want, we'll take a jaunt along our original course."
+
+"By all means."
+
+"In other words you are more than willing to be convinced?"
+
+"Yes," she said simply. She went silent then and I wondered what she was
+thinking about, but she didn't bother to tell me.
+
+Eventually we came back to the crossroad, and with a feeling of having
+been successful, I continued South with a confidence that I had not felt
+before. We stopped for dinner in a small town, ate hastily but well, and
+then had a very mild debate.
+
+"Shall we have a drink and relax for a moment?"
+
+"I'd like it," she replied honestly. "But somehow I doubt that I could
+relax."
+
+"I know. But it does seem like a good idea to take it easy for a half
+hour. It might even be better if we stopped over and took off again in
+the morning."
+
+"Steve," she told me, "the only way I could relax or go to sleep would
+be to take on a roaring load so that I'd pass out cold. I'd rather not
+because I'd get up tomorrow with a most colossal hangover. Frankly, I'm
+excited and I'd prefer to follow this thing to a finish."
+
+"It's a deal," I said. "We'll go until we have to stop."
+
+It was about eight o'clock when we hit the road again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+By nine-forty-five we'd covered something better than two hundred miles,
+followed another intersection turn according to the missing spoke, and
+were heading well toward the upper right-hand corner of Colorado on the
+road map.
+
+At ten o'clock plus a few minutes we came upon the roadsign that pointed
+the way to a ranch-type house set prettily on the top of a small knoll
+several hundred yards back from the main road. I stopped briefly a few
+hundred feet from the lead-in road and asked Miss Farrow:
+
+"What's your telepath range? You've never told me."
+
+She replied instantly, "Intense concentration directed at me is about a
+half mile. Superficial thinking that might include me or my personality
+as a by-thought about five hundred yards. To pick up a thought that has
+nothing to do with me or my interests, not much more than a couple of
+hundred feet. Things that are definitely none of my business close down
+to forty or fifty feet."
+
+That was about the average for a person with a bit of psi training
+either in telepathy or in esper; it matched mine fairly well, excepting
+that part about things that were none of my business. She meant
+_thoughts_ and not _things_. I had always had a hard time
+differentiating between things that were none of my damned business,
+although I do find it more difficult to dig the contents of a letter
+between two unknown parties at a given distance than it is to dig a
+letter written or addressed to a person I know. _Things_ are, by and
+large, a lot less personal than thoughts, if I'm saying anything new.
+
+"Well," I told her, "this is it. We're going to go in close enough for
+you to take a 'pathic look-around. Keep your mind sensitive. If you dig
+any danger, yell out. I'm going to extend my esper as far as I can and
+if I suddenly take off like a startled spacecraft, it's because I have
+uncovered something disagreeable. But keep your mind on them and not me,
+because I'm relying on you to keep posted on their mental angle."
+
+Miss Farrow nodded. "It's hard to remember that other people haven't the
+ability to make contact mentally. It's like a normal man talking to a
+blind man and referring constantly to visible things because he doesn't
+understand. I'll try to remember."
+
+"I'm going to back in," I said. "Then if trouble turns up, I'll have an
+advantage. As soon as they feel our minds coming in at them, they'll
+know that we're not in there for their health. So here we go!"
+
+"I'm a good actor," she said. "No matter what I say, I'm with you all
+the way!"
+
+I yanked the car forward, and angled back. I hit the road easily and
+started backing along the driveway at a rather fast speed with my eyes
+half-closed to give my esper sense the full benefit of my concentration
+along the road. When I was not concentrating on how I was going to turn
+the wheel at the next curve I thought, #I hope these folks know the best
+way to get to Colorado Springs from here. Dammit, we're lost!#
+
+Miss Farrow squeezed my arm gently, letting me know that she was
+thinking the same general thoughts.
+
+Suddenly she said, "It's a dead area, Steve."
+
+It was a dead area, all right. My perception came to a barrier that made
+it fade from full perception to not being able to perceive anything in a
+matter of yards. It always gives me an eerie feeling when I approach a
+dead area and find that I can see a building clearly and not be able to
+cast my perception beyond a few feet.
+
+I kept on backing up into the fringe of that dead area until I was deep
+within the edge and it took all my concentration to perceive the road a
+few feet ahead of my rear wheels so that I could steer. I was inching
+now, coming back like a blind man feeling his way. We were within about
+forty feet of the ranch house when Miss Farrow yelped:
+
+"They're surrounding us, Steve!"
+
+My hands whipped into action and my heavy right foot came down on the
+gas-pedal. The car shuddered, howled like a wounded banshee, and then
+leaped forward with a roar.
+
+A man sprang out of the bushes and stood in front of the car like a
+statue with his hand held up. Miss Farrow screamed something
+unintelligible and clutched at my arm frantically. I threw her hand off
+with a snarl, kept my foot rammed down hard and hit the man dead center.
+The car bucked and I heard metal crumple angrily. We lurched, bounced
+viciously twice as my wheels passed over his floundering body, and then
+we were racing like complete idiots along a road that should not have
+been covered at more than twenty. The main road came into sight and I
+sliced the car around with a screech of the rear tires, controlled the
+deliberate skid with some fancy wheel-work and some fast digging of the
+surrounding dangers.
+
+Then we were tearing along the broad and beautifully clear concrete with
+the speedometer needle running into the one-fifteen region.
+
+"Steve," said Miss Farrow breathlessly, "That man you hit--"
+
+In a hard voice I said, "He was getting to his feet when I drove out of
+range."
+
+"I know," she said in a whimper. "I was in his mind. He was not hurt!
+God! Steve--what are we up against?" Her voice rose to a wail.
+
+"I don't know, exactly," I said. "But I know what we're going to do."
+
+"But Steve--what can we do?"
+
+"Alone or together, very little. But we can bring one person more out
+along these Highways and then convince a fourth and a fifth and a
+fiftieth and a thousandth. By then we'll be shoved back off the stage
+while the big wheels grind painfully slow but exceedingly meticulous."
+
+"That'll take time."
+
+"Certainly. But we've got a start. Look how long it took getting a start
+in the first place."
+
+"But what is their purpose?" she asked.
+
+"That I can't say. I can't say a lot of things, like how, and why and
+wherefore. But I know that now we have a front tooth in this affair
+we're not going to let go." I thought for a moment. "I could use
+Thorndyke; he'd be the next guy to convince if we could find him. Or
+maybe Catherine, if we could find her. The next best thing is to get
+hold of that F.B.I. Team that called on me. There's a pair of
+cold-blooded characters that seem willing to sift through a million tons
+of ash to find one valuable cinder. They'll listen. I--"
+
+Miss Farrow looked at her watch; I dug it as she made the gesture.
+#Eleven o'clock.#
+
+"Going to call?" she asked.
+
+"No," I said. "It's too late. It's one in New York now and the F.B.I.
+Team wouldn't be ready for a fast job at this hour."
+
+"So?"
+
+"I have no intention of placing a 'When you are ready' call to a number
+identified with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Not when a full
+eight hours must elapse between the call and a reply. Too much can
+happen to us in the meantime. But if I call in the morning, we can
+probably take care of ourselves well enough until they arrive if we stay
+in some place that is positively teeming with citizens. Sensible?"
+
+"Sounds reasonable, Steve."
+
+I let the matter drop at that; I put the go-pedal down to the floor and
+fractured a lot of speed laws until we came to Denver.
+
+We made Denver just before midnight and drove around until we located a
+hotel that filled our needs. It was large, which would prevent overt
+operations on the part of the 'enemy' and it was a dead area, which
+would prevent one of them from reading our minds while we slept, and so
+enable them to lay counterplans against us.
+
+The bellhop gave us a knowing leer as we registered separately, but I
+was content to let him think what he wanted. Better that he get the
+wrong idea about us than the right one. He fiddled around in Miss
+Farrow's room on the ninth, bucking for a big tip--not for good service,
+but for leaving us alone, which he did by demonstrating how big a
+nuisance he could be if not properly rewarded. But finally he got tired
+of his drawer-opening and lamp-testing and towel-stacking, and escorted
+me up to the twelfth. I led him out with a five spot clutched in his
+fist and the leer even stronger.
+
+If he expected me to race downstairs as soon as he was out of ear-shot,
+he was mistaken, for I hit the sack like the proverbial ton of crushed
+mortar. It had been literally weeks since I'd had a pleasant, restful
+sleep that was not broken by fitful dreams and worry-insomnia. Now that
+we had something solid to work on, I could look forward to some concrete
+action instead of merely feeling pushed around.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+I'd put in for an eight o'clock call, but my sleep had been so sound and
+perfect that I was all slept out by seven-thirty. I was anxious to get
+going so I dressed and shaved in a hurry and cancelled the eight o'clock
+call. Then I asked the operator to connect me with 913.
+
+A gruff, angry male voice snarled out of the earpiece at me. I began to
+apologize profusely but the other guy slammed the phone down on the hook
+hard enough to make my ear ring.
+
+I jiggled my hook angrily and when the operator answered I told her that
+she'd miscued. She listened to my complaint and then replied in a
+pettish tone, "But I did ring 913, sir. I'll try again."
+
+I wanted to tell her to just try, that there was no 'again' about it,
+but I didn't. I tried to dig through the murk to her switchboard but I
+couldn't dig a foot through this area. I waited impatiently until she
+re-made the connections at her switchboard and I heard the burring of
+the phone as the other end rang. Then the same mad-bull-rage voice
+delivered a number of pointed comments about people who ring up honest
+citizens in the middle of the night; and he hung up again in the middle
+of my apology. I got irked again and demanded that the operator connect
+me with the registration clerk. To him I told my troubles.
+
+"One moment, sir," he said. A half minute later he returned with,
+"Sorry, sir. There is no Farrow registered. Could I have mis-heard you?"
+
+"No, goddammit," I snarled. "It's Farrow. F as in Frank; A as in Arthur;
+Double R as in Robert Robert; O as in Oliver; and W as in Washington. I
+saw her register, I went with her and the bellhop to her room, Number
+913, and saw her installed. Then the same 'hop took me up to my room in
+1224 on the Twelfth."
+
+There was another moment of silence. Then he said, "You're Mr. Cornell.
+Registered in Room 1224 last night approximately four minutes after
+midnight."
+
+"I know all about me. I was there and did it myself. And if I registered
+at four after midnight, Miss Farrow must have registered about two after
+midnight because the ink was still wet on her card when I wrote my name.
+We came in together, we were travelling together. Now, what gives?"
+
+"I wouldn't know, sir. We have no guest named Farrow."
+
+"See here," I snapped, "did you ever have a guest named Farrow?"
+
+"Not in the records I have available at this desk. Perhaps in the past
+there may have been--"
+
+"Forget the past. What about the character in 913?"
+
+The registration clerk returned and informed me coldly, "Room 913 has
+been occupied by a Mr. Horace Westfield for over three months, Mr.
+Cornell. There is no mistake." His voice sounded professionally
+sympathetic, and I knew that he would forget my troubles as soon as his
+telephone was put back on its hook.
+
+"Forget it," I snapped and hung up angrily. Then I went towards the
+elevators, walking in a sort of dream-like daze. There was a cold lump
+of something concrete hard beginning to form in the pit of my stomach.
+Wetness ran down my spine and a drop of sweat dropped from my armpit and
+hit my body a few inches above my belt like a pellet of icy hail. My
+face felt cold but when I wiped it with the palm of a shaking hand I
+found it beaded with an oily sweat. Everything seemed unreally
+horrifying.
+
+"Nine," I told the elevator operator in a voice that sounded far away
+and hoarse.
+
+I wondered whether this might not be a very vivid dream, and maybe if I
+went all the way back to my room, took a short nap, and got up to start
+all over again, I would awaken to honest reality.
+
+The elevator stopped at Nine and I walked the corridor that was familiar
+from last night. I rapped on the door of Room 913.
+
+The door opened and a big stubble-faced gorilla gazed out and snarled at
+me: "Are you the persistent character?"
+
+"Look," I said patiently, "last night a woman friend of mine registered
+at this hotel and I accompanied her to this door. Number 913. Now--"
+
+A long apelike arm came out and caught me by the coat lapels. He hauled
+and I went in fast. His breath was sour and his eyes were bloodshot and
+he was angry all the way through. His other hand caught me by the seat
+of the pants and he danced me into the room like a jumping jack.
+
+"Friend," he ground out, "Take a look. There ain't no woman in this
+room, see?"
+
+He whirled, carrying me off my feet. He took a lunging step forward and
+hurled me onto the bed, where I carried the springs deep down, to bounce
+up and off and forward to come up flat against the far wall. I landed
+sort of spread-eagle flat and seemed to hang there before I slid down
+the wall to the floor with a meaty-sounding Whump! Then before I could
+collect my wits or myself, he came over the bed in one long leap and had
+me hauled upright by the coat lapels again. The other hand was cocked
+back level with his shoulder it looked the size of a twenty-five pound
+sack of flour and was probably as hard as set cement.
+
+_Steve_, I told myself, _this time you're in for it!_
+
+"All right," I said as apologetically as I knew how, "so I've made a bad
+mistake. I apologize. I'll also admit that you could wipe up the hotel
+with me. But do you have to prove it?"
+
+Mr. Horace Westfield's mental processes were not slow, cumbersome, and
+crude. He was as fast and hard on his mental feet as he was on his
+physical feet. He made some remarks about my intelligence, my
+upbringing, my parentage and its legal status, and my unwillingness to
+face a superior enemy. During this catalog of my virtueless existence,
+he gandy-walked me to the door and opened it. He concluded his lecture
+by suggesting that in the future I accept anything that any registration
+clerk said as God-Stated Truth, and if I then held any doubts I should
+take them to the police. Then he hurled me out of the room by just sort
+of shoving me away. I sailed across the hall on my toes, backward, and
+slapped my frame flat again, and once more I hung against the wall until
+the kinetic energy had spent itself. Then I landed on wobbly ankles as
+the door to Room 913 came closed with a violent slam.
+
+I cursed the habit of building hotels in dead areas, although I admitted
+that I'd steer clear of any hotel in a clear area myself. But I didn't
+need a clear area nor a sense of perception to inform me that Room 913
+was absolutely and totally devoid of any remote sign of female
+habitation. In fact, I gathered the impression that for all of his brute
+strength and virile masculinity, Mr. Horace Westfield hadn't entertained
+a woman in that room since he'd been there.
+
+There was one other certainty: It was impossible for any agency short of
+sheer fairyland magic to have produced overnight a room that displayed
+its long-term occupancy by a not-too-immaculate character. That
+distinctive sour smell takes a long time to permeate the furnishings of
+any decent hotel; I wondered why a joint as well kept as this one would
+put up with a bird as careless of his person as Mr. Horace Westfield.
+
+So I came to the reluctant conclusion that Room 913 was not occupied by
+Nurse Farrow, but I was not yet convinced that she was totally missing
+from the premises.
+
+Instead of taking the elevator, I took to the stairs and tried the
+eighth. My perception was not too good for much in this murk, but I was
+mentally sensitive to Nurse Farrow and if I could get close enough to
+her, I might be able to perceive some trace of her even through the
+deadness. I put my forehead against the door of Room 813 and drew a
+blank. I could dig no farther than the inside of the door. If Farrow
+were in 813, I couldn't dig a trace of her. So I went to 713 and tried
+there.
+
+I was determined to try every -13th room on every floor, but as I was
+standing with my forehead against the door to Room 413, someone came up
+behind me quietly and asked in a rough voice: "Just what do you think
+you're doing, Mister?"
+
+His dress indicated housedick, but of course I couldn't dig the license
+in his wallet any more than he could read my mental, #None of your
+business, flatfoot!# I said, "I'm looking for a friend."
+
+"You'd better come with me," he said flatly. "There's been complaints."
+
+"Yeah?" I growled. "Maybe I made one of them myself."
+
+"Want to start something?" he snapped.
+
+I shrugged and he smiled. It was a stony smile, humorless as a crevasse
+in a rock-face. He kept that professional-type smile on his face until
+we reached the manager's office. The manager was out, but one of the
+assistant managers was in his desk. The little sign on the desk said
+"Henry Walton. Assistant Manager."
+
+Mr. Walton said, coldly, "What seems to be the trouble, Mr. Cornell?"
+
+I decided to play it just as though I were back at the beginning again.
+"Last night," I explained very carefully, "I checked into this hotel. I
+was accompanied by a woman companion. A registered nurse. Miss Gloria
+Farrow. She registered first, and we were taken by one of your bellboys
+to Rooms 913 and 1224 respectively. I went with Miss Farrow to 913 and
+saw her enter. Then the bellhop escorted me to 1224 and left me for the
+night. This morning I can find no trace of Miss Farrow anywhere in this
+fleabag."
+
+He bristled at the derogatory title but he covered it quickly. "Please
+be assured that no one connected with this hotel has any intention of
+confusing you, Mr. Cornell."
+
+"I'm tired of playing games," I snapped. "I'll accept your statement so
+far as the management goes, but someone is guilty of fouling up your
+registration lists."
+
+"That's rather harsh," he replied coldly. "Falsifying or tampering with
+hotel registration lists is illegal. What you've just said amounts to
+libel or slander, you know."
+
+"Not if it's true."
+
+I half expected Henry Walton to backwater fast, but instead, he merely
+eyed me with the same expression of distaste that he might have used
+upon finding half of a fuzzy caterpillar in his green salad. As cold as
+a cake of carbon dioxide snow, he said, "Can you prove this, Mr.
+Cornell?"
+
+"Your night crew--"
+
+"You've given us a bit of trouble this morning," he informed me. "So
+I've taken the liberty of calling in the night crew for you." He pressed
+a button and a bunch came in and lined up as if for formal inspection.
+"Boys," said Walton quietly, "suppose you tell us what you know about
+Mr. Cornell's arrival here last night."
+
+They nodded their heads in unison.
+
+"Wait a minute," I snapped. "I want a reliable witness to listen to
+this. In fact, if I could, I'd like to have their stories made under
+oath."
+
+"You'd like to register a formal charge? Perhaps of kidnapping, or maybe
+illegal restraint?"
+
+"Just get me an impartial witness," I told him sourly.
+
+"Very well." He picked up his telephone and spoke into it. We waited a
+few minutes, and finally a very prim young woman came in. She was
+followed by a uniformed policeman. She was carrying one of those
+sub-miniature silent typewriters which she set up on its little stand
+with a few efficient motions.
+
+"Miss Mason is our certified public stenographer," he said. "Officer,
+I'll want your signature on her copy when we're finished. This is a
+simple routine matter, but it must be legal to the satisfaction of Mr.
+Cornell. Now, boys, go ahead and explain. Give your name and position
+first for Miss Mason's record."
+
+It was then that I noticed that the night crew had arranged themselves
+in chronological order. The elderly gent spoke first. He'd been the
+night doorman but now he was stripped of his admiral's gold braid and he
+looked just like any other sleepy man of middle age.
+
+"George Comstock," he announced. "Doorman. As soon as I saw the car
+angling out of traffic, I pressed the call-button for a bell boy. Peter
+Wright came out and was standing in readiness by the time Mr. Cornell's
+car came to a stop by the curb. Johnny Olson was out next, and after
+Peter had taken Mr. Cornell's bag, Johnny got into Mr. Cornell's car and
+took off for the hotel garage--"
+
+Walton interrupted. "Let each man tell what he did himself. No
+prompting, please."
+
+"Well, then, you've heard my part in it. Johnny Olson took off in Mr.
+Cornell's car and Peter Wright took off with Mr. Cornell's bag, and Mr.
+Cornell followed Peter."
+
+The next man in line, at a nod from the assistant manager, stepped
+forward about a half a pace and said, "I'm Johnny Olson. I followed
+Peter Wright out of the door and after Peter had collected Mr. Cornell's
+bag, I got in Mr. Cornell's car and took it to the hotel garage."
+
+The third was Peter Wright, the bellhop. "I carried his bag to the desk
+and waited until he registered. Then we went up to Room 1224. I opened
+the door, lit the lights, opened the window, and stuff. Mr. Cornell
+tipped me five bucks and I left him there. Alone."
+
+"I'm Thomas Boothe, the elevator operator. I took Mr. Cornell and Peter
+Wright to the Twelfth. Peter said I should wait because he wouldn't be
+long, and so I waited on the Twelfth until Peter got back. That's all."
+
+"I'm Doris Caspary, the night telephone operator. Mr. Cornell called me
+about fifteen minutes after twelve and asked me to put him down for a
+call at eight o'clock this morning. Then he called at about seven thirty
+and said that he was already awake and not to bother."
+
+Henry Walton said, "That's about it, Mr. Cornell."
+
+"But--"
+
+The policeman looked puzzled. "What is the meaning of all this? If I'm
+to witness any statements like these, I'll have to know what for."
+
+Walton looked at me. I couldn't afford not to answer. Wearily I said,
+"Last night I came in here with a woman companion and we registered in
+separate rooms. She went into 913 and I waited until she was installed
+and then went to my own room on the Twelfth. This morning there is no
+trace of her."
+
+I went on to tell him a few more details, but the more I told him the
+more he lifted his eyebrows.
+
+"Done any drinking?" he asked me curtly.
+
+"No."
+
+"Certain?"
+
+"Absolutely."
+
+Walton looked at his crew. They burst into a chorus of, "Well, he _was_
+steady on his feet," and "He didn't _seem_ under the influence," and a
+lot of other statements, all generally indicating that for all they knew
+I could have been gassed to the ears, but one of those rare guys who
+don't show it.
+
+The policeman smiled thinly. "Just why was this registered nurse
+travelling with you?"
+
+I gave them the excuse-type statement; the one about the accident and
+that I felt that I was still a bit on the rocky side and so forth. About
+all I did for that was to convince the policeman that I was not a stable
+character. His attitude seemed to indicate that any man travelling with
+a nurse must either be physically sick or maybe mentally out of tune.
+
+Then with a sudden thought, I whirled on Johnny Olson. "Will you get my
+car?" I asked him. He nodded after a nod from Walton. I said, "There's
+plenty of evidence in my car. In the meantime, let's face one thing,
+officer. I've been accused of spinning a yarn. I'd hardly be demanding
+witnesses if I weren't telling the truth. I was standing beside Miss
+Farrow when she signed the register, complete with the R.N. title. It's
+too bad that hotels have taken to using card files instead of the old
+registration book. Cards are so easy to misplace--"
+
+Walton cut in angrily. "If that's an accusation, I'm inclined to see
+that you make it in a court of law."
+
+The policeman looked calm. "I'd take it easy, Mr. Cornell. Your story is
+not corroborated. But the employees of the hotel bear one another out.
+And from the record, it would appear that you were under the eyes of at
+least two of them from the moment your car slowed down in front of the
+main entrance up to the time that you were escorted to your room."
+
+"I object to being accused of complicity in a kidnapping," put in the
+assistant manager.
+
+"I object to being accused of mental incompetence," I snapped. "Why do
+we stand around accusing people back and forth when there's evidence if
+you'll only uncover it."
+
+We stood there glaring at one another. The air grew tense. The only ones
+in the place who did not have chips on their shoulders were the
+policeman and the certified stenographer, who was clicking her silent
+keys in lightning manner, taking down every comment as it was uttered.
+
+Eventually Olson returned, to put an end to the thick silence. "Y'car's
+outside," he told me angrily.
+
+"Fine," I said. "Now we'll go outside and take a look. You'll find
+plenty of traces of Miss Farrow's having been there. Officer--are you
+telepath or perceptive?"
+
+"Perceptive," he said. "But not in here."
+
+"How far out does this damned dead area extend?" I asked Walton.
+
+"About half way across the sidewalk."
+
+"Okay. So let's all go."
+
+We traipsed out to the curb. Miss Mason brought her little silent along,
+slipping the stand high up so that she could type from an erect
+position. We lined up along the curb and I looked into my car with a
+triumphant feeling.
+
+And then that cold chill congealed my spine again. My car was clean and
+shining. It had been washed and buffed and polished until it looked as
+new as the day I picked it out on the salesroom floor.
+
+Walton looked blank, and I whipped a thought at him: #Damned telepath!#
+
+He nodded perceptibly and said smoothly, "I'm rather sorry we couldn't
+find any fingerprints. Because now, you see," and here he turned to the
+policeman and went on, "Mr. Cornell will now accuse us of having washed
+his car to destroy the evidence. However, you'll find that as a general
+policy of the hotel, the car-washing is performed as a standard service.
+In fact, if any guest parks his car in our garage and his car is not
+rendered spick and span, someone is going to get fired for negligence."
+
+So that was that. I took a fast look around, because I knew that I had
+to get out of there fast. If I remained to carry on any more argument,
+I'd be tapped for being a nuisance and jugged.
+
+I had no doubt at all that the whole hotel staff were all involved in
+Nurse Farrow's disappearance. But they'd done their job in such a way
+that if the question were pushed hard, I would end up answering formal
+charges, the topmost of which might be murder and concealment of the
+body.
+
+I could do nothing by sitting in jail. This was the time to get out
+first and worry about Farrow later.
+
+So I opened the car door and slipped in. I fiddled with the so-called
+glove compartment and opened it; the maps were all neatly stacked and
+all the flub had been cleaned out. I fumbled inside and dropped a couple
+of road maps to the floor, and while I was down picking them up I turned
+the ignition key which Olson had left plugged in the lock.
+
+I took off with a jerk and howl of tires.
+
+There was the sudden shrill of a police whistle but it was stopped after
+one brief blast. As I turned the corner, I caught a fast backwards dig
+at them. They were filing back into the hotel. I did not believe that
+the policeman was part of the conspiracy, but I was willing to bet that
+Walton was going to slip the policeman a box of fine cigars as a reward
+for having helped them to get rid of a very embarrassing screwball.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+I put a lot of miles between me and my recent adventure before I stopped
+to take stock. The answer to the mess was still obscure, but the
+elimination of Nurse Farrow fell into the pattern very neatly.
+
+Alone, I was no problem. So long as my actions were restricted to
+meandering up and down the highways and byways, peering into nooks and
+crannies and crying, "Catherine," in a plaintive voice, no one cared.
+But when I teamed up with a telepath, they moved in with the efficiency
+of a well-run machine and extracted the disturbing element. In fact,
+their machinations had been so smooth that I was beginning to believe
+that my 'Discoveries' were really an assortment of unimportant facts
+shown to me deliberately for some reason of their own.
+
+The only snag in the latter theory was the fact of our accident.
+Assuming that I had to get involved in the mess, there were easier ways
+to introduce me than by planning a bad crack-up that could have been
+fatal, even granting the close proximity of the Harrison tribe to come
+to the rescue. The accident had to be an accident in the dictionary
+definition of the word itself. Under the circumstances, a planned
+accident could only be accepted under an entirely different set of
+conditions. For instance, let's assume that Catherine was a Mekstrom and
+I was about to disclose the fact. Then she or they could plan such an
+accident, knowing that she could walk out of the wreck with her hair
+barely mussed, leaving me dead for sure.
+
+But Catherine was not a Mekstrom. I'd been close enough to that satin
+skin to know that the body beneath it was soft and yielding.
+
+Yet the facts as they stood did not throw out my theory. It merely had
+to be revised. Catherine was no Mekstrom, but if the Harrisons had
+detected the faintest traces of an incipient Mekstrom infection, they
+could very well have taken her in. I fumed at the idea. I could almost
+visualize them pointing out her infection and then informing her bluntly
+that she could either swear in with them and be cured or she could die
+alone and miserably.
+
+This could easily explain her disappearance. Naturally, being what they
+were, they cared nothing for me or any other non-Mekstrom. I was no
+menace. Not until I teamed up with a telepath, and they knew what to do
+about that.
+
+Completely angry, I decided that it was time that I made a noise like an
+erupting volcano. With plans forming, I took off again towards
+Yellowstone, pausing only long enough at Fort Collins to buy some
+armament.
+
+Colorado is still a part of the United States where a man can go into a
+store and buy a gun over the counter just like any other tool. I picked
+out a Bonanza .375 because it is small enough to fit the hip pocket,
+light because of the new alloys so it wouldn't unballast me, and mostly
+because it packs enough wallop to stop a charging hippo. I did not know
+whether it would drill all the way through a Mekstrom hide, but the
+impact would at least set any target back on the seat of his pants.
+
+Then I drove into Wyoming and made my way to Yellowstone, and one day I
+was driving along the same road that had been pictured in Dr.
+Thorndyke's postcard. I drove along it boldly, loaded for bear, and
+watching the Highway signs that led me nicely toward my goal.
+
+Eventually I came to the inevitable missing spoke. It pointed to a
+ranch-type establishment that lay sprawled out in a billow of dead area.
+I eyed it warily and kept on driving because my plans did not include
+marching up to the front door like a rug peddler.
+
+Instead, I went on to the next town, some twenty miles away, which I
+reached about dark. I stopped for a leisurely dinner, saw a moving
+picture at the drive-in, killed a few at the bar, and started back to
+the way station about midnight.
+
+The name, dug from the mailbox, was Macklin.
+
+Again I did not turn in. I parked the car down the highway by about
+three miles, figuring that only a psi of doctor's degree would be able
+to dig anything at that distance. I counted on there being no such
+mental giant in this out of the way place.
+
+I made my way back toward the ranch house across the fields and among
+the rolling rock. I extended my perception as far as I could; I made
+myself sensitive to danger and covered the ground foot by foot, digging
+for traps, alarm lines, photocell trips, and parties who might be lying
+in wait for me.
+
+I encountered no sign of any trip or trap all the way to the fringe of
+the dead zone.
+
+The possibility that they knew of my presence and were comfortably
+awaiting me deep within the zone occurred to me, and so I was very
+cautious as I cased the layout and decided to make my entry at the point
+where the irregular boundary of the dead area was closest to the house
+itself.
+
+I entered and became completely psi-blind. Starlight cast just enough
+light so that I could see to walk without falling into a chuck hole or
+stumbling over something, but beyond a few yards everything lost shape
+and became a murky blob. The night was dead silent except for an
+occasional hiss of wind through the brush.
+
+Esperwise I was not covering much more than my eyes could see. I stepped
+deeper into the zone and lost another yard of perception. I kept probing
+at the murk, sort of like poking a finger at a hanging blanket. It moved
+if I dug hard enough in any direction, but as soon as I released the
+pressure, the murk moved right back where it was before.
+
+I crouched and took a few more steps into the zone, got to a place where
+I could begin to see the outlines of the house itself.
+
+Dark, silent, it looked uninhabited. I wished that there had been a
+college course in housebreaking, prowling and second-story operations. I
+went at it very slowly. I took my sweet time crossing the boards of the
+back verandah, even though the short hair on the back of my neck was
+beginning to prickle from nervousness. I was also scared. At any given
+moment, they had the legal right to open a window, poke out a
+field-piece, and blow me into bloody ribbons where I stood.
+
+The zone was really a dead one. My esper range was no more than about
+six inches from my forehead; a motion picture of Steve Cornell sounding
+out the border of a window with his forehead would have looked funny, it
+was not funny at the time. But I found that the sash was not locked and
+that the flyscreen could be unshipped from the outside.
+
+I entered a dining room. Inside, it was blacker than pitch.
+
+I crossed the dining room by sheer feel and instinct and managed to get
+to the hallway without making any racket. At this point I stopped and
+asked myself what the heck I thought I was trying to do. I had to admit
+that I had no plan in definite form. I was just prowling the joint to
+see what information I might be able to pick up.
+
+Down the hall I found a library. I'd been told that you tell what kind
+of people folks are by inspecting their library, and so I conned the
+book titles by running my head along a row of books.
+
+The books in the library indicated to me that this was a family of some
+size with rather broad tastes. There was everything from science fiction
+to Shakespeare, everything from philosophy to adventure. A short row of
+kid's books. A bible. Encyclopedia Brittanica (Published in Chicago), in
+fifty-four volumes, but there were no places that were worn that might
+give me an idea as to any special interest.
+
+The living room was also blank of any evidence of anything out or the
+ordinary. I turned away and stood in the hallway, blocked by indecision.
+I was a fool, I kept telling myself, because I did not have any
+experience in casing a joint, and what I knew had been studied out of
+old-time detective tales. Even if the inhabitants of the place were to
+let me go at it in broad daylight, I'm not too sure that I'd do a good
+job of finding something of interest except for sheer luck.
+
+But on the other hand, I'd gotten nowhere by dodging and ducking. I was
+in no mood to run quivering in fear. I was more inclined to emit a
+bellow just to see what would happen next.
+
+So instead of sneaking quietly away, I found the stairs and started to
+go up very slowly.
+
+It occurred to me at about the third step that I must be right. Anybody
+with any sense wouldn't keep anything dangerous in their downstairs
+library. It would be too much like a safe-cracker storing his nitro in
+the liquor cabinet or the murderer who hangs his weapon over the
+mantelpiece.
+
+Yet everybody kept some sort of records, or had things in their homes
+that were not shown to visiting firemen. And if it weren't on the second
+floor, then it might be in the cellar. If I weren't caught first, I'd
+prowl the whole damned place, inch by inch--avoiding if possible those
+rooms in which people slept.
+
+The fifth step squeaked ever so faintly, but it sounded like someone
+pulling a spike out of a packing case made of green wood. I froze, half
+aching for some perceptive range so that I could dig any sign of danger,
+and half remembering that if it weren't for the dead area, I'd not be
+this far. I'd have been frightened to try it in a clear zone.
+
+Eventually I went on up, and as my head came above the level of the
+floor, everything became psi-clear once more.
+
+Here was as neat a bit of home planning as I have ever seen. Just below
+the level of the second floor, their dead area faded out, so that the
+top floor was clean, bright, and clear as day. I paused, startled at it,
+and spent a few moments digging outside. The dead area billowed above
+the rooftop out of my range; from what little I could survey of the dark
+psi area, it must have been shaped sort of like an angel-food cake,
+except that the central hole did not go all the way down. Only to the
+first-floor level. It was a wonderful set-up for a home; privacy was
+granted on the first floor and from the road and all the surrounding
+territory, but on the second floor there was plenty of pleasant
+esperclear space for the close-knit family and friends. Their dead area
+was shaped in the ideal form for any ideal home.
+
+Then I stopped complimenting the architect and went on about my
+business, because there, directly in front of my nose, I could dig the
+familiar impression of a medical office.
+
+I went the rest of the way up the stairs and into the medical office.
+There was no mistake. The usual cabinets full of instruments, a
+laboratory examination table, shelves of little bottles, and along one
+wall was a library of medical books. All it needed was a sign on the
+door: 'S. P. Macklin, MSch' to make it standard.
+
+At the end of the library was a set of looseleaf notebooks, and I pulled
+the more recent of them out and held it up to my face. I did not dare
+snap on a light, so I had to go it esper.
+
+Even in the clear area, this told me very little. Esper is not like
+eyesight, any more than you can hear printed words or perhaps carry on a
+conversation by watching the wiggly green line on an oscilloscope. I
+wished it was. Instead, esper gives you a grasp of materials and shapes
+and things in position with regard to other things. It is sort of like
+seeing something simultaneously from all sides, if you can imagine such
+a sensation. So instead of being able to esper-read the journal, I had
+to take it letter by letter by digging the shape of the ink on the page
+with respect to the paper and the other letters, and since the guy's
+handwriting was atrocious, I could get no more than if the thing were
+written in Latin. If it had been typewritten, or with a stylized hand,
+it would have been far less difficult; or if it had been any of my
+damned business I could have dug it easily. But as it was----
+
+"Looking for something, Mr. Cornell?" asked a cool voice that dripped
+with acid sarcasm. At the same instant, the lights went on.
+
+I whirled, clutched at my hip pocket, and dropped to my knees at the
+same time. The sights of my .375 centered in the middle of a
+silk-covered midriff.
+
+She stood there indolently, disdainful of the cannon that was aimed at
+her. She was not armed; I'd have caught the esper warning of danger if
+she'd come at me with a weapon of some sort, even though I was
+preoccupied with the bookful of evidence.
+
+I stood up and faced her and let my esper run lightly over her body. She
+was another Mekstrom, which did not surprise me a bit.
+
+"I seem to have found what I was looking for," I said.
+
+Her laugh was scornful but not loud. "You're welcome, Mr. Cornell."
+
+#Telepath?#
+
+"Yes, and a good one."
+
+#Who else is awake?#
+
+"Just me, so far," she replied quietly. "But I'll be glad to call out--"
+
+#Keep it quiet, Sister Macklin.#
+
+"Stop thinking like an idiot, Mr. Cornell. Quiet or not, you'll not
+leave this house until I permit you to go."
+
+I let my esper roam quickly through the house. An elderly couple slept
+in the front bedroom. A man slept alone in the room beside them; a pair
+of young boys slept in an over-and-under bunk in the room across the
+hall. The next room must have been hers, the bed was tumbled but empty.
+The room next to the medical office contained a man trussed in traction
+splints, white bandages, and literally festooned with those little
+hanging bottles that contain everything from blood plasma to food and
+water, right on down to lubrication for the joints. I tried to dig his
+face under the swath of bandage but I couldn't make out much more than
+the fact that it was a face and that the face was half Mekstrom Flesh.
+
+"He is a Mekstrom Patient," said Miss Macklin quietly. "At this stage,
+he is unconscious."
+
+I sort of sneered at her. "Good friend of yours, no doubt."
+
+"Not particularly," she said. "Let's say that he is a poor victim that
+would die if we hadn't found his infection early." The tone and
+expression of her voice made me seethe; she sounded as though she felt
+herself to be a real benefactor to the human race, and that she and her
+outfit would do the same for any other poor guy that caught
+Mekstrom's--providing they learned about this unfortunate occurrence in
+time.
+
+"We would, Mr. Cornell."
+
+"Bah-loney," I grunted.
+
+"Why dispute my word?" she asked in the same tone of innocent honesty.
+
+I eyed her angrily and I felt my hand tighten on the revolver. "I've a
+reason to become suspicious," I told her in a voice that I hoped was as
+mild-mannered as her own. "Because three people have disappeared in the
+past half-year without a trace, but under circumstances that put me in
+the middle. All of them, somehow, seem to be involved with your hidden
+road sign system and Mekstrom's Disease."
+
+"That's unfortunate," she said quietly.
+
+I had to grab myself to keep from yelling, "Unfortunate?" and managed to
+muffle it down to a mere voice-volume sound. "People dying of Mekstrom's
+because you're keeping this cure a secret and I'm batted from pillar to
+post because--" I gave up on that because I really did not know why.
+
+"It's unfortunate that you had to become involved," she said firmly.
+"Because you--"
+
+"It's unfortunate for everybody," I snapped, "because I'm going to bust
+you all wide open!"
+
+"I'm afraid not. You see, in order to do that you'll have to get out of
+here and that I will not permit."
+
+I grunted. "Miss Macklin, you Mekstroms have hard bodies, but do you
+think your hide will stop a slug from this?"
+
+"You'll never know. You see, Mr. Cornell, you do not have the cold,
+brittle, determined guts that you'd need to pull that trigger."
+
+"No?"
+
+"Pull it," she said. "Or do you agree, now that you're of age, that you
+can't bluff a telepath."
+
+I eyed her sourly because she was right. She held that strength that
+lies in weakness; I could not pull that trigger and fire a .375 inch
+slug into that slender, silk-covered midriff. And opposite that, Miss
+Macklin also had a strength that was strength itself. She could hold me
+aloft with one hand kicking and squirming while she was twisting my arms
+and legs off with her other hand.
+
+She held all the big cards of her sex, too. I couldn't slug her with my
+fist, even though I knew that I'd only break my hand without even
+bruising her. I was in an awkward situation and I knew it. If she'd been
+a normal woman I could have shrugged my way past her and left, but she
+was determined not to let me leave without a lot of physical violence.
+Violence committed on a woman gets the man in dutch no matter how
+justified he is.
+
+Yet in my own weakness there was a strength; there was another way out
+and I took it. Abruptly and without forethought.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+Shifting my aim slightly, I pulled the trigger. The .375 Bonanza went
+off with a sound like an atom bomb in a telephone booth, and the slug
+whiffed between her arm and her body and drilled a crater in the plaster
+behind her.
+
+The roar stunned her stiff. The color drained from her face and she
+swayed uncertainly. I found time enough to observe that while her body
+was as hard as chromium, her nervous system was still human and
+sensitive enough to make her faint from a sudden shock. She caught
+herself, and stood there stiff and white with one delicate (but
+steel-hard) hand up against her throat.
+
+Then I dug the household. They were piling out of the hay like a bunch
+of trained firemen answering a still alarm. They arrived in all stages
+of nightdress in the following order:
+
+The man, about twenty-two or three, who skidded into the room on dead
+gallop and put on brakes with a screech as he caught sight of the .375
+with its thin wisp of blue vapor still trailing out of the muzzle.
+
+The twins, aged about fourteen, who might have turned to run if they'd
+not been frightened stiff at the sight of the cannon in my fist.
+
+Father and then Mother Macklin, who came in briskly but without panic.
+
+Mr. Macklin said, crisply, "May I have an explanation, Mr. Cornell?"
+
+"I'm a cornered rat," I said thickly. "And so I'm scared. I want out of
+here in one piece. I'm so scared that if I'm intercepted, I may get
+panicky, and if I do someone is likely to get hurt. Understand?"
+
+"Perfectly," said Mr. Macklin calmly.
+
+"Are you going to let him get away with this?" snapped the eldest son.
+
+"Fred, a nervous man with a revolver is very dangerous. Especially one
+who lacks the rudimentary training in the simpler forms of burglary."
+
+I couldn't help but admire the older gentleman's bland self-confidence.
+"Young man," he said to me, "You've made a bad mistake."
+
+"No I haven't," I snapped. "I've been on the trail of something concrete
+for a long time, and now that I've found it I'm not going to let it go
+easily." I waved the .375 and they all cringed but Mr. Macklin.
+
+He said, "Please put that weapon down, Mr. Cornell. Let's not add
+attempted murder to your other crimes."
+
+"Don't force me to it, then. Get out of my way and let me go."
+
+He smiled. "I don't have to be telepath to tell you that you won't pull
+that trigger until you're sorely driven," he replied calmly. He was so
+right that it made me mad. He added, "also, you've got four shells left
+since you carry the firearm on an empty chamber. Not used to guns, are
+you, Mr. Cornell?"
+
+Well, I wasn't used to wearing a gun. Now that he mentioned it, I
+remembered that it was impossible to fire the shell under the hammer by
+any means except by pulling the trigger.
+
+What he was telling me meant that even if I made a careful but bloody
+sweep of it with my four shells, there would be two of them left, and
+even the twins were more than capable of taking me apart inch by inch
+once my revolver was empty.
+
+"Seems to be an impasse, Mr. Cornell," he said with an amused smile.
+
+"You bland-mannered bunch of--"
+
+"Ah now, please," he said abruptly. "My wife is not accustomed to such
+language, nor is my daughter, although my son and the twins probably
+know enough definitions to make them angry. This is an impasse, Mr.
+Cornell, and it behooves all of us to be extremely polite to one
+another. For one wrong move and you'll fire; this will mean complete
+chaos for all of us. One wrong word from you and someone of us will take
+offense, which will be equally fatal. Now, let's all stand quietly and
+talk this over."
+
+"What's to talk over?" I demanded.
+
+"A truce. Or call it an armistice."
+
+"Do go on."
+
+He looked at his family, and I followed his gaze. Miss Macklin was
+leaning against the wall with a look of concentrated interest. Her elder
+brother Fred was standing alert and ready but not quite poised for a
+leap. Mrs. Macklin had a motherly-looking smile on her face which for
+some unknown reason she was aiming at me in a disarming manner. The
+twins were standing close together, both of them puzzled-looking. I
+wondered whether they were esper or telepath (twins are always the same
+when they're identical, and opposite when fraternal). The thing that
+really bothered me was their attitude They all seemed to look at me as
+though I were a poor misguided individual who had unwittingly tromped on
+their toes after having fallen in among bad company. They reminded me of
+the Harrisons, who looked and sounded so sympathetic when I'd gone out
+there seeking Catherine.
+
+A fine bunch to trust! First they swipe my girl and erase all traces of
+her; then when I go looking they offer me help and sympathy for my
+distress. The right hand giveth and the left hand taketh away, yeah!
+
+I hated them all, yet I am not a hero-type. I wanted the whole Highways
+in Hiding rolled up like an old discarded corridor carpet, with every
+Mekstrom on Earth rolled up in it. But even if I'd been filled to the
+scuppers with self-abnegation in favor of my fellow man, I could not
+have pulled the trigger and started the shambles. For instead of blowing
+the whole thing wide open because of a batch of bodies, the survivors
+would have enough savvy to clean up the mess before our bodies got cold,
+and the old Highways crowd would be doing business at the same old
+stand. Without, I might add, without the minor nuisance that people call
+Steve Cornell.
+
+What I really wanted was to find Catherine.
+
+And then it came to me that what I really wanted second of all was to
+possess a body of Mekstrom Flesh, to be a physical superman.
+
+"Suppose," said Miss Macklin unexpectedly, "that it is impossible?"
+
+"Impossible?" I roared. "What have you got that I haven't got?"
+
+"Mekstrom's Disease," replied Miss Macklin quietly.
+
+"Fine," I sneered. "So how do I go out and get it?"
+
+"You'll get it naturally--or not at all," she said.
+
+"Now see here--" I started off, but Mr. Macklin stopped me with an
+upraised hand.
+
+"Mr. Cornell," he said, "we are in the very awkward position of trying
+to convince a man that his preconceived notion is incorrect. We can
+produce no direct evidence to support our statement. All we can do is to
+tell you that so far as we know, and as much as we know about Mekstrom's
+Disease, no one has ever contracted the infection artificially."
+
+"And how can I believe you?"
+
+"That's our awkward position. We cannot show you anything that will
+support our statement. We can profess the attitudes of honesty, truth,
+honor, good-will, altruism, and every other word that means the same
+thing. We can talk until doomsday and nothing will be said."
+
+"So where is all this getting us?" I asked.
+
+"I hope it is beginning to cause your mind to doubt the preconceived
+notion," he said. "Ask yourself why any outfit such as ours would
+deliberately show you evidence."
+
+"I have it and it does not make sense."
+
+He smiled. "Precisely. It does not."
+
+Fred Macklin interrupted, "Look, Dad, why are we bothering with all this
+guff?"
+
+"Because I have hopes that Mr. Cornell can be made to see our point, to
+join, as it were, our side."
+
+"Fat chance," I snapped.
+
+"Please, I'm your elder and not at all inclined to waste my time. You
+came here seeking information and you shall have it. You will not
+believe it, but it will, I hope, fill in some blank spots after you have
+had a chance to compare, sort, and use your own logic on the problem. As
+a mechanical engineer, you are familiar with the line of reasoning that
+we non-engineering people call Occam's Razor?"
+
+"The law of least reaction," I said automatically.
+
+"The what?" asked Mrs. Macklin.
+
+Miss Macklin said, "I'll read it from Mr. Cornell's mind, mother. The
+law of least reaction can be demonstrated by the following: If a bucket
+of mixed wood-shavings and gasoline are heated, there is a calculable
+probability that the gasoline will catch fire first because the gasoline
+is easier--least reaction--to set on fire."
+
+"Right," I said. "But how does this apply to me?"
+
+Mr. Macklin took up the podium again: "For one thing, your assumption
+regarding Catherine is correct. At the time of the accident she was
+found to have Mekstrom's Disease in its earliest form. The Harrisons did
+take her in to save her life. Now, dropping that side of the long story,
+we must follow your troubles. The accident, to a certain group of
+persons, was a fortunate one. It placed under their medical care a
+man--you--in whose mind could be planted a certain mild curiosity about
+a peculiar road sign and other evidences. The upshot of this was that
+you took off on a tour of investigation."
+
+That sounded logical, but there were a lot of questions that had open,
+ragged ends flying loose.
+
+Mr. Macklin went on: "Let's diverge for the moment. Mr. Cornell, what is
+your reaction to Mekstrom's Disease at this point?"
+
+That was easy. It was a curse to the human race, excepting that some
+outfit knew how to cure it. Once cured, it made a physical superman of
+the so-called victim. What stuck in my craw was the number of
+unfortunate people who caught it and died painfully--or by their own
+hand in horror--without the sign of aid or assistance.
+
+He nodded when I'd gone about half-way through my conclusions and before
+I got mentally violent about them.
+
+"Mr. Cornell, you've expressed your own doom at certain hands. You feel
+that the human race could benefit by exploitation of Mekstrom's
+Disease."
+
+"It could, if everybody helped out and worked together."
+
+"Everybody?" he asked with a sly look. I yearned again for the ability
+of a telepath, and I knew that the reason why I was running around loose
+was because I was only an esper and therefore incapable of learning the
+truth directly. I stood there like a totem pole and tried to think.
+
+Eventually it occurred to me. Just as there are people who cannot stand
+dictatorships, there are others who cannot abide democracy; in any
+aggregation like the human race there will be the warped souls who feel
+superior to the rest of humanity. They welcome dictatorships providing
+they can be among the dictators and if they are not included, they fight
+until the other dictatorship is deposed so that they can take over.
+
+"True," said Mr. Macklin, "And yet, if they declared their intentions,
+how long would they last?"
+
+"Not very long. Not until they had enough power to make it stick," I
+said.
+
+"And above all, not until they have the power to grant this blessing to
+those whose minds agree with theirs. So now, Mr. Cornell, I'll make a
+statement that you can accept as a mere collection of words, to be used
+in your arguments with yourself: We'll assume two groups, one working to
+set up a hierarchy of Mekstroms in which the rest of the human race will
+become hewers of wood and drawers of water. Contrasting that group is
+another group who feels that no man or even a congress of men are
+capable of picking and choosing the individual who is to be granted the
+body of the physical superman. We cannot hope to watch the watchers, Mr.
+Cornell, and we will not have on our conscience the weight of having to
+select A over B as being more desirable. Enough of this! You'll have to
+argue it out by yourself later."
+
+"Later?" grunted Fred Macklin. "You're not going to--"
+
+"I certainly am," said his father firmly. "Mr. Cornell may yet be the
+agency whereby we succeed in winning out." He spoke to me again.
+"Neither group dares to come into the open, Mr. Cornell. We cannot
+accuse the other group of anything nefarious, any more than they dare to
+accuse us. Their mode of attack is to coerce you into exposing us for a
+group of undercover operators who are making supermen."
+
+"Look," I asked him, "why not admit it? You've got nothing sinister in
+mind."
+
+"Think of all the millions of people who have not had schooling beyond
+the preparatory grades," he said. "People of latent psi ability instead
+of trained practice, or those poor souls who have no psi ability worth
+mentioning. Do you know the history of the Rhine Institute, Mr.
+Cornell?"
+
+"Only vaguely."
+
+"In the early days of Rhine's work at Duke University, there were many
+scoffers. The scoffers and detractors, naturally enough, were those
+people who had the least amount of psi ability. Admitting that at the
+time all psi ability was latent, they still had less of it. But after
+Rhine's death, his associates managed to prove his theories and
+eventually worked out a system of training that would develop the psi
+ability. Then, Mr. Cornell, those who are blessed with a high ability in
+telepathy or perception--the common term of esper is a misnomer, you
+know, because there's nothing extra-sensory about perception--found
+themselves being suspected and hated by those who had not this delicate
+sense. It took forty of fifty years before common public acceptance got
+around to looking at telepathy and perception in the same light as they
+saw a musician with a trained ear or an artist with a trained eye. Psi
+is a talent that everybody has to some degree, and today this is
+accepted with very little angry jealousy.
+
+"But now," he went on thoughtfully, "consider what would happen if we
+made a public announcement that we could cure Mekstrom's Disease by
+making a physical superman out of the poor victim. Our main enemy would
+then stand up righteously and howl that we are concealing the secret; he
+would be believed. We would be tracked down and persecuted, eventually
+wiped out, while he sat behind his position and went on picking and
+choosing victims whose attitude parallel his own."
+
+"And who is the character?" I demanded. I knew. But I wanted him to say
+it aloud.
+
+He shook his head. "I'll not say it," he said. "Because I will not
+accuse him aloud, any more than he dares to tell you flatly that we are
+an underground organization that must be rooted out. He knows about our
+highways and our way stations and our cure, because he uses the same
+cure. He can hide behind his position so long as he makes no direct
+accusation. You know the law, Mr. Cornell."
+
+Yes, I knew the law. So long as the accuser came into court with a
+completely clean mind, he was safe. But Scholar Phelps could hardly make
+the accusation, nor could he supply the tiniest smidgin of direct
+evidence to me. For in my accusation I'd implicate him as an
+accessory-accuser and then he would be called upon to supply not only
+evidence but a clear, clean, and open mind. In shorter words, the old
+stunt of pointing loudly to someone else as a dodge for covering up your
+own crime was a lost art in this present-day world of telepathic
+competence. The law, of course, insisted that no man could be convicted
+for what he was thinking, but only upon direct evidence of action. But a
+crooked-thinking witness found himself in deep trouble anyway, even
+though crooked thinking was in itself no crime.
+
+"Now for one more time," said Mr. Macklin. "Consider a medical person
+who cannot qualify because he is a telepath and not a perceptive. His
+very soul was devoted to being a scholar of medicine like his father and
+his grandfather, but his telepath ability does not allow him to be the
+full scholar. A doctor he can be. But he can never achieve the final
+training, again the ultimate degree. Such a man overcompensates and
+becomes the frustrate; a ripe disciple for the superman theory."
+
+"Dr. Thorndyke!" I blurted.
+
+His face was as blank, as noncommittal as a bronze bust; I could neither
+detect affirmation nor negation in it. He was playing it flat; I'd never
+get any evidence from him, either.
+
+"So now, Mr. Cornell, I have given you food for thought. I've made no
+direct statements; nothing that you could point to. I've defended myself
+as any man will do, but only by protestations of innocence. Therefore I
+suggest that you take your artillery and vacate the premises."
+
+I remembered the Bonanza .375 that was hanging in my hand. Shamefacedly
+I slipped it back in my hip pocket. "But look, sir--"
+
+"Please leave, Mr. Cornell. Any more I cannot say without laying us wide
+open for trouble. I am sorry for you, it is no joy being a pawn. But I
+hope that your pawn-ship will work for our side, and I hope that you
+will come through it safely. Now, please leave us quietly."
+
+I shrugged. I left. And as I was leaving, Miss Macklin touched my arm
+and said in a soft voice: "I hope you find your Catherine, Steve. And I
+hope that someday you'll be able to join her."
+
+I nodded dumbly. It was not until I was all the way back to my car that
+I remembered that her last statement was something similar to wishing me
+a case of measles so that I'd be afterward immune from them.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+As the miles separated me from the Macklins, my mind kept whirling
+around in a tight circle. I had a lot of the bits, but none of them
+seemed to lock together very tight. And unhappily, too many of the bits
+that fit together were hunks that I did not like.
+
+I knew the futility of being non-telepath. Had Mr. Macklin given me the
+truth or was I being sold another shoddy bill of goods? Or had he spun
+me a yarn just to get me out of his house without a riot? Of course,
+there had been a riot, and he'd been expecting it. If nothing else, it
+proved that I was a valuable bit of material, for some undisclosed
+reason.
+
+I had to grin. I didn't know the reason, but whatever reason they had,
+it must gripe the devil out of them to be unable to erase me.
+
+Then the grin faded. No one had told me about Catherine. They'd neatly
+avoided the subject. Well, since I'd taken off on this still hunt to
+find Catherine, I'd continue looking, even though every corner I looked
+into turned out to be the hiding place for another bunch of mad spooks.
+
+My mind took another tack: Admitting that neither side could rub me out
+without losing, why in heck didn't they just collect me and put me in a
+cage? Dammit, if I had an organization as well oiled as either of them,
+I could collect the President right out of the New White House and put
+him in a cage along with the King of England, the Shah of Persia, and
+the Dali Lama to make a fourth for bridge.
+
+This was one of those questions that cannot be answered by the
+application of logic, reasoning, or by applying either experience or
+knowledge. I did not know, nor understand. And the only way I would ever
+find out was to locate someone who was willing to tell.
+
+Then it occurred to me that--aside from my one experience in
+housebreaking--that I'd been playing according to the rules. I'm pretty
+much a law-abiding citizen. Yet it did seem to me that I learned more
+during those times when the rules, if not broken, at least were bent
+rather sharply. So I decided to try my hand at busting a couple of
+rather high-level rules.
+
+There was a way to track down Catherine.
+
+So I gassed up the buggy, turned the nose East, and took off like a man
+with a purpose in mind. En route, I laid out my course. Along that
+course there turned out to be seven Way Stations, according to the
+Highway signs. Three of them were along U.S. 12 on the way from
+Yellowstone to Chicago. One of them was between Chicago and Hammond,
+Indiana. There was another to the south of Sandusky, Ohio, one was
+somewhere south of Erie, Pa., and the last was in the vicinity of
+Newark. There were a lot of the Highways themselves, leading into and
+out of my main route--as well as along it.
+
+But I ignored them all, and nobody gave me a rough time.
+
+Eventually I walked into my apartment. It was musty, dusty, and
+lonesome. Some of Catherine's things were still on the table where I'd
+dropped them; they looked up at me mutely until I covered them with the
+walloping pile of mail that had arrived in my long absence. I got a
+bottle of beer and began to go through the mail, wastebasketing the
+advertisements, piling the magazines neatly, and filing some offers of
+jobs (Which reminded me that I was still an engineer and that my funds
+wouldn't last indefinitely) and went on through the mail until I came to
+a letter--The Letter.
+
+     _Dear Mr. Cornell:_
+
+     _We're glad to hear from you. We moved, not because Marian caught
+     Mekstrom's, but because the dead area shifted and left us sort of
+     living in a fish-bowl, psi-wise._
+
+     _Everybody is hale and hearty here and we all wish you the best._
+
+     _Please do not think for a moment that you owe us anything. We'd
+     rather be free of your so-called debt. We regret that Catherine was
+     not with you, maybe the accident might not have happened. But we do
+     all think that we stand as an association with a very unhappy
+     period in your life, and that it will be better for you if you try
+     to forget that we exist. This is a hard thing to say, Steve, but
+     really, all we can do for you is to remind you of your troubles._
+
+     _Therefore with love from all of us, we'd like to make this a
+     sincerely sympathetic and final--_
+
+     _Farewell, Philip Harrison._
+
+I grunted unhappily. It was a nice-sounding letter, but it did not ring
+true, somehow. I sat there digging it for hidden meanings, but none
+came. I didn't care. In fact, I didn't really expect any more than this.
+If they'd not written me at all, I'd still have done what I did. I sat
+down and wrote Phillip Harrison another letter:
+
+     _Dear Philip:_
+
+     _I received your letter today, as I returned from an extended trip
+     through the west. I'm glad to hear that Marian is not suffering
+     from Mekstrom's Disease. I am told that it is fatal to
+     the--uninitiated._
+
+     _However, I hope to see you soon._
+
+     _Regards, Steve Cornell._
+
+_That_, I thought, _should do it!_
+
+Then to help me and my esper, I located a tiny silk handkerchief of
+Catherine's, one she'd left after one of her visits. I slipped it into
+the envelope and slapped a stamp and a notation on the envelope that
+this letter was to be forwarded to Phillip Harrison. I dropped it in the
+box about eleven that night, but I didn't bother trying to follow it
+until the morning.
+
+Ultimately it was picked up and taken to the local post office, and from
+there it went to the clearing station at Pennsylvania Station at 34th
+St., where I hung around the mail-baggage section until I attracted the
+attention of a policeman.
+
+"Looking for something, Mr. Cornell?"
+
+"Not particularly," I told the telepath cop. "Why?"
+
+"You've been digging every mailbag that comes out of there."
+
+"Am I?" I asked ingeniously.
+
+"Can it Buster, or we'll let you dig your way out of a jail."
+
+"You can't arrest a man for thinking."
+
+"I'll be happy to make it loitering," he said sharply.
+
+"I've a train ticket."
+
+"Use it, then."
+
+"Sure. At train time I'll use it."
+
+"Which train?" he asked me sourly. "You've missed three already."
+
+"I'm waiting for a special train, officer."
+
+"Then please go and wait in the bar, Mr. Cornell."
+
+"Okay. I'm sorry I caused you any trouble, but I've a bit of a personal
+problem. It isn't illegal."
+
+"Anything that involves taking a perceptive dig at the U.S. Mail is
+illegal," said the policeman. "Personal or not, it's out. So either you
+stop digging or else."
+
+I left. There was no sense in arguing with the cop. I'd just end up
+short. So I went to the bar and I found out why he'd recommended it. It
+was in a faintly-dead area, hazy enough to prevent me from taking a
+squint at the baggage section. I had a couple of fast ones, but I
+couldn't stand the suspense of not knowing when my letter might take off
+without me.
+
+Since I'd also pushed my loitering-luck I gave up. The only thing I
+could hope for was that the sealed forwarding address had been made out
+at that little town near the Harrisons and hadn't been moved. So I went
+and took a train that carried no mail.
+
+It made my life hard. I had to wander around that tank town for hours,
+keeping a blanket-watch on the post office for either the income or the
+outgo of my precious hunk of mail. I caught some hard eyes from the
+local yokels but eventually I discovered that my luck was with me.
+
+A fast train whiffled through the town and they baggage-hooked a mailbag
+off the car at about a hundred and fifty per. I found out that the next
+stop of that train was Albany. I'd have been out of luck if I'd hoped to
+ride with the bag.
+
+Then came another period of haunting that dinky post office (I've
+mentioned before that it was in a dead area, so I couldn't watch the
+insides, only the exits) until at long last I perceived my favorite bit
+of mail emerging in another bag. It was carted to the railroad station
+and hung up on another pick-up hook. I bought a ticket back to New York
+and sat on a bench near the hook, probing into the bag as hard as my
+sense of perception could dig.
+
+I cursed the whole world. The bag was merely labelled "Forwarding Mail"
+in letters that could be seen at ninety feet. My own letter, of course,
+I could read very well, to every dotted 'i' and crossed 't' and the
+stitching in Catherine's little kerchief. But I could not make out the
+address printed on the form that was pasted across the front of the
+letter itself.
+
+As I sat there trying to probe that sealed address, a fast train came
+along and scooped the bag off the hook.
+
+I caught the next train. I swore and I squirmed and I groaned because
+that train stopped at every wide spot in the road, paused to take on
+milk, swap cars, and generally tried to see how long it could take to
+make a run of some forty miles. This was Fate. Naturally, any train that
+stopped at my rattle burg would also stop at every other point along the
+road where some pioneer had stopped to toss a beer bottle off of his
+covered wagon.
+
+At long last I returned to Pennsylvania Station just in time to perceive
+my letter being loaded on a conveyor for LaGuardia.
+
+Then the same damned policeman collared me.
+
+"This is it," he said.
+
+"Now see here, officer. I--"
+
+"Will you come quietly, Mr. Cornell? Or shall I put the big arm on you?"
+
+"For what?"
+
+"You've been violating the 'Disclosure' section of the Federal
+Communications Act, and I know it."
+
+"Now look, officer, I said this was not illegal."
+
+"I'm not an idiot, Cornell!" I noted uncomfortably that he had dropped
+the formal address. "You have been trailing a specific piece of mail
+with the express purpose of finding out where it is going. Since its
+destination is a sealed forwarding address, your attempt to determine
+this destination is a violation of the act." He eyed me coldly as if to
+dare me to deny it. "Now," he finished, "Shall I read you chapter and
+verse?"
+
+He had me cold. The 'Disclosure' Act was an old ruling that any
+transmission must not be used for the benefit of any handler. When Rhine
+came along, 'Disclosure' Act was extended to everything.
+
+"Look officer, it's my girl," hoping that would make a difference.
+
+"I know that," he told me flatly. "Which is why I'm not running you in.
+I'm just telling you to lay off. Your girl went away and left you a
+sealed forwarding address. Maybe she doesn't want to see you again."
+
+"She's sick," I said.
+
+"Maybe her family thinks you made her sick. Now stop it and go away. And
+if I ever find you trying to dig the mail again, you'll dig iron bars.
+Now scat!"
+
+He urged me towards the outside of the station like a sheep-dog hazing
+his flock. I took a cab to LaGuardia, even though it was not as fast as
+the subway. I was glad to be out of his presence.
+
+I connected with my letter again at LaGuardia. It was being loaded
+aboard a DC-16 headed for Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, Hawaii, and
+Manila. I didn't know how far it was going so I bought a ticket for the
+route with my travel card and I got aboard just ahead of the closing
+door.
+
+My bit of mail was in the compartment below me, and in the hour travel
+time to Chicago, I found out that Chicago was the destination for the
+mailbag, although the superscript on the letter was still hazy.
+
+I followed the bag off the plane at Chicago and stopped long enough to
+cancel the rest of my ticket. There was no use wasting the money for the
+unused fare from Chicago to Manila. I rode into the city in a
+combination bus-truck less than six feet from my little
+point-of-interest. During the ride I managed to dig the superscript.
+
+It forwarded the letter to Ladysmith, Wisconsin, and from there to a
+rural route that I couldn't understand although I got the number.
+
+Then I went back to Midway Airport and found to my disgust that the
+Chicago Airport did not have a bar. I dug into this oddity for a moment
+until I found out that the Chicago Airport was built on Public School
+Property and that according to law, they couldn't sell anything harder
+than soda pop within three hundred feet of public school property, no
+matter who rented it. So I dawdled in the bar across Cicero Avenue until
+plane time, and took an old propeller-driven Convair to Eau Claire on a
+daisy-clipping ride that stopped at every wide spot on the course. From
+Eau Claire the mail bag took off in the antediluvian Convair but I took
+off by train because the bag was scheduled to be dropped by guided
+glider into Ladysmith.
+
+At Ladysmith I rented a car, checked the rural routes, and took off
+about the same time as my significant hunk of mail.
+
+Nine miles from Ladysmith is a flagstop called Bruce, and not far from
+Bruce there is a body of water slightly larger than a duck pond called
+Caley Lake.
+
+A backroad, decorated with ornamental metal signs, led me from Bruce,
+Wisconsin, to Caley Lake, where the road signs showed a missing spoke.
+
+I turned in, feeling like Ferdinand Magellan must have felt when he
+finally made his passage through the Strait to discover the open sea
+that lay beyond the New World. I had done a fine job of tailing and I
+wanted someone to pin a leather medal on me. The side road wound in and
+out for a few hundred yards, and then I saw Phillip Harrison.
+
+He was poking a long tool into the guts of an automatic pump, built to
+lift water from a deep well into a water tower about forty feet tall. He
+did not notice my arrival until I stopped my rented car beside him and
+said:
+
+"Being a mechanical engineer and an esper, Phil, I can tell you that you
+have a--"
+
+"A worn gasket seal," he said. "It doesn't take an esper engineer to
+figure it out. How the heck did you find us?"
+
+"Out in your mailbox there is a letter," I told him. "I came with it."
+
+He eyed me humorously. "How much postage did you cost? Or did you come
+second class mail?"
+
+I was not sure that I cared for the inference, but Phillip was kidding
+me by the half-smile on his face. I asked, "Phil, please tell me--what
+is going on?"
+
+His half-smile faded. He shook his head unhappily as he said, "Why can't
+you leave well-enough alone?"
+
+My feelings welled up and I blew my scalp. "Let well enough alone?" I
+roared. "I'm pushed from pillar to post by everybody. You steal my girl.
+I'm in hokus with the cops, and then you tell me that I'm to stay--"
+
+"Up the proverbial estuary lacking the customary means of locomotion,"
+he finished with a smile.
+
+I couldn't see the humor in it. "Yeah," I drawled humorlessly.
+
+"You realize that you're probably as big a liability with us as you were
+trying to find us?"
+
+I grunted. "I could always blow my brains out."
+
+"That's no solution and you know it."
+
+"Then give me an alternative."
+
+Phillip shrugged. "Now that you're here, you're here. It's obvious that
+you know too much, Steve. You should have left well enough alone."
+
+"I didn't know well enough. Besides, I couldn't have been pushed better
+if someone had slipped me--" I stopped, stunned at the idea and then I
+went on in a falter, "--a post-hypnotic suggestion."
+
+"Steve, you'd better come in and meet Marian. Maybe that's what
+happened."
+
+"Marian?" I said hollowly.
+
+"She's a high-grade telepath. Master of psi, no less."
+
+My mind went red as I remembered how I'd catalogued her physical charms
+on our first meeting in an effort to find out whether she were esper or
+telepath. Marian had fine control; her mind must have positively seethed
+at my invasion of her privacy. I did not want to meet Marian face to
+face right now, but there wasn't a thing I could do about it.
+
+Phillip left his pump and waved for me to follow. He took off in his
+jeep and I trailed him to the farmhouse. We went through a dim area that
+was almost the ideal shape for a home. The ring was not complete, but
+the open part faced the fields behind the house so that good privacy was
+ensured for all practical purposes.
+
+On the steps of the verandah stood Marian.
+
+Sight of her was enough to make me forget my self-accusation of a few
+moments ago. She stood tall and lissome, the picture of slender, robust
+health.
+
+"Come in, Steve," she said, holding out her hand. I took it. Her grip
+was firm and hard, but it was gentle. I knew that she could have pulped
+my hand if she squeezed hard.
+
+"I'm very happy to see that rumor is wrong and that you're
+not--suffering--from Mekstrom's Disease," I told her.
+
+"So now you know, Steve. Too bad."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because it adds a load to all of us. Even you." She looked at me
+thoughtfully for a moment, then said, "Well, come on in and relax,
+Steve. We'll talk it out."
+
+We all went inside.
+
+On a divan in the living room, covered by a light blanket, resting in a
+very light snooze, was a woman. Her face was turned away from me, but
+the hair and the line of the figure and the--
+
+#Catherine!#
+
+She turned and sat up at once, alive and shocked awake. She rubbed the
+sleep from her eyes with swift knuckles and then looked over her hands
+at me.
+
+"Steve!" she cried, and all the world and the soul of her was in the
+throb of her voice.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+Catherine took one unsteady step towards me and then came forward with a
+rush. She hurled herself into my arms, pressed herself against me, held
+me tight.
+
+It was like being attacked by a bulldozer.
+
+Phillip stayed my back against her headlong rush or I would have been
+thrown back out through the door, across the verandah, and into the
+middle of the yard. The strength of her crushed my chest and wrenched my
+spine. Her lips crushed mine. I began to black out from the physical
+hunger of a woman who did not know the extent of her new-found body. All
+that Catherine remembered was that once she held me to the end of her
+strength and yearned for more. To hold me that way now meant--death.
+
+Her body was the same slenderness, but the warm softness was gone. It
+was a flesh-warm waist of flexible steel. I was being held by a statue
+of bronze, animated by some monster servo-mechanism. This was no woman.
+
+Phillip and Marian pried her away from me before she broke my back.
+Phillip led her away, whispering softly in her ear. Marian carried me to
+the divan and let me down on my face gently. Her hands were gentle as
+she pressed the air back into my lungs and soothed away the awful wrench
+in my spine. Gradually I came alive again, but there was pain left that
+made me gasp at every breath.
+
+Then the physical hurt went away, leaving only the mental pain; the
+horror of knowing that the girl that I loved could never hold me in her
+arms. I shuddered. All that I wanted out of this life was marriage with
+Catherine, and now that I had found her again, I had to face the fact
+that the first embrace would kill me.
+
+I cursed my fate just as any invalid has cursed the malady that makes
+him a responsibility and a burden to his partner instead of a joy and
+helpmeet. Like the helpless, I didn't want it; I hadn't asked for it;
+nor had I earned it. Yet all I could do was to rail against the
+unfairness of the unwarranted punishment.
+
+Without knowing that I was asking, I cried out, "But why?" in a
+plaintive voice.
+
+In a gentle tone, Marian replied: "Steve, you cannot blame yourself.
+Catherine was lost to you before you met her at her apartment that
+evening. What she thought to be a callous on her small toe was really
+the initial infection of Mekstrom's Disease. We're all psi-sensitive to
+Mekstrom's Disease, Steve. So when you cracked up and Dad and Phil went
+on the dead run to help, they caught a perception of it. Naturally we
+had to help her."
+
+I must have looked bitter.
+
+"Look, Steve," said Phillip slowly. "You wouldn't have wanted us not to
+help? After all, would you want Catherine to stay with you? So that you
+could watch her die at the rate of a sixty-fourth of an inch each hour?"
+
+"Hell," I snarled, "Someone might have let me know."
+
+Phillip shook his head. "We couldn't Steve. You've got to understand our
+viewpoint."
+
+"To heck with your viewpoint!" I roared angrily. "Has anybody ever
+stopped to consider mine?" I did not give a hoot that they could wind me
+around a doorknob and tuck my feet in the keyhole. Sure, I was grateful
+for their aid to Catherine. But why didn't someone stop to think of the
+poor benighted case who was in the accident ward? The bird that had been
+traipsing all over hell's footstool trying to get a line on his lost
+sweetheart. I'd been through the grinder; questioned by the F.B.I.,
+suspected by the police; and I'd been the guy who'd been asked by a
+grieving, elderly couple, "But can't you remember, son?" Them and their
+stinking point of view!
+
+"Easy, Steve," warned Phillip Harrison.
+
+"Easy nothing! What possible justification have you for putting me
+through my jumps?"
+
+"Look, Steve. We're in a precarious position. We're fighting a battle
+against an unscrupulous enemy, an undercover battle, Steve. If we could
+get something on Phelps, we'd expose him and his Medical Center like
+that. Conversely, if we slip a millimeter, Phelps will clip us so hard
+that the sky will ring. He--damn him--has the Government on his side. We
+can't afford to look suspicious."
+
+"Couldn't you have taken me in too?"
+
+He shook his head sadly. "No," he said. "There was a bad accident, you
+know. The authorities have every right to insist that each and every
+automobile on the highway be occupied by a minimum of one driver. They
+also believe that for every accident there must be a victim, even though
+the damage is no more than a bad case of fright."
+
+I could hardly argue with that. Changing the subject, I asked, "but what
+about the others who just drop out of sight?"
+
+"We see to it that plausible letters of explanation are written."
+
+"So who wrote me?" I demanded hotly.
+
+He looked at me pointedly. "If we'd known about Catherine before, she'd
+have--disappeared--leaving you a trite letter. But no one could think of
+a letter to explain her disappearance from an accident, Steve."
+
+"Oh fine."
+
+"Well, you'd still prefer to find her alive, wouldn't you?"
+
+"Couldn't someone tell me?"
+
+"And have you radiating the fact like a broadcasting station?"
+
+"Why couldn't I have joined her--you--?"
+
+He shook his head in the same way that a man shakes it when he is trying
+to explain _why_ two plus two are four and not maybe five or three and a
+half. "Steve," he said, "You haven't got Mekstroms' Disease."
+
+"How do I get it?" I demanded hotly.
+
+"Nobody knows," he said unhappily. "If we did, we'd be providing the
+rest of the human race with indestructible bodies as fast as we could
+spread it and take care of them."
+
+"But couldn't I have been told _something_?" I pleaded. I must have
+sounded like a hurt kitten.
+
+Marian put her hand on my arm. "Steve," she said, "You'd have been
+smoothed over, maybe brought in to work for us in some dead area. But
+then you turned up acting dangerously for all of us."
+
+"Who--me?"
+
+"By the time you came out for your visit, you were dangerous to us."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"Let me find out. Relax, will you Steve? I'd like to read you deep.
+Catherine, you come in with me."
+
+"What are we looking for?"
+
+"Traces of post-hypnotic suggestion. It'll be hard to find because there
+will be only traces of a plan, all put in so that it looks like natural,
+logical reasoning."
+
+Catherine looked doubtful. "When would they have the chance?" she asked.
+
+"Thorndyke. In the hospital."
+
+Catherine nodded and I relaxed. At the beginning I was very reluctant. I
+didn't mind Catherine digging into the dark and dusty corners of my
+mind, but Marian Harrison bothered me.
+
+"Think of the accident, Steve," she said.
+
+Then I managed to lull my reluctant mind by remembering that she was
+trying to help me. I relaxed mentally and physically and regressed back
+to the day of the accident. I found it hard even then to go through the
+love-play and sweet seriousness that went on between Catherine and me,
+knowing that Marian Harrison was a sort of mental spectator. But I
+fought down my reticence and went on with it.
+
+I practically re-lived the accident. It was easier now that I'd found
+Catherine again. It was like a cleansing bath. I began to enjoy it. So I
+went on with my life and adventures right up to the present. Having come
+to the end, I stopped.
+
+Marian looked at Catherine. "Did you get it?"
+
+Silence. More silence. Then, "It seems dim. Almost incredulous--that it
+could be--" with a trail-off into thought again.
+
+Phillip snorted. "Make with the chin-music, you two. The rest of us
+aren't telepaths, you know."
+
+"Sorry," said Marian. "It's sort of complicated and hard to figure, you
+know. What seems to be the case is sort of like this," she went on in an
+uncertain tone, "We can't find any direct evidence of anything like
+hypnotic suggestion. The urge to follow what you call the Highways in
+Hiding is rather high for a mere bump of curiosity, but nothing
+definite. I think you were probably urged very gently. Catherine
+objects, saying that it would take a brilliant psycho-telepath to do a
+job delicate enough to produce the urge without showing the traces of
+the operation."
+
+"Someone of scholar grade in both psychology and telepathy," said
+Catherine.
+
+I thought it over for a moment. "It seems to me that whoever did it--if
+it was done--was well aware that a good part of this urge would be
+generated by Catherine's total and unexplicable disappearance. You'd
+have saved yourselves a lot of trouble--and saved me a lot of heartache
+if you'd let me know something. God! Haven't you any feelings?"
+
+Catherine looked at me from hurt eyes. "Steve," she said quietly, "A
+billion girls have sworn that they'd rather die than live without their
+one and only. I swore it too. But when your life's end is shown to you
+on a microscope slide, love becomes less important. What should I do?
+Just die? Painfully?"
+
+That was handing it to me on a platter. It hurt but I am not
+chuckleheaded enough to insist that she come with me to die instead of
+leaving me and living. What really hurt was not knowing.
+
+"Steve," said Marian. "You know that we couldn't have told you the
+truth."
+
+"Yeah," I agreed disconsolately.
+
+"Let's suppose that Catherine wrote you a letter telling you that she
+was alive and safe, but that she'd reconsidered the marriage. You were
+to forget her and all that. What happens next?"
+
+Unhappily I told him. "I'd not have believed it."
+
+Phillip nodded. "Next would have been a telepath-esper team. Maybe a
+perceptive with a temporal sense who could retrace that letter back to
+the point of origin, teamed up with a telepath strong enough to drill a
+hole through the dead area that surrounds New Washington. Why, even
+before Rhine Institute, it was sheer folly for a runaway to write a
+letter. What would it be now?"
+
+I nodded. What he said was true, but it did not ease the hurt.
+
+"Then on the other hand," he went on in a more cheerful vein, "Let's
+take another look at us and you, Steve. Tell me, fellow, where are you
+now?"
+
+I looked up at him. Phillip was smiling in a knowing-superior sort of
+manner. I looked at Marian. She was half-smiling. Catherine looked
+satisfied. I got it.
+
+"Yeah. I'm here."
+
+"You're here without having any letters, without leaving any broad trail
+of suspicion upon yourself. You've not disappeared, Steve. You've been
+a-running up and down the country all on your own decision. Where you go
+and what you do is your own business and nobody is going to set up a hue
+and cry after you. Sure, it took a lot longer this way. But it was a lot
+safer." He grinned wide then as he went on, "And if you'd like to take
+some comfort out of it, just remember that you've shown yourself to be
+quite capable, filled with dogged determination, and ultimately
+successful."
+
+He was right. In fact, if I'd tried the letter-following stunt long
+earlier, I'd have been here a lot sooner.
+
+"All right," I said. "So what do we do now?"
+
+"We go on and on and on, Steve, until we're successful."
+
+"Successful?"
+
+He nodded soberly. "Until we can make every man, woman, and child on the
+face of this Earth as much physical superman as we are, our job is not
+finished."
+
+I nodded. "I learned a few of the answers at the Macklin Place."
+
+"Then this does not come as a complete shock."
+
+"No. Not a complete shock. But there are a lot of loose ends still. So
+the basic theme I'll buy. Scholar Phelps and his Medical Center are busy
+using their public position to create the nucleus of a totalitarian
+state, or a physical hierarchy. You and the Highways in Hiding are busy
+tearing Phelps down because you don't want to see any more rule by the
+Divine Right of Kings, Dictators, or Family Lines."
+
+"Go on, Steve."
+
+"Well, why in the devil don't you announce yourselves?"
+
+"No good, old man. Look, you yourself want to be a Mekstrom. Even with
+your grasp of the situation, you resent the fact that you cannot."
+
+"You're right."
+
+Phillip nodded slowly. "Let's hypothesize for a moment, taking a subject
+that has nothing to do with Mekstrom's Disease. Let's take one of the
+old standby science-fiction plots. Some cataclysm is threatening the
+solar system. The future of the Earth is threatened, and we have only
+one spacecraft capable of carrying a hundred people to safety--somewhere
+else. How would you select them?"
+
+I shrugged. "Since we're hypothecating, I suppose that I'd select the
+more healthy, the more intelligent, the more virile, the more--" I
+struggled for another category and then let it stand right there because
+I couldn't think of another at that instant.
+
+Phillip agreed. "Health and intelligence and all the rest being pretty
+much a matter of birth and upbringing, how can you explain to Wilbur
+Zilch that Oscar Hossenpfeiffer has shown himself smarter and healthier
+and therefore better stock for survival? Maybe you can, but the
+end-result is that Wilbur Zilch slaughters Oscar Hossenpfeiffer. This
+either provides an opening for Zilch, or if he is caught at it, it
+provides Zilch with the satisfaction of knowing that he's stopped the
+other guy from getting what he could not come by honestly."
+
+"So what has this to do with Mekstrom's Disease and supermen?"
+
+"The day that we--and I mean either of us--announces that we can 'cure'
+Mekstrom's Disease and make physical supermen of the former victims,
+there will be a large scream from everybody to give them the same
+treatment. No, we'll tell them, we can't cure anybody who hasn't caught
+it. Then some pedagogue will stand up and declare that we are
+suppressing information. This will be believed by enough people to do us
+more harm than good. Darn it, we're not absolutely indestructible,
+Steve. We can be killed. We could be wiped out by a mob of angry
+citizens who saw in us a threat to their security. Neither we of the
+Highways nor Phelps of The Medical Center have enough manpower to be
+safe."
+
+"So that I'll accept. The next awkward question comes up: What are we
+going to do with me?"
+
+"You've agreed that we cannot move until we know how to inoculate
+healthy flesh. We need normal humans, to be our guinea pigs. Will you
+help bring to the Earth's People the blessing that is now denied them?"
+
+"If you are successful, Steve," said Marian, "You'll go down in History
+along with Otto Mekstrom. You could be the turning point of the human
+race, you know."
+
+"And if I fail?"
+
+Phillip Harrison's face took on a hard and determined look. "Steve,
+there can be no failure. We shall go on and on until we have success."
+
+That was a fine prospect. Old guinea-pig Cornell, celebrating his
+seventieth birthday as the medical experimentation went on and on.
+
+Catherine was leaning forward, her eyes bright. "Steve," she cried,
+"You've just _got_ to!"
+
+"Just call me the unwilling hero," I said in a drab voice. "And put it
+down that the condemned specimen drank a hearty dinner. I trust that
+there is a drink in the house."
+
+There was enough whiskey in the place to provide the new specimen with a
+near-total anesthesia. The evening was spent in forced badinage, shallow
+laughter, and a pointed avoidance of the main subject. The whiskey was
+good; I took it undiluted and succeeded in getting boiled to the
+eyebrows before they carted me off to bed.
+
+I did not sleep well despite my anesthesia. There was too much on my
+mind and very little of it was the fault of the Harrisons. One of the
+things that I had to face was the cold fact that part of Catherine's
+lack of communication with me was caused by logic and good sense. Both
+History and Fiction are filled with cases where love was set aside
+because consummation was impossible for any number of good reasons.
+
+So I slept fitfully, and my dreams were as unhappy as the thoughts I had
+during my waking moments. Somehow I realized that I'd have been far
+better off if I'd been able to forget Catherine after the accident, if
+I'd been able to resist the urge to follow the Highways in Hiding, if
+I'd never known that those ornamental road signs were something more
+than the desire of some road commissioner to beautify the countryside.
+But no, I had to go and poke my big bump of curiosity into the problem.
+So here I was, resentful as all hell because I was denied the pleasure
+of living in the strong body of a Mekstrom.
+
+It was not fair. Although Life itself is seldom fair, it seemed to me
+that Life was less fair to me than to others.
+
+And then to compound my feelings of persecution, I woke up once about
+three in the morning with a strong urge to take a perceptive dig down
+below. I should have resisted it, but of course, no one has ever been
+able to resist the urge of his sense of perception.
+
+Down in the living room, Catherine was crying on Phillip Harrison's
+shoulder. He held her gently with one arm around her slender waist and
+he was stroking her hair softly with his other hand. I couldn't begin to
+dig what was being said, but the tableau was unmistakable.
+
+She leaned back and looked at him as he said something. Her head moved
+in a 'No' motion as she took a deep breath for another bawl. She buried
+her face in his neck and sobbed. Phillip held her close for a moment and
+then loosed one hand to find a handkerchief for her. He wiped her eyes
+gently and talked to her until she shook her head in a visible effort to
+shake away both the tears and the unhappy thoughts.
+
+Eventually he lit two cigarettes and handed one to her. Side by side
+they walked to the divan and sat down close together. Catherine leaned
+against him gently and he put his arm over her shoulders and hugged her
+to him. She relaxed, looking unhappy, but obviously taking comfort in
+the strength and physical presence of him.
+
+It was a hell of a thing to dig in my mental condition. I drifted off to
+a sleep filled with unhappy dreams while they were still downstairs.
+Frankly, I forced myself into fitful sleep because I did not want to
+stay awake to follow them.
+
+As bad as the nightmare quality of my dreams were, they were better for
+me than the probable reality.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Oh, I'd been infernally brilliant when I uncovered the first secret of
+the Highways in Hiding. I found out that I did not know one-tenth of the
+truth. They had a network of Highways that would make the Department of
+Roads and Highways look like a backwood, second-rate, political
+organization.
+
+I'd believed, for instance, that the Highways were spotted only along
+main arteries to and from their Way Stations. The truth was that they
+had a complete system from one end of the country to the other. Lanes
+led from Maine and from Florida into a central main Highway that laid
+across the breadth of the United States. Then from Washington and from
+Southern California another branching network met this main Highway.
+Lesser lines served Canada and Mexico. The big Main Trunk ran from New
+York to San Francisco with only one large major division: A heavy line
+that led down to a place in Texas called _Homestead_. Homestead, Texas,
+was a big center that made Scholar Phelps' Medical Center look like a
+Teeny Weeny Village by comparison.
+
+We drove in Marian's car. My rented car, of course, was returned to the
+agency and my own bus would be ferried out as soon as it could be
+arranged so that I'd not be without personal transportation in Texas.
+Catherine remained in Wisconsin because she was too new at being a
+Mekstrom to know how to conduct herself so that the fact of her
+super-powerful body did not cause a lot of slack jaws and high
+suspicion.
+
+We drove along the Highways to Homestead, carrying a bag of the Mekstrom
+Mail.
+
+The trip was uneventful.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+Since this account of my life and adventures is not being written
+without some plan, it is no mere coincidence that this particular
+section comes under Chapter Thirteen. Old Unlucky Thirteen covers ninety
+days which I consider the most dismal ninety days of my life. Things,
+which had been going along smoothly had, suddenly got worse.
+
+We started with enthusiasm. They cut and they dug and they poked needles
+into me and trimmed out bits of my hide for slides. I helped them by
+digging my own flesh and letting their better telepaths read my results
+for their records.
+
+They were nice to me. I got the best of everything. But being nice to me
+was not enough; it sort of made me feel like Gulliver in Brobdingnag.
+They were so over-strong that they did not know their own strength. This
+was especially true of the youngsters of Mekstrom parents. I tried to
+re-diaper a baby one night and got my ring finger gummed for my efforts.
+It was like wrestling Bad Cyril in a one-fall match, winner take all.
+
+As the days added up into weeks, their hope and enthusiasm began to
+fade. The long list of proposed experiments dwindled and it became
+obvious that they were starting to work on brand new ideas. But brand
+new ideas are neither fast in arriving nor high in quantity, and time
+began to hang dismally heavy.
+
+They began to avoid my eyes. They stopped discussing their attempts on
+me; I no longer found out what they were doing and how they hoped to
+accomplish the act. They showed the helplessness that comes of failure,
+and this feeling of utter futility was transmitted to me.
+
+At first I was mentally frantic at the idea of failure, but as the
+futile days wore on and the fact was practically shoved down my throat,
+I was forced to admit that there was no future for Steve Cornell.
+
+I began at that time to look forward to my visit to reorientation.
+
+Reorientation is a form of mental suicide. Once reoriented, the problems
+that make life intolerable are forgotten, your personality is changed,
+your grasp of everything is revised, your appreciation of all things
+comes from an entirely new angle. You are a new person.
+
+Then one morning I faced my image in the mirror and came to the
+conclusion that if I couldn't be Me, I didn't want to be Somebody Else.
+It is no good to be alive if I am not me, I told my image, who
+obediently agreed with me.
+
+I didn't even wait to argue with Me. I just went out and got into my car
+and sloped. It was not hard; everybody in Homestead trusted me.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+I left homestead with a half-formed idea that I was going to visit
+Bruce, Wisconsin, long enough to say goodbye to Catherine and to release
+her from any matrimonial involvement she may have felt binding. I did
+not relish this idea, but I felt that getting it out, done, and agreed
+was only a duty.
+
+But as I hit the road and had time to think, I knew that my half-formed
+intention was a sort of martyrdom; I was going to renounce myself in a
+fine welter of tears and then go staggering off into the setting sun to
+die of my mental wounds. I took careful stock of myself and faced the
+fact that my half-baked idea was a sort of suicide-wish; walking into
+any Mekstrom way station now was just asking for capture and a fast trip
+to their reorientation rooms. The facts of my failure and my
+taking-of-leave would be indication enough for Catherine that I was
+bowing out. It would be better for Catherine, too, to avoid a fine,
+high-strung, emotional scene. I remembered the little bawling session in
+the Harrison living room that night; Catherine would not die for want of
+a sympathetic hand on her shoulder. In fact, as she'd said
+pragmatically, well balanced people never die of broken hearts.
+
+Having finally convinced myself of the validity of this piece of obvious
+logic, I suddenly felt a lot better. My morose feeling faded away; my
+conviction of utter uselessness died; and my half-formed desire to
+investigate a highly hypothetical Hereafter took an abrupt about-face.
+And in place of this collection of undesirable self-pities came a much
+nicer emotion. It was a fine feeling, that royal anger that boiled up
+inside of me. I couldn't lick 'em and I couldn't join 'em, so I was
+going out to pull something down, even if it all came down around my own
+ears.
+
+I stopped long enough to check the Bonanza .375 both visually and
+perceptively and then loaded it full. I consulted a road map to chart a
+course. Then I took off with the coal wide open and the damper rods all
+the way out and made the wheels roll towards the East.
+
+I especially gave all the Highways a very wide berth. I went down
+several, but always in the wrong direction. And in the meantime, I kept
+my sense of perception on the alert for any pursuit. I drove with my
+eyes alone. I could have made it across the Mississippi by nightfall if
+I'd not taken the time to duck Highway signs. But when I got good, and
+sick, and tired of driving, I was not very far from the River. I found a
+motel in a rather untravelled spot and sacked in for the night.
+
+I awoke at the crack of dawn with a feeling of impending _something_. It
+was not doom, because any close-danger would have nudged me on the bump
+of perception. Nor was it good, because I'd have awakened looking
+forward to it. Something odd was up and doing. I dressed hastily, and as
+I pulled my clothing on I took a slow dig at the other cabins in the
+motel.
+
+Number One contained a salesman type, I decided, after digging through
+his baggage. Number Two was occupied by an elderly couple who were
+loaded with tourist-type junk and four or five cameras. Number Three
+harbored a stopover truck driver and Number Four was almost overflowing
+with a gang of schoolgirls packed sardine-wise in the single bed. Number
+Five was mine. Number Six was vacant. Number Seven was also vacant but
+the bed was tumbled and the water in the washbowl was still running out,
+and the door was still slamming, and the little front steps were still
+clicking to the fast clip of high heels, and----
+
+I hauled myself out of my cabin on a dead gallop and made a fast line
+for my car. I hit the car, clawed myself inside, wound up the turbine
+and let the old heap in gear in one unbroken series of motions. The
+wheels spun and sent back a hail of gravel, then they took a bite out of
+the parking lot and the take-off snapped my head back.
+
+Both esper and eyesight were very busy cross-stitching a crooked course
+through the parking lot between the parked cars and the trees that were
+intended to lend the outfit a rustic atmosphere. So I was too busy to
+take more than a vague notice of a hand that clamped onto the doorframe
+until the door opened and closed again. By then I was out on the highway
+and I could relax a bit.
+
+"Steve," she said, "why do you do these things?"
+
+Yeah, it was Marian Harrison. "I didn't ask to get shoved into this
+mess," I growled.
+
+"You didn't ask to be born, either," she said.
+
+I didn't think the argument was very logical, and I said so. "Life
+wasn't too hard to bear until I met you people," I told her sourly.
+"Life would be very pleasant if you'd go away. On the other hand, life
+is all I've got and it's far better than the alternative. So if I'm
+making your life miserable, that goes double for me."
+
+"Why not give it up?" she asked me.
+
+I stopped the car. I eyed her dead center, eye to eye until she couldn't
+take it any more. "What would you like me to just give up, Marian? Shall
+I please everybody by taking a bite of my hip-pocket artillery sights
+whilst testing the trigger pull with one forefinger? Will it make
+anybody happy if I walk into the nearest reorientation museum blowing
+smoke out of my nose and claiming that I am a teakettle that's gotta be
+taken off the stove before I blow my lid?"
+
+Marian's eyes dropped.
+
+"Do you yourself really expect me to seek blessed oblivion?"
+
+She shook her head slowly.
+
+"Then for the love of God, what do you expect of me?" I roared. "As I
+am, I'm neither flesh nor fish; just foul. I'm not likely to give up,
+Marian. If I'm a menace to you and to your kind, it's just too tough.
+But if you want me out of your hair, you'll have to wrap me up in
+something suitable for framing and haul me kicking and screaming to your
+mind-refurbishing department. Because I'm not having any on my own.
+Understand?"
+
+"I understand, Steve," she said softly. "I know you; we all know you and
+your type. You can't give up. You're unable to."
+
+"Not when I've been hypnoed into it," I said.
+
+Marian's head tossed disdainfully. "Thorndyke's hypnotic suggestion was
+very weak," she explained. "He had to plant the idea in such a way as to
+remain unidentified afterwards. No, Steve, your urge has always been
+your own personal drive. All that Thorndyke did was to point you
+slightly in our direction and give you a nudge. You did the rest."
+
+"Well, you're a telepath. Maybe you're also capable of planting a
+post-hypnotic suggestion that I forget the whole idea."
+
+"I'm not," she said with a sudden flare.
+
+I looked at her. Not being a telepath I couldn't read a single thought,
+but it was certain that she was telling the truth, and telling it in
+such a manner as to be convincing. Finally I said, "Marian, if you know
+that I'm not to be changed by logic or argument, why do you bother?"
+
+For a full minute she was silent, then her eyes came up and gave it back
+to me with their electric blue. "For the same reason that Scholar Phelps
+hoped to use you against us," she said. "Your fate and your future is
+tied up with ours whether you turn out to be friend or enemy."
+
+I grunted. "Sounds like a soap opera, Marian," I told her bitterly.
+"Will Catherine find solace in Phillip's arms? Will Steve catch
+Mekstrom's Disease? Will the dastardly Scholar Phelps--"
+
+"Stop it!" she cried.
+
+"All right. I'll stop as soon as you tell me what you intend to do with
+me now that you've caught up with me again."
+
+She smiled. "Steve, I'm going along with you. Partly to play the
+telepath-half of your team. If you'll trust me to deliver the truth. And
+partly to see that you don't get into trouble that you can't get out of
+again."
+
+My mind curled its lip. Pappy had tanned my landing gear until I was out
+of the habit of using mother for protection against the slings and
+arrows of outrageous schoolchums. I'd not taken sanctuary behind a
+woman's skirts since I was eight. So the idea of running under the
+protection of a woman went against the grain, even though I knew that
+she was my physical superior by no sensible proportion. Being cared for
+physically by a dame of a hundred-ten--
+
+"Eighteen."
+
+--didn't sit well on me.
+
+"Do you believe me, Steve?"
+
+"I've got to. You're here to stay. I'm a sucker for a good-looking woman
+anyway, it seems. They tell me anything and I'm not hardhearted enough
+to even indicate that I don't believe them."
+
+She took my arm impulsively; then she let me go before she pinched it
+off at the elbow. "Steve," she said earnestly, "Believe me and let me be
+your--"
+
+#Better half?# I finished sourly.
+
+"Please don't," she said plaintively. "Steve, you've simply _got_ to
+trust _somebody_!"
+
+I looked into her face coldly. "The hardest job in the world for a
+non-telepath is to locate someone he can trust. The next hardest is to
+explain that to a telepath; because telepaths can't see any difficulty
+in weeding out the non-trustworthy. Now--"
+
+"You still haven't faced the facts."
+
+"Neither have you, Marian. You intend to go along with me, ostensibly to
+help me in whatever I intend to do. That's fine. I'll accept it. But you
+know good and well that I intend to carry on and on until something
+cracks. Now, tell me honestly, are you going along to help me crack
+something wide open, or just to steer me into channels that will not
+result in a crack-up for your side?"
+
+Marian Harrison looked down for a moment; I didn't need telepathy to
+know that I'd touched the sore spot. Then she looked up and said,
+"Steve, more than anything, I intend to keep you out of trouble. You
+should know by now that there is very little you can really do to harm
+either side of our own private little war."
+
+#And if I can't harm either side, I can hardly do either side any good.#
+
+She nodded.
+
+#Yet I must be of some importance.#
+
+She nodded again. At that point I almost gave up. I'd been around this
+circle so many times in the past half-year that I knew how the back of
+my head looked. Always, the same old question.
+
+#_Cherchez le angle_,# I thought in bum French. Something I had was
+important enough to both sides to make them keep me on the loose instead
+of erasing me and my nuisance value. So far as I could see, I was as
+useless to either side as a coat of protective paint laid on stainless
+steel. I was immune to Mekstrom's Disease; the immunity of one who has
+had everything tried on him that scholars of the disease could devise.
+About the only thing that ever took place was the sudden disappearance
+of everybody that I came in contact with.
+
+Marian touched my arm gently. "You mustn't think like that, Steve," she
+said gently. "You've done enough useless self-condemnation. Can't you
+stop accusing yourself of some evil factor? Something that really is not
+so?"
+
+"Not until I know the truth," I replied. "I certainly can't dig it; I'm
+no telepath. Perhaps if I were, I'd not be in this awkward position."
+
+Again her silence proved to me that I'd hit a touchy spot. "What am I?"
+I demanded sourly. "Am I a great big curse? What have I done, other than
+to be present just before several people turn up missing? Makes me sort
+of a male Typhoid Mary, doesn't it?"
+
+"Now, Steve--"
+
+"Well, maybe that's the way I feel. Everything I put my great big
+clutching hands on turns dark green and starts to rot. Regardless of
+which side they're on, it goes one, two, three, four; Catherine,
+Thorndyke, You, Nurse Farrow."
+
+"Steve, what on Earth are you talking about?"
+
+I smiled down at her in a crooked sort of quirk. "You, of course, have
+not the faintest idea of what I'm thinking."
+
+"Oh, Steve--"
+
+"And then again maybe you're doing your best to lead my puzzled little
+mind away from what you consider a dangerous subject?"
+
+"I'd hardly do that--"
+
+"Sure you would. I'd do it if our positions were reversed. I don't think
+it un-admirable to defend one's own personal stand, Marian. But you'll
+not divert me this time. I have a hunch that I am a sort of male Typhoid
+Mary. Let's call me old Mekstrom Steve. The carrier of Mekstrom's
+Disease, who can innocently or maliciously go around handing it out to
+anybody that I contact. Is that it, Marian?"
+
+"It's probably excellent logic, Steve. But it isn't true."
+
+I eyed her coldly. "How can I possibly believe you?"
+
+"That's the trouble," she said with a plaintive cry. "You can't. You've
+got to believe me on faith, Steve."
+
+I smiled crookedly. "Marian," I said, "That's just the right angle to
+take. Since I cannot read your mind, I must accept the old appeal to the
+emotions. I must tell myself that Marian Harrison just simply could not
+lie to me for many reasons, among which is that people do not lie to
+blind men nor cause the cripple any hurt. Well, phooey. Whatever kind of
+gambit is being played here, it is bigger than any of its parts or
+pieces. I'm something between a queen and a pawn, Marian; a piece that
+can be sacrificed at any time to further the progress of the game.
+Slipping me a lie or two to cause me to move in some desired direction
+should come as a natural."
+
+"But why would we lie to you?" she asked, and then she bit her lip; I
+think that she slipped, that she hadn't intended to urge me into deeper
+consideration of the problem lest I succeed in making a sharp analysis.
+After all, the way to keep people from figuring things out is to stop
+them from thinking about the subject. That's the first rule. Next comes
+the process of feeding them false information if the First Law cannot be
+invoked.
+
+"Why would you lie to me?" I replied in a sort of sneer. I didn't really
+want to sneer but it came naturally. "In an earlier age it might not be
+necessary."
+
+"What?" she asked in surprise.
+
+"Might not be necessary," I said. "Let's assume that we are living in
+the mid-Fifties, before Rhine. Steve Cornell turns up being a carrier of
+a disease that is really a blessing instead of a curse. In such a time,
+Marian, either side could sign me up openly as a sort of missionary; I
+could go around the country inoculating the right people, those citizens
+who have the right kind of mind, attitude, or whatever-factor. Following
+me could be a clean-up corps to collect the wights who'd been inoculated
+by my contact. Sounds reasonable, doesn't it?" Without waiting for
+either protest or that downcast look of agreement, I went on: "But now
+we have perception and telepathy all over the place. So Steve Cornell,
+the carrier, must be pushed around from pillar to post, meeting people
+and inoculating them without ever knowing what he is doing. Because once
+he knows what he is doing, his usefulness is ended in this world of
+Rhine Institute."
+
+"Steve--" she started, but I interrupted again.
+
+"About all I have to do now is to walk down any main street radiating my
+suspicions," I said bitterly. "And it's off to Medical Center for
+Steve--unless the Highways catch me first."
+
+Very quietly, Marian said, "We really dislike to use reorientation on
+people. It changes them so--"
+
+"But that's what I'm headed for, isn't it?" I demanded flatly.
+
+"I'm sorry, Steve."
+
+Angrily I went on, not caring that I'd finally caught on and by doing so
+had sealed my own package. "So after I have my mind ironed out smoothly,
+I'll still go on and on from pillar to post providing newly inoculated
+Mekstroms for your follow-up squad."
+
+She looked up at me and there were tears in her eyes. "We were all
+hoping--" she started.
+
+"Were you?" I asked roughly. "Were you all working to innoculate me at
+Homestead, or were you really studying me to find out what made me a
+carrier instead of a victim?"
+
+"Both, Steve," she said, and there was a ring of honesty in her tone. I
+had to believe her, it made sense.
+
+"Dismal prospect, isn't it?" I asked. "For a guy that's done nothing
+wrong."
+
+"We're all sorry."
+
+"Look," I said with a sudden thought, "Why can't I still go on? I could
+start a way station of some sort, on some pretext, and go on
+innoculating the public as they come past. Then I could go on working
+for you and still keep my right mind."
+
+She shook her head. "Scholar Phelps knows," she said. "Above all things
+we must keep you out of his hands. He'd use you for his own purpose."
+
+I grunted sourly. "He has already and he will again," I told her. "Not
+only that, but Phelps has had plenty of chance to collect me on or off
+the hook. So what you fear does not make sense."
+
+"It does now," she told me seriously. "So long as you did not suspect
+your own part in the picture, you could do more good for Phelps by
+running free. Now you know and Phelps' careful herding of your motions
+won't work."
+
+"Don't get it."
+
+"Watch," she said with a shrug. "They'll try. I don't dare experiment,
+Steve, or I'd leave you right now. You'd find out very shortly that
+you're with me because I got here first."
+
+"And knowing the score makes me also dangerous to your Highways? Likely
+to bring 'em out of Hiding?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"So now that I've dumped over the old apple cart, I can assume that
+you're here to take me in."
+
+"What else can I do, Steve?" she said unhappily.
+
+I couldn't answer that. I just sat there looking at her and trying to
+remember that her shapely one hundred and eighteen pounds were steel
+hard and monster strong and that she could probably carry me under one
+arm all the way to Homestead without breathing hard. I couldn't cut and
+run; she could outrun me. I couldn't slug her on the jaw and get away;
+I'd break my hand. The Bonanza .375 would probably stun her, but I have
+not the cold blooded viciousness to pull a gun on a woman and drill her.
+I grunted sourly, that weapon had been about as useful to me as a
+stuffed bear or an authentic Egyptian Obelisk.
+
+"Well, I'm not going," I said stubbornly.
+
+She looked at me in surprise. "What are you going to do?" she asked me.
+
+I felt a glow of self-confidence. If I could not run loose with guilty
+knowledge of my being a Mekstrom Carrier, it was equally impossible for
+anybody to kidnap me and carry me across the country. I'd radiate like
+mad; I'd complain about the situation at every crossroad, at every
+filling station, before every farmer. I'd complain mentally and
+bitterly, and sooner or later someone would get suspicious.
+
+"Don't think like an idiot," she told me sharply. "You drove across the
+country before, remember? How many people did you convince?"
+
+"I wasn't trying, then--"
+
+"How about the people in the hotel in Denver?" she asked me pointedly.
+"What good did you do there?"
+
+#Very little, but--#
+
+"One of the advantages of a telepath is that we can't be taken by
+surprise," she informed me. "Because no one can possibly work without
+plans of some kind."
+
+"One of the troubles of a telepath," I told her right back, "is that
+they get so confounded used to knowing what is going to happen next that
+it takes all the pleasant element of surprise out of their lives. That
+makes 'em dull and--"
+
+The element of surprise came in through the back window, passed between
+us and went _Splat!_ against the wind-shield. There was the sound like
+someone chipping ice with a spike followed by the distant bark of a
+rifle. A second slug came through the back window about the time that
+the first one landed on the floor of the car. The second slug, not
+slowed by the shatter-proof glass in the rear, went through the
+shatter-proof glass in the front. A third slug passed through the same
+tunnel.
+
+These were warning shots. He'd missed us intentionally. He'd proved it
+by firing three times through the same hole, from beyond my esper range.
+
+I wound up the machinery and we took off. Marian cried something about
+not being foolish, but her words were swept out through the hole in the
+rear window, just above the marks on the pavement caused by my tires as
+we spun the wheels.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+"Steve, stop it!" cried Marian as soon as she could get her breath.
+
+"Nuts," I growled. I took a long curve on the outside wheels and ironed
+out again. "He isn't after our corpse, honey. He's after our hide. I
+don't care for any."
+
+The fourth shot went singing off the pavement to one side. It whined
+into the distance making that noise that sets the teeth on edge and
+makes one want to duck. I lowered the boom on the go pedal and tried to
+make the meter read off the far end of the scale; I had a notion that
+the guy behind might shoot the tires out if we were going slow enough so
+that a blowout wouldn't cause a bad wreck; but he probably wouldn't do
+it once I got the speed up. He was not after Marian. Marian could walk
+out of any crack-up without a bruise, but I couldn't.
+
+We went roaring around a curve. I fought the wheel into a nasty double
+'s' curve to swing out and around a truck, then back on my own side of
+the road again to avoid an oncoming car. I could almost count the front
+teeth of the guy driving the car as we straightened out with a coat of
+varnish to spare. I scared everybody in all three vehicles, including
+me.
+
+Then I passed a couple of guys standing beside the road; one of them
+waved me on, the other stood there peering past me down the road. As we
+roared by, another group on the other side of the highway came running
+out hauling a big old hay wagon. They set the wagon across the road and
+then sloped into the ditch on either side of it.
+
+I managed to dig the bare glimmer of firearms before I had to yank my
+perception away from them and slam it back on the road in front. I was
+none too soon, because dead ahead by a thousand feet or so, they were
+hauling a second road block out.
+
+Marian, not possessed of esper, cried out as soon as she read this new
+menace in my mind. I rode the brakes easily and came to a stop long
+before we hit it. In back sounded a crackle of rifle fire; in front,
+three men came out waving their rifles at us.
+
+I whipped the car back, spun it in a seesaw, and took off back towards
+the first road block. Half way back I whirled my car into a rough
+sideroad just as the left hand rear tire went out with a roar. The car
+sagged and dragged me to a stop with my nose in a little ditch. The heap
+hadn't stopped rocking yet before I was out and on the run.
+
+"Steve!" cried Marian. "Come back!"
+
+#To heck with it.# I kept right on running. Before me by a couple of
+hundred yards was a thicket of trees; I headed that way fast. I managed
+to sling a dig back; Marian was joining the others; pointing in my
+direction. One of them raised the rifle but she knocked it down.
+
+I went on running. It looked as though I'd be all right so long as I
+didn't get in the way of an accidental shot. My life was once more
+charmed with the fact that no one wanted me dead.
+
+The thicket of woods was not as thick as I'd have liked. From a distance
+they'd seemed almost impenetrable, but when I was running through them
+towards the center, they looked pitifully thin. I could see light from
+any direction and the floor of the woods was trimmed, the underbrush
+cleaned out, and a lot of it was tramped down.
+
+Ahead of me I perceived a few of them coming towards the woods warily,
+behind me there was another gang closing in. I began to feel like the
+caterpillar on the blade of grass in front of the lawn mower.
+
+I tried to hide under a deadfall, knowing that it was poor protection
+against rifle fire. I hauled out the Bonanza and checked the cylinder. I
+didn't know which side I was going to shoot at, but that didn't bother
+me. I was going to shoot at the first side that got close.
+
+A couple of shots whipped by over my head, making noises like someone
+snapping a bullwhip. I couldn't tell which direction they came from; I
+was too busy trying to stuff my feet into a gopher hole under my
+deadfall.
+
+I cast around the thicket with my sense of perception and caught the
+layout. Both sides were spread out, stalking forward like infantry
+advancing through disputed ground. Now and then one of them would raise
+his rifle and fire at some unexpected motion. This, I gathered, was more
+nervousness than fighting skill because no group of telepaths and/or
+perceptives would be so jittery on the trigger if they weren't basically
+nervous. They should, as I did, have the absolute position of both the
+enemy and their own side.
+
+With a growing nervous sweat I dug their advances. They were avoiding my
+position, trying to encircle me by making long semicircular marches,
+hoping to get between me and the other side. This was a rough maneuver,
+sort of like two telepaths playing chess. Both sides knew to a minute
+exactly what the other had in mind, where he was, and what he was going
+to do about his position. But they kept shifting, feinting and
+counter-advancing, trying to gain the advantage of number or position so
+that the other would be forced to retreat. It became a war of nerves; a
+game of seeing who had the most guts; who could walk closer to the
+muzzle of an enemy rifle without getting hit.
+
+Their rifles were mixed; there were a couple of deer guns, a nice 35-70
+Express that fired a slug slightly smaller than a panetella cigar, a few
+shotguns, a carbine sports rifle that looked like it might have been a
+Garand with the barrel shortened by a couple of inches, some revolvers,
+one nasty-looking Colt .45 Automatic, and so on.
+
+I shivered down in my little hideout; as soon as the shooting started in
+earnest, they were going to clean out this woods but good. It was going
+to be a fine barrage, with guns going off in all directions, because it
+is hard to keep your head in a melee. Esper and telepathy go by the
+board when shooting starts.
+
+I still didn't know which side was which. The gang behind me were
+friends of Marian Harrison; but that did not endear them to me any more
+than knowing that the gang in front were from Scholar Phelps Medical
+Center or some group affiliated with him. In the midst of it, I managed
+to bet myself a new hat that old Scholar Phelps didn't really know what
+was going on. He would be cagey enough to stay ignorant of any overt
+strife or any other skullduggery that could be laid at his door.
+
+Then on one edge of the woodsy section, two guys of equal damfool-factor
+advanced, came up standing, and faced one another across fifty feet of
+open woods. Their rifles came up and yelled at one another like a string
+of firecrackers; they wasted a lot of powder and lead by not taking
+careful aim. One of them emptied his rifle and started to fade back to
+reload, the other let him have it in the shoulder. It spun the guy
+around and dumped him on his spine. His outflung hand slammed his rifle
+against a tree, which broke it. He gave a painful moan and started to
+crawl back, his arm hanging limp-like but not broken. From behind me
+came a roar and a peltering of shotgun pellets through the trees; it was
+answered by the heavy bark of the 35-70 Express. I'm sure that in the
+entire artillery present, the only rifle heavy enough to really damage
+those Mekstroms was that Express, which would stop a charging rhino.
+When you get down to facts, my Bonanza .375 packed a terrific wallop but
+it did not have the shocking power of the heavy big-game rifle.
+
+Motion caught my perception to one side; two of them had let go shotgun
+blasts from single-shot guns. They were standing face to face swinging
+their guns like a pair of axemen; swing, chop! swing, chop! and with
+each swing their guns were losing shape, splinters from the butts, and
+bits of machinery. Their clothing was in ribbons from the shotgun
+blasts. But neither of them seemed willing to give up. There was not a
+sign of blood; only a few places on each belly that looked shiny-like.
+On the other side of me, one guy let go with a rifle that slugged the
+other bird in the middle. He folded over the shot and his middle went
+back and down, which whipped his head over, back, and down where it hit
+the ground with an audible thump. The first guy leaped forward just as
+the victim of his attack sat up, rubbed his belly ruefully, and drew a
+hunting knife with his other hand. The first guy took a running dive at
+the supine one, who swung the hunting knife in a vicious arc. The point
+hit the chest of the man coming through the air but it stopped as though
+the man had been wearing plate armor. You could dig the return shock
+that stunned the knife-wielder's arm when the point turned. All it did
+was rip the clothing. Then the pair of them were at it in a free-for-all
+that made the woods ring. This deadly combat did not last long. One of
+them took aim with a fist and let the other have it. The rifle shot
+hadn't stopped him but the hard fist of another Mekstrom laid him out
+colder than a mackerel iced for shipment.
+
+The deadly 35-70 Express roared again, and there started a concentration
+of troops heading towards the point of origin. I had a hunch that the
+other side did not like anybody to be playing quite as rough as a
+big-game gun. Someone might really get hurt.
+
+By now they were all in close and swinging; now and then someone would
+stand off and gain a few moments of breathing space by letting go with a
+shotgun or knocking someone off of his feet with a carbine. There was
+some bloodshed, too; not all these shots bounced. But from what I could
+perceive, none of them were fatal. Just painful. The guy who'd been
+stopped first with the rifle slug and then the other Mekstrom's fist was
+still out cold and bleeding lightly from the place in his stomach. A bit
+horrified, I perceived that the pellet was embedded about a half-inch
+in. The two birds who'd been hacking at one another with the remains of
+their shotguns had settled it barehanded, too. The loser was groaning
+and trying to pull himself together. The shiny spots on his chest were
+shotgun pellets stuck in the skin.
+
+It was one heck of a fight.
+
+Mekstroms could play with guns and knives and go around taking swings at
+one another with hunks of tree or clubbed rifles, or they could stand
+off and hurl boulders. Such a battlefield was no place for a guy named
+Steve Cornell.
+
+By now all good sense and fine management was gone. If I'd been spotted,
+they'd have taken a swing at me, forgetting that I am no Mekstrom. So I
+decided that it was time for Steve to leave.
+
+I cast about me with my perception; the gang that Marian had joined had
+advanced until they were almost even with my central position; there
+were a couple of swinging matches to either side and one in front of me.
+I wondered about Marian; somehow I still don't like seeing a woman
+tangled up in a free-for-all. Marian was out of esper range, which was
+all right with me.
+
+I crawled out of my hideout cautiously, stood up in a low crouch and
+began to run. A couple of them caught sight of me and put up a howl, but
+they were too busy with their personal foe to take off after me. One of
+them was free; I doubled him up and dropped him on his back with a slug
+from my Bonanza .375. Somehow it did not seem rough or vicious to shoot
+since there was nothing lethal in it. It was more like a game of cowboy
+and Indian than deadly earnest warfare.
+
+Then I was out and free of them all, out of the woods and running like a
+deer. I cursed the car with its blown out tire; the old crate had been a
+fine bus, nicely broken in and conveniently fast. But it was as useful
+to me now as a pair of skids.
+
+A couple of them behind me caught on and gave chase. I heard cries for
+me to stop, which I ignored like any sensible man. Someone cut loose
+with a roar; the big slug from the Express whipped past and went
+_Sprang!_ off a rock somewhere ahead.
+
+It only added a few more feet per second to my flight. If they were
+going to play that rough, I didn't care to stay.
+
+I fired an unaimed shot over my shoulder, which did no good at all
+except for lifting my morale. I hoped that it would slow them a bit, but
+if it did I couldn't tell. Then I leaped over a ditch and came upon a
+cluster of cars. I dug at them as I approached and selected one of the
+faster models that still had its key dangling from the lock.
+
+I was in and off and away as fast as a scared man can move. They were
+still yelling and fighting in the woods when I raced out of my range.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The heap I'd jumped was a Clinton Special with rock-like springs and a
+low slung frame that hugged the ground like a clam. I was intent upon
+putting as many miles as I could between me and the late engagement in
+as short a time as possible, and the Clinton seemed especially apt until
+I remembered that the figure 300 on the dial meant kilometers instead of
+miles per hour. Then I let her out a bit more and tried for the end of
+the dial. The Clinton tried with me, and I had to keep my esper
+carefully aimed at the road ahead because I was definitely overdriving
+my eyesight and reaction-time.
+
+I was so intent upon making feet that I did not notice the jetcopter
+that came swooping down over my head until the howl of its vane-jets
+raised hell with my eardrums. Then I slowed the car and lifted my
+perception at the same time for a quick dig.
+
+The jetcopter was painted Policeman Blue and it sported a large
+gold-leaf on its side, and inside the cabin were two hard-faced
+gentlemen wearing uniforms with brass buttons and that Old Bailey look
+in their eye. The one on the left was jingling a pair of handcuffs.
+
+They passed over my head at about fifteen feet, swooped on past by a
+thousand, and dropped a road-block bomb. It flared briefly and let out
+with a billow of thick red smoke.
+
+I leaned on the brakes hard enough to stand the Clinton up on its nose,
+because if I shoved my front bumper through that cloud of red smoke it
+was a signal for them to let me have it. I came to a stop about a foot
+this side of the bomb, and the jetcopter came down hovering. Its vanes
+blew the smoke away and the 'copter landed in front of my swiped Clinton
+Special.
+
+The policeman was both curt and angry. "Driver's ticket, registration,
+and maybe your pilot's license," he snapped.
+
+Well, that was _it_. I had a driver's ticket all right, _but_ it did not
+permit me to drive a car that I'd selected out of a group willy nilly.
+The car registration was in the glove compartment where it was supposed
+to be, but what it said did not match what the driver's license claimed.
+No matter what I said, there would be the Devil to pay.
+
+"I'll go quietly, officer," I told him.
+
+"Darn' white of you, pilot," he said cynically. He was scribbling on a
+book of tickets and it was piling up deep. Speeding, reckless driving,
+violation of ordinance something-or-other by number. Driving a car
+without proper registration in the absence of the rightful owner (Check
+for stolen car records) and so on and on and on until it looked like a
+life term in the local jug.
+
+"Move over, Cornell," he said curtly. "I'm taking you in."
+
+I moved politely. The only time it pays to be arrogant with the police
+is long after you've proved them wrong, and then only when you're facing
+your mirror at home telling yourself what you should have said.
+
+I was driven to court; escorted in by the pair of them and seated with
+one on each side. The sign on the judge's table said: Magistrate
+Hollister.
+
+Magistrate Hollister was an elderly gentleman with a cast iron jaw and a
+glance as cold as a bucket of snow. He dealt justice with a sharp-edged
+shovel and his attitude seemed to be that everybody was either guilty as
+charged or was contemplating some form of evil to be committed as soon
+as he was out of the sight of Justice. I sat there squirming while he
+piled the top on a couple whose only crime was parking overtime; I
+itched from top to bottom while he slapped one miscreant in gaol for
+turning left in violation of City Ordinance. His next attempt gave a ten
+dollar fine for failing to come to a full and grinding halt at the sign
+of the big red light, despite the fact that the criminal was esper to a
+fine degree and dug the fact that there was no cross-traffic for a half
+mile.
+
+Then His Honor licked his chops and called my name.
+
+He speared me with an icicle-eye and asked sarcastically: "Well, Mr.
+Cornell, with what form of sophistry are you going to explain your
+recent violations?"
+
+I blinked.
+
+He aimed a cold glance at the bailiff, who arose and read off the
+charges against me in a deep, hollow intonation.
+
+"Speak up!" he snapped. "Are you guilty or not guilty?"
+
+"Guilty," I admitted.
+
+He beamed a sort of self-righteous evil. It was easy to see that never
+in his tenure of office had he ever encountered a criminal as hardened
+and as vicious as I. Nor one who admitted to his turpitude so blandly. I
+felt it coming, and it made me itch, and I knew that if I tried to
+scratch His Honor would take the act as a personal affront. I fought
+down the crazy desire to scratch everything I could reach and it was
+hard; about the time His Honor added a charge of endangering human life
+on the highway to the rest of my assorted crimes, the itch had localized
+into the ring finger of my left hand. That I could scratch by rubbing it
+against the seam of my trousers.
+
+Then His Honor went on, delivering Lecture Number Seven on Crime,
+Delinquency, and Grand Larceny. I was going to be an example, he vowed.
+I was assumed to be esper since no normal--that's the word he used,
+which indicated that the old bird was a blank and hated everybody who
+wasn't--human being would be able to drive as though he had eyes mounted
+a half mile in front of him. Not that my useless life was in danger, or
+that I was actually not-in-control of my car, but that my actions made
+for panic among normal--again he used it!--people who were not blessed
+with either telepathy or perception by a mere accident of birth. The
+last one proved it; it was not an accident of birth so much as it was
+proper training, to my way of thinking. Magistrate Hollister hated
+psi-trained people and was out to make examples of them.
+
+He polished off his lecture by pronouncing sentence: "--and the Law
+provides punishment by a fine not to exceed one thousand dollars, or a
+sentence of ninety days in jail--_or both_." He rolled the latter off as
+though he relished the sound of the words.
+
+I waited impatiently. The itch on my finger increased; I flung a fast
+dig at it but there was nothing there but Sophomore's Syndrome. Good old
+nervous association. It was the finger that little Snoodles, the
+three-month baby supergirl had munched to a faretheewell. Darned good
+thing the kid didn't have teeth! But I was old Steve, the immune, the
+carrier, the--
+
+"Well, Mr. Cornell?"
+
+I blinked. "Yes, your honor?"
+
+"Which will it be? I am granting you the leniency of selecting which
+penalty you prefer."
+
+I could probably rake up a thousand by selling some stock, personal
+possessions, and draining my already-weakened bank account. The most
+valuable of my possessions was parked in a ditch with a blowout and
+probably a bent frame and even so, I only owned about six monthly
+payments worth of it.
+
+"Your Honor, I will prefer to pay the fine--if you'll grant me time in
+which to go and collect--"
+
+He rapped his desk with his gavel. "Mr. Cornell," he boomed angrily. "A
+thief cannot be trusted. Within a matter of minutes you could remove
+yourself from the jurisdiction of this court unless a binding penalty is
+placed against your person. You may go on your search for money, but
+only after posting bond--to the same amount as your fine!"
+
+_Lenient--?_
+
+"However, unless you are able to pay, I have no recourse but to exact
+the prison sentence of ninety days. Bailiff--!"
+
+I gave up. It even felt sort of good to give up, especially when the
+turn is called by someone too big to be argued with. No matter what, I
+was going to take ninety days off, during which I could sit and think
+and plan and wonder and chew my fingernails.
+
+The itch in my finger burned again, deep this time, and not at all easy
+to satisfy by rubbing it against my trousers. I picked at it with the
+thumbnail and the nail caught something hard.
+
+I looked down at the itching finger and sent my perception into it with
+as much concentration as I could.
+
+My thumbnail had lifted a tiny circle no larger than the head of a pin.
+Blood was oozing from beneath the lifted rim, and I nervously picked off
+the tiny patch of hard, hard flesh and watched the surface blood well
+out into a tiny droplet. My perception told me the truth: It was
+Mekstrom's Disease and not a doubt. The Immune had caught it!
+
+The bailiff tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Come along, Cornell!"
+
+And I was going to have ninety days to watch that patch grow at the
+inexorable rate of one sixty-fourth of an inch per hour!
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+
+The bailiff repeated, "Come along, Cornell." Then he added sourly, "Or
+I'll have to slip the cuffs on you."
+
+I turned with a helpless shrug. I'd tried to lick 'em and I'd tried to
+join 'em and I'd failed both. Then, as of this instant when I might have
+been able to go join 'em, I was headed for the wrong side as soon as I
+opened my big yap. And if I didn't yelp, I was a dead one anyway. Sooner
+or later someone in the local jug would latch on to my condition and
+pack me off to Scholar Phelps' Medical Center.
+
+Once more I was in a situation where all I could do was to play it by
+ear, wait for a break, and see if I could make something out of it.
+
+But before I could take more than a step or two toward the big door,
+someone in the back of the courtroom called out:
+
+"Your Honor, I have some vital information in this case."
+
+His Honor looked up across the court with a great amount of irritation
+showing in his face. His voice rasped, "Indeed?"
+
+I whirled, shocked.
+
+Suavely, Dr. Thorndyke strode down the aisle. He faced the judge and
+explained who he was and why, then he backed it up with a wallet full of
+credentials, cards, identification, and so forth. The judge looked the
+shebang over sourly but finally nodded agreement. Thorndyke smiled
+self-confidently and then went on, facing me:
+
+"It would be against my duty to permit you to incarcerate this
+miscreant," he said smoothly. "Because Mr. Cornell has Mekstrom's
+Disease!"
+
+Everybody faded back and away from me as though he'd announced me to be
+the carrier of plague. They looked at me with horror and disgust on
+their faces, a couple of them began to wipe their hands with
+handkerchiefs; one guy who'd been standing where I'd dropped my little
+patch of Mekstrom Flesh backed out of that uncharmed circle. Some of the
+spectators left hurriedly.
+
+His Honor paled. "You're certain?" he demanded of Dr. Thorndyke.
+
+"I'm certain. You'll note the blood on his finger; Cornell recently
+picked off a patch of Mekstrom Flesh no larger than the head of a pin.
+It was his first sign." The doctor went on explaining, "Normally this
+early seizure would be difficult to detect, except from a clinical
+examination. But since I am telepath and Cornell has perception, his own
+mind told me he was aware of his sorry condition. One only need read his
+mind, or to dig at the tiny bit of Mekstrom Flesh that he dropped to
+your floor."
+
+The judge eyed me nastily. "Maybe I should add a charge of contaminating
+a courtroom," he muttered. He was running his eyes across the floor from
+me to wherever I'd been, trying to locate the little patch. I helped him
+by not looking at it. The rest of the court faded back from me still
+farther. I could hardly have been less admired if I'd been made of pure
+cyanide gas.
+
+The judge rapped his gavel sharply. "I parole this prisoner in the
+custody of Dr. Thorndyke, who as a representative of the Medical Center
+will remove the prisoner to that place where the proper treatment awaits
+him."
+
+"Now see here--" I started. But His Honor cut me off.
+
+"You'll go as I say," he snapped. "Unfortunately, the Law does not
+permit me to enjoy any cruel or unusual punishments, or I'd insist upon
+your ninety-day sentence and watch you die painfully. I--Bailiff! Remove
+this menace before I forget my position here and find myself in contempt
+of the law I have sworn to uphold. I cannot be impartial before a man
+who contaminates my Court with the world's most dangerous disease!"
+
+I turned to Thorndyke. "All right," I grunted. "You win."
+
+He smiled again; I wanted to wipe that smile away with a set of knuckles
+but I knew that all I'd get would be a broken hand against Thorndyke's
+stone-hard flesh. "Now, Mr. Cornell," he said with that clinical
+smoothness, "let's not get the old standard attitude."
+
+"Nearly everybody who contracts Mekstrom's Disease," he said to the
+judge, "takes on a persecution complex as soon as he finds out that he
+has it. Some of them have even accused me of fomenting some big
+fantastic plot against them. Please, Mr. Cornell," he went on facing me,
+"we'll give you the best of treatment that Medical Science knows."
+
+"Yeah," I grunted.
+
+His Honor rapped on the gavel once more. "Officer Gruenwald," he
+snapped, "you will accompany the prisoner and Dr. Thorndyke to the
+Medical Center and having done that you will return to report to me that
+you have accomplished your mission."
+
+Then the judge glared around, rapped once more, and cried, "Case
+Finished. Next Case!"
+
+I felt almost as sorry for the next guy coming in as I felt for myself.
+His Honor was going to be one tough baby for some days to come. As they
+escorted me out, a janitor came in and began to swab the floor where I'd
+been standing. He was using something nicely corrosive that made the
+icy, judicial eyes water, all of which discomfort was likely to be added
+to the next law-breaker's sorry lot.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I was in fine company. Thorndyke was a telepath and Officer Gruenwald
+was perceptive. They went as a team and gave me about as much chance to
+escape as if I'd been a horned toad sealed in a cornerstone. Gruenwald,
+of course, treated me as though my breath was deadly, my touch foul, and
+my presence evil. In Gruenwald's eyes, the only difference between me
+and Medusa the Gorgon was that looking at me did not turn him to stone.
+He kept at least one eye on me almost constantly.
+
+I could almost perceive Thorndyke's amusement. With the best of social
+amenities, he could hardly have spent a full waking day in the company
+of either a telepath or a perceptive without giving away the fact that
+he was Mekstrom. But with me to watch over, Officer Gruenwald's mental
+attention was not to be turned aside to take an impolite dig at his
+companion. Even if he had, Thorndyke would have been there quickly to
+turn his attention aside.
+
+I've read the early books that contain predictions of how we are
+supposed to operate. The old boys seemed to have the quaint notion that
+a telepath should be able at once to know everything that goes on
+everywhere, and a perceptive should be aware of everything material
+about him. There should be no privacy. There was to be no defense
+against the mental peeping Tom.
+
+It ain't necessarily so. If Gruenwald had taken a dig at Thorndyke's
+hide, the doctor would have speared the policeman with a cold, indignant
+eye and called him for it. Of course, there was no good reason for
+Gruenwald to take a dig at Thorndyke and so he didn't.
+
+So I went along with the status quo and tried to think of some way to
+break it up.
+
+An hour later I was still thinking, and the bleeding on my finger had
+stopped. Mekstrom Flesh had covered the raw spot with a thin, stone-hard
+plate that could not be separated visually from the rest of my skin.
+
+"As a perceptive," observed Dr. Thorndyke in a professional tone,
+"you'll notice the patch of infection growing on Mr. Cornell's finger.
+The rate of growth seems normal; I'll have to check it accurately once I
+get him to the clinic. In fifty or sixty hours, Mr. Cornell's finger
+will be solid to the first joint. In ninety days his arm will have
+become as solid as the arm of a marble statue."
+
+I interjected, "And what do we do about it?"
+
+He moved his head a bit and eyed me in the rear view mirror. "I hope we
+can help you, Cornell," he said in a tone of sympathy that was
+definitely intended to impress Officer Gruenwald with his medical
+appreciation of the doctor's debt to humanity. "I sincerely hope so. For
+in doing so, we will serve the human race. And," he admitted with an
+entirely human-sounding selfishness, "I may be able to deliver a thesis
+on the cure that will qualify me for my scholarate."
+
+I took a fast stab: "Doctor, how does my flesh differ from yours?"
+
+Thorndyke parried this attention-getting question: "Mine is of no
+consequence. Dig your own above and below the line of infection,
+Cornell. If your sense of perception has been trained fine enough, dig
+the actual line of infection and watch the molecular structure
+rearrange. Can you dig that fine, Officer? Cornell, I hate to dwell at
+length upon your misfortune, but perhaps I can help you face it by
+bringing the facts to light."
+
+#Like the devil you hate to dwell, Doctor Mekstrom!#
+
+In the rear view mirror, his lips parted in a bland smile and one eyelid
+dropped in a knowing wink.
+
+I opened my mouth to make another stab in the open but Thorndyke got
+there first. "Officer Gruenwald," he suggested, "you can help by putting
+out your perception along the road ahead and seeing how it goes. I'd
+like to make tracks with this crate."
+
+Gruenwald nodded.
+
+Thorndyke put the goose-pedal down and the car took off with a howl of
+passing wind. He said with a grin, "It isn't very often that I get a
+chance to drive like this, but as long as I've an officer with me--"
+
+He was above one forty by the time he let his voice trail off.
+
+I watched the back of their heads for a moment. At this speed, Thorndyke
+would have both his mind and his hands full and the cop would be digging
+at the road as far ahead as his perception could dig a clear
+appreciation of the road and its hazards. Thorndyke's telepathy would be
+occupied in taking this perception and using it. That left me free to
+think.
+
+I cast a dig behind me, as far behind me as my perception would reach.
+Nothing.
+
+I thought furiously. It resulted in nothing.
+
+I needed either a parachute or a full set of Mekstrom Hide to get out of
+this car now. With either I might have taken a chance and jumped. But as
+it was, the only guy who could scramble out of this car was Dr. James
+Thorndyke.
+
+I caught his dropping eyelid in the rear view mirror again and swore at
+him under my breath.
+
+Time, and miles, went past. One after the other, very fast. We hissed
+through towns where the streets had been opened for us and along broad
+stretches of highway and between cars and trucks running at normal
+speeds. One thing I must say for Thorndyke: He was almost as good a
+driver as I.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My second arrival at the Medical Center was rather quiet. I went in the
+service entrance, so to speak, and didn't get a look at the enamelled
+blonde at the front portal. They whiffed me in at a broad gate that was
+opened by a flunky and we drove for another mile through the grounds far
+from the main road. We ended up in front of a small brick building and
+as we went through the front office into a private place, Thorndyke told
+a secretary that she should prepare a legal receipt for my person. I did
+not like being bandied about like a hunk of merchandise, but nobody
+seemed to care what I thought. It was all very fast and efficient. I'd
+barely seated myself and lit a cigarette when the nurse came in with the
+document which Thorndyke signed, she witnessed, and was subsequently
+handed to Officer Gruenwald.
+
+"Is there any danger of me--er--contracting--" he faltered uncertainly
+to Dr. Thorndyke.
+
+"You'll notice that--" I started to call attention to Thorndyke's
+calmness at being in my presence and was going to invite Gruenwald to
+take a dig at the doctor's hide, but once more the doctor blocked me.
+
+"None of us have ever found any factor of contagion," he said. "And we
+live among Mekstrom Cases. You'll notice Miss Clifton's lack of
+concern."
+
+Miss Clifton, the nurse, turned a calm face to the policeman and gave
+him her hand. Miss Clifton had a face and a figure that was enough to
+make a man forget anything. She knew her part very well; together, the
+nurse and the policeman left the office together and I wondered just why
+a non-Mekstrom would have anything to do with an outfit like this.
+
+Thorndyke smiled and said, "I won't tell you, Steve. What you don't know
+won't hurt anybody."
+
+"Mind telling me what I'm slated for? The high jump? Going to watch me
+writhing in pain as my infection climbs toward my vitals? Going to
+amputate? Or are you going to cut it off inch by inch and watch me
+suffer?"
+
+"Steve, some things you know already. One, that you are a carrier. There
+have been no other carriers. We'd like to know what makes you a
+carrier."
+
+#The laboratory again?# I thought.
+
+He nodded. "Also whether your final contraction of Mekstrom's Disease
+removes the carrier-factor."
+
+I said hopefully, "I suppose as a Mekstrom I'll eventually be qualified
+to join you?"
+
+Thorndyke looked blank. "Perhaps," he said flatly.
+
+To my mind, that flat _perhaps_ was the same sort of reply that Mother
+used to hand me when I wanted something that she did not want to give.
+I'd been eleven before I got walloped across the bazoo by pointing out
+to her that _we'll see_ really meant _no_, because nothing that she said
+it to ever came to pass.
+
+"Look, Thorndyke, let's take off our shoes and stop dancing," I told
+him. "I have a pretty good idea of what's been going on. I'd like an
+honest answer to what's likely to go on from here."
+
+"I can't give you that."
+
+"Who can?"
+
+He said nothing, but he began to look at me as though I weren't quite
+bright. That made two of us, I was looking at him in the same manner.
+
+My finger itched a bit, saving the situation. I'd been about to forget
+that Thorndyke was a Mekstrom and take a swing at him.
+
+He laughed at me cynically. "You're in a very poor position to dictate
+terms," he said sharply.
+
+"All right," I agreed reluctantly. "So I'm a prisoner. I'm also under a
+sentence of death. Don't think me unreasonable if I object to it."
+
+"The trouble with your thinking is that you expect all things to be
+black or white and so defined. You ask me, 'am I going to live or die?'
+and expect me to answer without qualification. I can only tell you that
+I don't know which. That it all depends."
+
+"Depends upon exactly what?"
+
+He eyed me with a cold stare. "Whether you're worthy of living."
+
+"Who's to decide?"
+
+"We will."
+
+I grunted, wishing that I knew more Latin. I wanted to quote that Latin
+platitude about who watches the watchers. He watched me narrowly, and I
+expected him to quote me the phrase after having read my mind. But
+apparently the implication of the phrase did not appeal to him, and so
+he remained silent.
+
+I broke the silence by saying, "What right has any man or collection of
+men to decide whether I, or anyone else, has the right to live or die?"
+
+"It's done all the time," he replied succinctly.
+
+"Yeah?"
+
+"Criminals are--"
+
+"I'm not a criminal; I've violated no man-made law. I've not even
+violated very many of the Ten Commandments. At least, not the one that
+is punishable by death."
+
+He was silent for a moment again, then he said, "Steve, you're the
+victim of loose propaganda."
+
+"Who isn't?" I granted. "The entire human race is lambasted by one form
+of propaganda or another from the time the infant learns to sit up until
+the elderly lays down and dies. We're all guilty of loose thinking. My
+own father, for instance, had to quit school before he could take any
+advanced schooling, had to fight his way up, had to collect his advanced
+education by study, application, and hard practice. He always swore that
+this long period of hardship strengthened his will and his character and
+gave him the guts to go out and do things that he'd never have thought
+of if he'd had an easy life. Then the old duck turns right around and
+swears that he'll never see any son of his take the bumps as he took
+them."
+
+"That's beside the point, Steve. I know what sort of propaganda you've
+been listening to. It's the old do-good line; the everything for anybody
+line; the no man must die alone line."
+
+"Is it bad?"
+
+Dr. Thorndyke shrugged. "You've talked about loose propaganda," he said.
+"Well, in this welter of loose propaganda, every man had at least the
+opportunity of choosing which line of guff he intends to adhere to. I'm
+even willing to admit that there is both right and wrong on both sides.
+Are you?"
+
+I stifled a sour grin. "I shouldn't, because it is a mistake in any
+political argument to even let on that the other guy is slightly more
+than an idiot. But as an engineer, I'll admit it."
+
+"Now that's a help," he said more cheerfully. "You're objecting, of
+course, to the fact that we are taking the right to pick, choose, and
+select those people that we think are more likely to be of good
+advantage to the human race. You've listened to that old line about the
+hypothetical cataclysm that threatens the human race, and how would you
+choose the hundred people who are supposed to carry on. Well, have you
+ever eyed the human race in slightly another manner?"
+
+"I wouldn't know," I told him. "Maybe."
+
+"Have you ever watched the proceedings of one of those big trials where
+some conkpot has blown the brains out of a half-dozen citizens by
+pointing a gun and emptying it at a crowd? If you have, you've been
+appalled by the sob sisters and do-gooders who show that the vicious
+character was momentarily off his toggle. We mustn't execute a nut, no
+matter how vicious he is. We've got to protect him, feed him, and house
+him for the next fifty years. Now, not only is he doing Society
+absolutely no damned good while he's locked up for fifty years, he's
+also eating up his share of the standard of living. Then to top this
+off, so long as this nut is alive, there is the danger that some
+soft-hearted fathead will succeed in getting him turned loose once
+more."
+
+"Agreed," I said. "But you're again talking about criminals, which I
+don't think applies in my case."
+
+"No, of course not," he said quickly. "I used it to prove to you that
+this is one way of looking at a less concrete case. Carry this soft
+headed thinking a couple of steps higher. Medical science has made it
+possible for the human race to dilute its strength. Epileptics are saved
+to breed epileptics; haemophiliacs are preserved, neurotics are ironed
+out, weaknesses of all kinds are kept alive to breed their strain of
+weakness."
+
+"Just what has this to do with me and my future?" I asked.
+
+"Quite a lot. I'm trying to make you agree that there are quite a lot of
+undeserving characters here on Earth."
+
+"Did I ever deny it?" I asked him pointedly, but he took it as not
+including present company.
+
+But I could see where Thorndyke was heading. First eliminate the lice on
+the body politic. Okay, so I am blind and cannot see the sense of
+incarcerating a murderer that has to be fed, clothed, and housed at my
+expense for the rest of his natural life. Then for the second step we
+get rid of weaklings, both physical and mental. I'll call Step Two
+passably okay, but--? Number Three includes grifters, beggars, bums, and
+guys out for the soft touch and here I begin to wonder. I've known some
+entertaining grifters, beggars, and bums; a few of them chose their way
+of life for their own, just as I became a mechanical engineer.
+
+The trouble with this sort of philosophy is that it starts off with an
+appeal to justice and logic (I'm quoting myself), but it quickly gets
+dangerous. Start knocking off the bilge-scum. Then when the lowest
+strata of society is gone, start on the next. Carry this line of
+reasoning out to straight Aristotelian Logic and you come up with
+parties like you and me, who may have been quite acceptable when
+compared to the whole cross-section of humanity, but who now have no one
+but his betters to compete with.
+
+I had never reasoned this out before, but as I did right there and then,
+I decided that Society cannot draw lines nor assume a static pose.
+Society must move constantly, either in one direction or the other. And
+while I object to paying taxes to support some rattlehead for the rest
+of his natural life, I'd rather have it that way than to have someone
+start a trend of bopping off everybody who has not the ability to absorb
+the educational level of the scholar. Because, if the trend turned
+upward instead of downward, that's where the dividing line would end.
+
+Anarchy at one end, is as bad as tyranny at the other--
+
+"I'm sorry you cannot come to a reasonable conclusion," said Dr.
+Thorndyke. "If you cannot see the logic of--"
+
+I cut him off short. "Look, Doc," I snapped, "If you can't see where
+your line of thinking ends, you're in bad shape."
+
+He looked superior. "You're sour because you know you haven't got what
+it takes."
+
+I almost nipped. "You're so damned dumb that you can't see that in any
+society of supermen, you'd not be qualified to clean out ash trays," I
+tossed back at him.
+
+He smiled self-confidently. "By the time they start looking at my
+level--if they ever do--you'll have been gone long ago. Sorry, Cornell.
+You don't add up."
+
+Well, that was nothing I didn't know already. In his society, I was a
+nonentity. Yet, somehow, if that's what the human race was coming to
+under the Thorndyke's and the Phelps', I didn't care to stay around.
+
+"All right," I snapped. "Which way do I go from here? The laboratory, or
+will you dispense with the preliminaries and let me take the high slide
+right now before this--" I held up my infected finger, "gets to the
+painful stages."
+
+With the air and tone of a man inspecting an interesting specimen
+impaled on a mounting pin, Thorndyke replied:
+
+"Oh--we have use for the likes of you."
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+
+It would please me no end to report here that the gang at the Medical
+Center were crude, rough, vicious, and that they didn't give a damn
+about human suffering. Unfortunately for my sense of moral balance, I
+can't. They didn't cut huge slices out of my hide without benefit of
+anaesthesia. They didn't shove pipe-sized needles into me, or strap me
+on a board and open me up with dull knives. Instead, they treated me as
+if I'd been going to pay for my treatment and ultimately emerge from the
+Center to go forth and extol its virtues. I ate good food, slept in a
+clean and comfortable bed, smoked free cigarettes, read the best
+magazines--and also some of the worst, if I must report the whole
+truth--and was permitted to mingle with the rest of the patients,
+guests, victims, personnel, and so forth that were attached to my ward.
+
+I was not at any time treated as though I were anything but a willing
+and happy member of their team. It was known that I was not, but if any
+emotion was shown, it was sympathy at my plight in not being one of
+them. This was viewed in the same way as any other accident of birth or
+upbringing.
+
+In my room was another man about my age. He'd arrived a day before me,
+with an early infection at the tip of his middle toe. He was, if I've
+got to produce a time-table, about three-eights of an inch ahead of me.
+He had no worries. He was one of their kind of thinkers.
+
+"How'd you connect?" I asked him.
+
+"I didn't," he said, scratching his infected toe vigorously. "They
+connected with me."
+
+"Oh?"
+
+"Yeah. I was sleeping tight and not even dreaming. Someone rapped on my
+apartment door and I growled myself out of bed and sort of felt my way.
+It was three in the morning. Guy stood there looking apologetic. 'Got a
+message for you,' he tells me. 'Can't it wait until morning?' I snarl
+back. 'No,' he says. 'It's important!' So I invite him in. He doesn't
+waste any time at all; his first act is to point at an iron floor lamp
+in the corner and ask me how much I'd paid for it. I tell him. Then this
+bird drops twice the amount on the coffee table, strides over to the
+corner, picks up the lamp, and ties the iron pipe into a fancy-looking
+bowknot. He didn't even grunt. 'Mr. Mullaney,' he asks me, 'How would
+you like to be that strong?' I didn't have to think it over. I told him
+right then and there. Then we spent from three ayem to five thirty going
+through a fast question and answer routine, sort of like a complicated
+word-association test. At six o'clock I've packed and I'm on my way here
+with my case of Mekstrom's Disease."
+
+"Just like that?" I asked Mr. Mullaney.
+
+"Just like that," he repeated.
+
+"So now what happens?"
+
+"Oh, about tomorrow I'll go in for treatment," he said. "Seems as how
+they've got to start treatment before the infection creeps to the first
+joint or I'll lose the joint." He contemplated me a bit; he was a
+perceptive and I knew it. "You've got another day or more. That's
+because your ring finger is longer than my toe."
+
+"What's the treatment like?" I asked him.
+
+"That I don't know. I've tried to dig the treatment, but it's too far
+away from here. This is just a sort of preliminary ward; I gather that
+they know when to start and so on." He veiled his eyes for a moment. He
+was undoubtedly thinking of my fate. "Chess?" he asked, changing the
+subject abruptly.
+
+"Why not?" I grinned.
+
+My mind wasn't in it. He beat me three out of four. I bedded down about
+eleven, and to my surprise I slept well. They must have been shoving
+something into me to make me sleep; I know me very well and I'm sure
+that I couldn't have closed an eye if they hadn't been slipping me the
+old closeout powder. For three nights, now, I'd corked off solid until
+seven ack emma and I'd come alive in the morning fine, fit, and fresh.
+
+But on the following morning, Mr. Mullaney was missing. I never saw him
+again.
+
+At noon, or thereabouts, the end of the ring finger on my left hand was
+as solid as a rock. I could squeeze it in a door or burn it with a
+cigarette; I got into a little habit of scratching kitchen matches on it
+as I tried to dig into the solid flesh with my perception. I growled a
+bit at my fate, but not much.
+
+It was about this time, too, that the slight itch began to change. You
+know how a deep-felt itch is. It can sometimes be pleasant. Like the
+itch that comes after a fast swim in the salty sea and a dry-out in the
+bright sun, when the drying salt water makes your skin itch with the
+vibrant pleasure of just being alive. This is not like the bite of any
+bug, but the kind that makes you want to take another dive into the
+ocean instead of trying to scratch it with your claws. Well, the itch in
+my finger had been one of the pleasant kinds. I could sort of scratch it
+away by taking the steel-hard part of my finger in my other hand and
+wiggle, briskly. But now the itch turned into a deep burning pain.
+
+My perception, never good enough to dig the finer structure clearly, was
+good enough to tell me that my crawling horror had come to the boundary
+line of the first joint.
+
+It was this pause that was causing the burning pain.
+
+According to what I'd been told, if someone didn't do something about me
+right now, I'd lose the end joint of my finger.
+
+Nobody came to ease my pain, nor to ease my mind. They left me strictly
+alone. I spent the time from noon until three o'clock examining my
+fingertip as I'd not examined it before. It was rock hard, but strangely
+flexible if I could exert enough pressure on the flesh. It still moved
+with the flexing of my hands. The fingernail itself was like a chip of
+chilled steel. I could flex the nail neither with my other hand nor by
+biting it; between my teeth it had the uncomfortable solidity of a sheet
+of metal that conveyed to my brain that the old teeth should not try to
+bite too hard. I tried prying on a bit of metal with the fingernail;
+inserting the nail in the crack where a metal cylinder had been formed
+to make a table leg. I might have been able to pry the crack wider, but
+the rest of my body did not have the power nor the rigidity necessary to
+drive the tiny lever that was my fingertip.
+
+I wondered what kind of tool-grinder they used for a manicure.
+
+At three-thirty, the door to my room opened and in came Scholar Phelps,
+complete with his benign smile and his hearty air.
+
+"Well," he boomed over-cheerfully, "we meet again, Mr. Cornell."
+
+"Under trying circumstances," I said.
+
+"Unfortunately so," he nodded. "However, we can't all be fortunate."
+
+"I dislike being a vital statistic."
+
+"So does everybody. Yet, from a philosophical point of view, you have no
+more right to live at the expense of someone else than someone else has
+a right to live at your expense. It all comes out even in the final
+accounting. And, of course, if every man were granted a guaranteed
+immortality, we'd have one cluttered-up world."
+
+I had to admit that he was right, but I still could not accept his
+statistical attitude. Not while I'm the statistic. He followed my
+thought even though he was esper; it wasn't hard to follow anyway.
+
+"All right, I admit that this is no time to sit around discussing
+philosophy or metaphysics or anything of that nature. What you are
+interested in is you."
+
+"How absolutely correct."
+
+"You know, of course, that you are a carrier."
+
+"So I've come to believe. At least, everybody I seem to have any contact
+with either turns up missing or comes down with Mekstrom's--or both."
+
+Scholar Phelps nodded. "You might have gone on for quite some time if it
+hadn't been so obvious."
+
+I eyed him. "Just what went on?" I asked casually. "Did you have a
+clean-up squad following me all the time, picking up the debris? Or did
+you just pick up the ones you wanted? Or did the Highways make you
+indulge in a running competition?"
+
+"Too many questions at once. Most of which answers would be best that
+you did not know. Best for us, that is. Maybe even for you."
+
+I shrugged. "We seem to be bordering on philosophy again when the
+important point is what you intend to do to me."
+
+He looked unhappy. "Mr. Cornell, it is hard to remain unphilosophical in
+a case like this. So many avenues of thought have been opened, so many
+ideas and angles come to mind. We'll readily admit what you've probably
+concluded; that you as a carrier have become the one basic factor that
+we have been seeking for some twenty years and more. You are the
+dirigible force, the last brick in the building, the final answer. Or,
+and I hate to say it, were."
+
+"Were?"
+
+"For all of our knowledge of Mekstrom's we know so very little," he
+said. "In certain maladies the carrier is himself immune. In some we
+observe that the carrier results from a low-level, incomplete infection
+with the disease which immunizes him but does not kill the bugs. In
+others, we've seen the carrier become normal after he has finally
+contracted the disease. What we must know now is: Is Steve Cornell, the
+Mekstrom Carrier, now a non-carrier because he has contracted the
+disease?"
+
+"How are you going to find out?" I asked him.
+
+"That's a problem," he said thoughtfully. "One school feels that we
+should not treat you, since the treatment itself may destroy whatever
+unknown factor makes you a carrier. The other claims that if we don't
+treat you, you'll hardly live long enough to permit comprehensive
+research anyway. A third school believes that there is time to find out
+whether you are still a carrier, make some tests, and then treat you,
+after which these tests are to be repeated."
+
+Rather bitterly, I said, "I suppose I have absolutely no vote."
+
+"Hardly," his face was pragmatic.
+
+"And to which school do you belong?" I asked sourly. "Do you want me to
+get the cure? Or am I to die miserably while you take tabs on my blood
+pressure, or do I merely lose an arm while you're sitting with folded
+hands waiting for the laboratory report?"
+
+"In any case, we'll learn a lot about Mekstrom's from you," he said.
+"Even if you die."
+
+As caustically as I could, I said, "It's nice to know that I am not
+going to die in vain."
+
+He eyed me with contempt. "You're not afraid to die, are you, Mr.
+Cornell?"
+
+That's a dirty question to ask any man. Sure, I'm afraid to die. I just
+don't like the idea of being not-alive. As bad as life is, it's better
+than nothing. But the way he put the question he was implying that I
+should be happy to die for the benefit of Humanity in general, and
+that's a question that is unfairly loaded. After all, everybody is
+slated to kick off. There is no other way of resigning from the
+universe. So if I have to die, it might as well be for the Benefit of
+Something, and if it happens to be Humanity, so much the better. But
+when the case is proffered on a silver tray, I feel, "Somebody else, not
+me!"
+
+The next argument Phelps would be tossing out would be the one that
+goes, "Two thousand years ago, a Man died for Humanity--" which always
+makes me sick. No matter how you look at us, there is no resemblance
+between Him and me.
+
+I cut him short before he could say it: "Whether or not I'm afraid to
+die, and for good or evil, now or later, is beside the point. I have,
+obviously, nothing to say about the time, place, and the reasons."
+
+We sat there and glared at one another; he didn't know whether to laugh
+or snarl and I didn't care which he did. It seemed to me that he was
+leading up to something that looked like the end. Then I'd get the
+standard funeral and statements would be given out that I'd died because
+medical research had not been able to save me and blah blah blah
+complete with lack of funds and The Medical Center charity drive. The
+result would mean more moola for Phelps and higher efficiency for his
+operations, and to the devil with the rest of the world.
+
+"Let's get along with it," I snapped. "I've no opinion, no vote, no
+right of appeal. Why bother to ask me how I feel?"
+
+Calmly he replied, "Because I am not a rough-shod, unhuman monster, Mr.
+Cornell. I would prefer that you see my point of view--or at least
+enough of it to admit that there is a bit of right on my side."
+
+"Seems to me I went through that with Thorndyke."
+
+"This is another angle. I'm speaking of my right of discovery."
+
+"You're speaking of what?"
+
+"My right of discovery. You as an engineer should be familiar with the
+idea. If I were a poet I could write an ode to my love and no one would
+forbid me my right to give it to her and to nobody else. If I were a
+cook with a special recipe no one could demand that I hand it over
+unless I had a special friend. He who discovers something new should be
+granted the right to control it. If this Mekstrom business were some
+sort of physical patent or some new process, I could apply for a patent
+and have it for my exclusive use for a period of seventeen years. Am I
+not right?"
+
+"Yes, but--"
+
+"Except that my patent would be infringed upon and I'd have no
+control--"
+
+I stood up suddenly and faced him angrily. He did not cower; after all
+he was a Mekstrom. But he did shut up for a moment.
+
+"Seems to me," I snarled, "that any process that can be used to save
+human life should not be held secret, patentable, or under the control
+of any one man or group."
+
+"This is an argument that always comes up. You may, of course, be
+correct. But happily for me, Mr. Cornell, I have the process and you
+have not, and it is my own conviction that I have the right to use it on
+those people who seem, in my opinion, to hold the most for the future
+advancement of the human race. However, I do not care to go over this
+argument again, it is tiresome and it never ends. As one of the ancient
+Greek Philosophers observed, you cannot change a man's mind by arguing
+with him. The other fact remains, however, that you do have something to
+offer us, despite your contrary mental processes."
+
+"Do go on? What do I have to do to gain this benefit? Who do I have to
+kill?" I eyed him cynically and then added, "Or is it 'Whom shall I
+kill?' I like these things to be proper, you know."
+
+"Don't be sarcastic. I'm serious," he told me.
+
+"Then stop pussyfooting and come to the point," I snapped. "You know
+what the story is. I don't. So if you think I'll be interested, why not
+tell me instead of letting me find out the hard way."
+
+"You, of course, were a carrier. Maybe you still are. We can find out.
+In fact, we'll have to find out, before we--"
+
+"For God's Sake stop it!" I yelled. "You're meandering."
+
+"Sorry," he said in a tone of apology that surprised me all the way down
+to my feet. He shook himself visibly and went on from there: "You, if
+still a carrier, can be of use to The Medical Center. Now do you
+understand?"
+
+Sure I understand, but good. As a normal human type, they held nothing
+over me and just shoved me here and there and picked up the victims
+after me. But now that I was a victim myself, they could offer me their
+"cure" only if I would swear to go around the country deliberately
+infecting the people they wanted among them. It was that--or lie there
+and die miserably. This had not come to Scholar Phelps as a sudden flash
+of genius. He'd been planning this all along; had been waiting to pop
+this delicate question after I'd been pushed around, had a chance to
+torture myself mentally, and was undoubtedly soft for anything that
+looked like salvation.
+
+"There is one awkward point," said Scholar Phelps suavely. "Once we have
+cured you, we would have no hold on you other than your loyalty and your
+personal honor to fulfill a promise given. Neither of us are naive, Mr.
+Cornell. We both know that any honorable promise is only as valid as the
+basic honor involved. Since your personal opinion is that this medical
+treatment should be used indiscriminately, and that our program to
+better the human race by competitive selection is foreign to your
+feelings, you would feel honor-bound to betray us. Am I not correct?"
+
+What could I say to that? First I'm out, then I'm in, now I'm out again.
+What was Phelps getting at?
+
+"If our positions were reversed, Mr. Cornell, I'm sure that you'd seek
+some additional binding force against me. I shall continue to seek some
+such lever against you for the same reason. In the meantime, Mr.
+Cornell, we shall make a test to see whether we have any real basis for
+any agreement at all. You may have ceased to be a carrier, you know."
+
+"Yeah," I admitted darkly.
+
+"In the meantime," he said cheerfully, "the least we can do is to treat
+your finger. I'd hate to have you hedge a deal because we did not
+deliver your cured body in the whole."
+
+He put his head out of the door and summoned a nurse who came with a
+black bag. From the bag, Scholar Phelps took a skin-blast hypo and a
+small metal box, the top of which held a small slender, jointed platform
+and some tiny straps. He strapped my finger to this platform and then
+plugged in a length of line cord to the nearest wall socket. The little
+platforms moved; the one nearest my wrist vibrated rapidly across a very
+small excursion that tickled like the devil. The end platform moved in
+an arc, flexing the finger tip from straight to about seventy degrees.
+This moved fairly slow but regularly up and down.
+
+"I'll not fool you," he said drily. "This is going to hurt."
+
+He set the skin-blast hypo on top of the joint and let it go. For a
+moment the finger felt cold, numb, pleasant. Then the shock wore away
+and the tip of my finger, my whole finger and part of my hand shocked me
+with the most excruciating agony that the hide of man ever felt. Flashes
+and waves of pain darted up my arm to the elbow and the muscles in my
+forearm jumped. The sensitive nerve in my elbow sang and sent darting
+waves of zigzag needles up to my shoulder. My hand was a source of
+searing heat and freezing cold and the pain of being crushed and twisted
+and wrenched out of joint all at the same time.
+
+Phelps wiped my wet face with a towel, loaded another hypo and let me
+have it in the shoulder. Gradually the stuff took hold and the awful
+pain began to subside. Not all the way, it just diminished from
+absolutely unbearable to merely terrible.
+
+I knew at that moment why a trapped animal will bite off its own foreleg
+to get free of the trap.
+
+From the depths of his bag he found a bottle and poured a half-tumbler
+for me; it went down like a whiskey-flavored soft drink. It had about as
+much kick as when you pour a drink of water into a highball glass that
+still holds a dreg of melted ice and diluted liquor. But it burned like
+fury once it hit my stomach and my mind began to wobble. He'd given me a
+slug of the pure quill, one hundred proof.
+
+As some sort of counter-irritant, it worked. Very gradually the awful
+pain in my hand began to subside.
+
+"You can take that manipulator off in an hour or so," he told me. "And
+in the meantime we'll get along with our testing."
+
+I gathered that they could stop this treatment anywhere along the
+process if I did not measure up.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+
+Midnight. The manipulator had been off my hand for several hours, and it
+was obvious that my Mekstrom's was past the first joint and creeping up
+towards the next. I eyed it with some distaste; as much as I wanted to
+have a fine hard body, I was not too pleased at having agony for a
+companion every time the infection crossed a joint. I began to wonder
+about the wrist; this is a nice complicated joint and should, if
+possible, exceed the pain of the first joint in the ring finger. I'd
+heard tell, of course, that once you've reached the top, additional
+torture does not hurt any greater. I'd accepted this statement as it was
+printed. But now I was not too sure that what I'd just been through was
+not one of those exceptions that take place every now and then to the
+best of rules.
+
+I was still in a dark and disconsolate mood. But I'd managed to eat, and
+I'd shaved and showered, and I'd hit the hay because it was as good a
+place to be as anywhere else. I could lie there and dig the premises
+with my esper.
+
+There were very few patients in this building, and none were done up
+like the character in the Macklin place. They moved the patients to some
+other part of the grounds when the cure started. There weren't very many
+nurses, doctors, scholars, or other personnel around, either.
+
+Outside along one side of a road was a small lighted house that was
+obviously a sort of guard, but it was casual instead of being formal and
+military in appearance. The ground, instead of being patrolled by human
+guards (which might have caused some comment) was carefully laid off
+into checkerboard squares by a complicated system of photobeams and
+induction bridges.
+
+You've probably read about how the job of casing a joint should be done.
+I did it the same way. I dug back and forth, collecting the layout from
+the back door of my building towards the nearest puff of dead area. This
+coign of safety billowed outward from the pattern towards the building
+like an arm of cumulus cloud and the top of it rose like a column to a
+height above my range. It sort of leaned forward but it did not lean far
+enough to be directly above the building. The far side of the column was
+just like the rear side; even though I'm well trained, it always
+startles me when I perceive the far side of a smallish dead area. I'm
+inclined like everybody else to consider perception on a line-of-sight
+basis instead of on a sort of all-around grasp.
+
+I let my thinker run free. If I could direct a breakout from this joint
+with a lot of outside help, I'd have a hot jetcopter pilot come down the
+dead-area column with a dead engine. The Medical Center did not have any
+radar, probably on the proposition that too high a degree of security
+indicated a high degree of top-secret material to hide. So I'd come down
+dead engine, land, and wait it out. Timing would have to be perfect,
+because I, the prisoner, would have to make a fast gallop across a
+couple of hundred yards of wide open psi area, scale a tall fence topped
+with barbed wire, cross another fifty yards into the murk, and then find
+my rescuer. The take off would be fast once I'd located the 'copter in
+the murk, and everything would depend upon a hot pilot who felt
+confident enough in his engine and his rotorjets to let 'em go with a
+roar and a lift without warmup.
+
+During which time, unfortunately for all plans, the people at The
+Medical Center would have been reading my mind and would probably have
+that dead patch well patrolled with big, rough gentlemen armed with
+stuff heavy enough to stop a tank.
+
+Lacking any sort of device or doodad that would conceal my mind from
+prying telepaths, about the only thing I could do was to lay here in my
+soft bed and daydream of making my escape.
+
+Eventually I went to sleep and dreamed that I was hunting Mallards with
+a fly-rod baited with a stale doughnut. The only thing that bothered me
+was a couple of odd-looking guys who thought that the way to hunt
+Mallards was with shotguns, and their dress was just as out of taste as
+their equipment. Who ever hunted ducks from a canoe, dressed in
+windbreakers and hightopped boots? Eventually they bought some ducks
+from me and went home, leaving me to my slumbers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+About eight in the morning, there was a tentative tap on my door. While
+I was growling about why they should bother tapping, the door opened and
+a woman came in with my breakfast tray. She was not my nurse; she was
+the enamelled blonde receptionist.
+
+She had lost some of her enamelled sophistication. It was not evident in
+her make-up, her dress, or her hair-do. These were perfection. In fact,
+she bore that store-window look that made me think of an automaton,
+triggered to make the right noises and to present the proper expression
+at the correct time. As though she had never had a thought of her own or
+an emotion that was above the level of very mild interest. As if the
+perfection of her dress and the characterless beauty of her face were
+more important than anything else in her life.
+
+But the loss of absolute plate-glass impersonality was gone, and it took
+me some several moments to dig it out of her appearance. Then I saw it.
+Her eyes. They no longer looked glassily out of that clear oval face at
+a point about three inches above my left shoulder, but they were
+centered on me from no matter what point in the room she'd be as she
+went about the business of running open the blinds, checking the this
+and that and the other like any nurses' helper.
+
+Finally she placed my tray on the bed-table and stood looking down at
+me.
+
+From my first meeting with her I knew she was no telepath, so I bluntly
+said, "Where's the regular girl? Where's my nurse?"
+
+"I'm taking over for the time," she told me. Her voice was strained;
+she'd been trying to use that too-deeply cultured tone she used as the
+professional receptionist but the voice had cracked through the training
+enough to let some of her natural tone come through.
+
+"Why?"
+
+Then she relaxed completely, or maybe it was a matter of coming unglued.
+Her face allowed itself to take on some character and her body ceased
+being that rigid window-dummy type. "What's your trouble--?" I asked her
+softly. She had something on her mind that was a bit too big for her,
+but her training was not broad enough to allow her to get it out. I
+hoped to help, if I could. I also wanted to know what she was doing
+here. If Scholar Phelps was thinking about putting a lever on me of the
+female type, he'd guessed wrong.
+
+She was looking at me and I could see a fragment of fright in her face.
+
+"Is it terrible?" she asked me in a whisper.
+
+"Is what terrible?"
+
+"Me--Me--Mekstrom's D--Disease--" The last word came out with a couple
+of big tears oozing from closed lids.
+
+"Why?" I asked. "Do I look all shot to bits?"
+
+She opened the eyes and looked at me. "Does it hurt?"
+
+I remembered the agony of my finger and tried to lie. "A little," I told
+her. "But I'm told that it was because I'd waited too long for my first
+treatment." I hoped that I was correct; maybe it was wishful thinking,
+but I claim that right. I didn't want to go through the same agony every
+time we crossed a joint.
+
+I reached over to the bedside table and found my cigarettes. I slipped
+two up and offered one of them to her. She put a tentative hand forward,
+slowly, a scared-to-touch reluctance in her motion. This changed as her
+hand came forward. It was the same sort of reluctance that you feel when
+you start out to visit the dentist for a roaring tooth. The closer you
+get to the dentist's office the less inclined you are to finish the job.
+Then at some indeterminate point you cross the place of no return and
+from that moment you go forward with increased determination.
+
+She finally made the cigarette package but she was very careful not to
+touch my hand as she took out the weed. Then, as if she'd reached that
+point of no return, her hand slipped around the package and caught me by
+the wrist.
+
+We were statue-still for three heartbeats. Then I lifted my other hand,
+took out the cigarette she'd missed, and held it forward for her. She
+took it. I dropped the pack and let my hand slip back until we were
+holding hands, practically. She shuddered.
+
+I flipped my lighter and let her inhale a big puff before I put the next
+question: "Why are you here and what goes on?"
+
+In a flat, dry voice she said, "I'm--supposed--to--" and let it trail
+away without finishing it.
+
+"Guinea pig?" I blurted bluntly.
+
+She collapsed like a deflated balloon. Next, she had her face buried in
+my shoulder, bawling like a hurt baby. I stroked her shoulder gently,
+but she shuddered away from my hand as though it were poison.
+
+I shoved her upright and shook her a bit. "Don't blubber like an idiot.
+Sit there and talk like a human being!"
+
+It took her a minute of visible effort before she said, "You're supposed
+to be a--carrier. I'm supposed to find out--whether you are--a carrier."
+
+Well, I'd suspected something of that sort.
+
+Shakily she asked me, "How do I get it, Mr. Cornell?"
+
+I eyed her sympathetically.
+
+Then I held up my left hand and looked at the infection. This was the
+finger that had been gummed to bits by the Mekstrom infant back in
+Homestead. With a shrug of uncertainty, I lifted her hand to my mouth. I
+felt with my tongue and dug with my perception until I had a tiny fold
+of her skin between my front teeth. Then sharply, I bit down, drawing
+blood. She jerked, stiffened, closed her eyes and took a deep breath but
+she did not cry out.
+
+"That, if anything, should do it," I said flatly. "Now go out and get
+some iodine for the cut. Human-bite is likely to become infected with
+something bad. And I don't think antiseptic will hurt the Mekstrom
+Infection if it's taken place." They'd given me the antiseptic works in
+Homestead, I recalled. "Now, Miss Nameless, you sit over there and tell
+me how come this distressing tableau?"
+
+"Oh--I can't," she cried. Then she left in a hurry sucking on her
+bleeding finger.
+
+I didn't need any explanation; I'd just wanted my suspicions confirmed.
+Someone had a lever on her. Maybe someone she loved was a Mekstrom and
+her loyalty was extracted because of it. The chances were also high that
+she'd been given to understand that they'd accept her as a member if she
+ever caught Mekstrom's; and they'd taken my arrival as a fine chance to
+check me and get her at the same time.
+
+I wondered about her; she was no big-brain. I couldn't quite see the
+stratified society outlined by Scholar Phelps as holding a position open
+for her in the top echelon. Except she was a woman, attractive if you
+like your women beautiful and dull-minded, and she probably would be
+happy to live in a little vacuum-type world bounded on all sides with
+women's magazines, lace curtains, TV soap opera, and a corral full of
+little Mekstrom kids. I grinned. Funny how the proponents of the
+stratified society always have their comeuppance by the need of women
+whose minds are bent on mundane things like homes and families.
+
+Well, I hoped she caught it, if that's what she wanted. I was willing to
+bet my life that she cared a lot more for being with her man than she
+did for the cockeyed society he was supporting.
+
+I finished my breakfast and went out to watch a couple of telepaths
+playing chess until lunch time and then gave up. Telepathic chess was
+too much like playing perceptive poker.
+
+Then after lunch came the afternoon full of laboratory tests,
+inspections, experiments, and so forth; they didn't do much that hadn't
+been tried at Homestead, and I surprised them again by being able to
+help in their never-ending blood counts and stuff of that sort.
+
+They did not provide me with a new room mate, so I wandered around after
+dinner hoping that I could avoid both Thorndyke and Phelps. I didn't
+want to get into another fool social-structure argument with them and
+the affair of the little scared receptionist was more than likely to
+make me say a few words that might well get me cast into the Outer
+Darkness for their mere semantic content.
+
+Once more I hit the sack early.
+
+And, once more, there came a tap on my door about eight o'clock. It was
+not a tentative little frightened tap this time, it was more jovial and
+eager sounding. My reaction was about the same. Since it was their show
+and their property, I couldn't see any reason why they made this odd
+lip-service to politeness.
+
+It was the receptionist again. She came in with a big wistful smile and
+dropped my tray on the bed table.
+
+"Look," she cried. She held up her hand. The bleeding had stopped and
+there was a thin film over the cut. I dug at it and nodded; it was the
+first show of Mekstrom Flesh without a doubt.
+
+"That's it, kid."
+
+"I know," she said happily. "Golly, I could kiss you."
+
+Then before I could think of all the various ways in which the word
+"Golly" sounded out of character for her, she launched herself into my
+arms and was busily erasing every attempt at logical thought with one of
+the warmest, no-holds-barred smoocheroo that I'd enjoyed for what seemed
+like years. Since I'd held Catherine in my arms in her apartment just
+before we'd eloped, I'd spent my time in the company of Nurse Farrow who
+held no emotional appeal to me, and the rest of my female company had
+been Mekstroms whose handholding might twist off a wrist if they got a
+thrill out of it. About the time I began to respond with enthusiasm and
+vigor, she extricated herself from my clutch and slid back to the foot
+of the bed out of reach.
+
+A little breathlessly she said, "Harry will thank you for this." _This_
+meant the infection in her finger.
+
+Then she was gone and I was thinking, _Harry should drop dead_!
+
+Then I grinned at myself like the Cheshire Cat because I realized that I
+was so valuable a property that they couldn't afford to let me die. No
+matter what, I'd be kept alive. And after having things go so sour for
+so long a time, things were about to take a fast turn and go my way.
+
+I discounted the baby-bite affair. Even if the baby were another
+carrier, it would take a long time before the kid was old enough to be
+trusted in his aim.
+
+I discounted it even more because I hadn't been roaring around the
+countryside biting innocent citizens. Mere contact was enough; if the
+bite did anything, it may have hastened the process.
+
+So here I was, a nice valuable property, with a will of my own. I could
+either throw in with Phelps and bite only Phelps' Chosen Aristocrats, or
+I could go back to the Highways and bite everybody in sight.
+
+I laughed at my image in the mirror. I am a democratic sort of soul, but
+when it comes to biting, there's some I'd rather bite than others.
+
+I bared my teeth at my image, but it was more of a leering smile of the
+tooth-paste ad than a fierce snarl.
+
+My image looked pensive. It was thinking, _Steve, old carnivore, ere you
+go biting anybody, you've first got to bite your way out of the Medical
+Center._
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+
+One hour later they pulled my fangs without benefit of anaesthesia.
+
+Thorndyke came in to inspect the progress of my infection and allowed as
+how I'd be about ready for the full treatment in a few days. "We like to
+delay the full treatment as long as possible," he told me, "because it
+immobilizes the patient too long as it is." He pressed a call bell,
+waited, and soon the door opened to admit a nurses' helper pushing a
+trundle cart loaded with medical junk. I still don't know what was on
+the cart because I was too flabbergasted to notice it.
+
+I was paying all my attention to Catherine, cheerful in her Gray Lady
+uniform, being utterly helpful, bright, gay, and relaxed. I was tongue
+tied, geflummoxed, beaten down, and--well, just speechless.
+
+Catherine was quite professional about her help. She loaded the
+skin-blast hypo and slapped it into Thorndyke's open hand. Her eyes
+looked into mine and they smiled reassuringly. Her hand was firm as she
+took my arm; she locked her strength on my hand and held it immobile
+while Thorndyke shot me in the second joint. There was a personal touch
+to her only briefly when she breathed, "Steve, I'm so glad!" and then
+went on about her work. The irony of it escaped me; but later I did
+recall the oddity of congratulating someone who's just contracted a
+disease.
+
+Then that wave of agony hit me, and the only thing I can remember
+through it was Catherine folding a towel so that the hem would be on the
+inside when she wiped the beads of sweat from my face. She cradled my
+head between her hands and crooned lightly to me until the depths of the
+pain was past. Then she got efficient again and waved Thorndyke aside to
+see to the little straps on the manipulator herself. She adjusted them
+delicately. Then she poured me a glass of ice water and put it where I
+could reach it with my other hand. She left after one long searching
+look into my eyes, and I knew that she would be back later to talk to me
+alone. This seemed all right with Dr. Thorndyke, the wily telepath who
+would be able to dig a reconstruction of our private talk with a little
+urging on his part.
+
+After Catherine was gone, Thorndyke smiled down at me with cynical
+self-confidence. "There's your lever, Steve," he said.
+
+The dope helped to kill all but the worst waves of searing pain; between
+them I managed to grind out, "How did you sell her that bill of goods,
+Thorndyke?"
+
+His reply was scornful. "Maybe she likes your hide all in one piece," he
+grunted.
+
+He left me with my mind a-whirl with thoughts and pain. The little
+manipulator was working my second finger joint up and down rhythmically,
+and with each move came pain. It also exercised the old joint, which had
+grown so rigid that my muscles hadn't been able to move it for several
+hours. That added agony, too.
+
+The dope helped, but it also dimmed my ability to concentrate.
+
+Up to a certain point everything was quite logical and easy to
+understand. Catherine was here because they had contacted her through
+some channel and said, "Throw in with us and we'll see that your lover
+does not die miserably." So much was reasonable, but after that point
+the whole thing began to take on a mad puzzle-like quality. Given normal
+circumstances, Catherine would have come to me as swiftly as I'd have
+gone to her if I'd known how. Not only that, but I'd probably have sworn
+eternal fealty to them for their service even though I could not stand
+their way of thinking.
+
+But Catherine was smart enough to realize that I, as the only known
+carrier of Mekstrom's Disease, was more valuable live than dead.
+
+Why, then, had Catherine come here to place herself in their hands?
+Alone, she might have gone off half-cocked in an emotional tizzy. But
+the Highways had good advisers who should have pointed out that Steve
+Cornell was one man alive who could walk with impunity among friend or
+foe. Why, they hadn't even tried to collect me until it became evident
+that I was in line for the Old Treatment. Then they had to take me in,
+because the Medical Center wanted any information they could get above
+and beyond the fact that I was a carrier. If someone from Homestead had
+been in that courtroom, I'd now be among friends.
+
+Then the ugly thought hit me and my mind couldn't face it for some time.
+
+_Reorientation._
+
+Catherine's cheerful willingness to help them must be reorientation and
+nothing else.
+
+Now, although I've mentioned reorientation before, what I actually know
+about it is meager. It makes Dr. Jekylls out of former Mr. Hydes and the
+transformation is complete. It can be done swiftly; the rapidity depends
+upon the strength of the mind of the operator compared to the mind of
+the subject. It is slightly harder to reorient a defiant mind than a
+willing one. It sticks unless someone else begins to tinker again. It is
+easier to make a good man out of a bad one than the reverse, although
+the latter is eminently possible. This is too difficult a problem to
+discuss to the satisfaction of everybody, but it seems to go along with
+the old theory that "Good" does benefit the tribe of mankind in the long
+run, while "Bad" things cause trouble. I'll say no more than to point
+out that no culture based upon theft, murder, piracy, and pillage, has
+ever survived.
+
+The thought of Catherine's mind being tampered with made me seethe with
+anger. I forgot my pain and began to probe around wildly, and as I
+probed I began to know the real feeling of helpless futility.
+
+For here I was, practically immobilized and certainly dependent upon
+them for help. This was no time to attempt a rescue of my
+sweetheart--who would only be taken away kicking and screaming all the
+way from here to the first place where I could find a haven and have her
+re-reoriented. The latter would not be hard; among the other things I
+knew about reorientation was that it could be negated by some strong
+emotional ties and a personal background that included worthy objection
+to the new personality.
+
+For my perceptive digging I came up with nothing but those things that
+any hospital held. Patients, nurses, interns, orderlies; a couple of
+doctors, a scholar presiding over a sheaf of files. And finally
+Catherine puttering over an autoclave. She was setting out a string of
+instruments under the tutelage of a superintendent of nurses who was
+explaining how the job should be done.
+
+I took a deep, thankful breath. Her mind was occupied enough to keep her
+from reading the dark thoughts that were going through mine. I did not
+even want a loved one to know how utterly helpless and angry I felt.
+
+And then, because I was preoccupied with Catherine and my own thoughts,
+the door opened without my having taken a dig at the opener beforehand.
+The arrival was all I needed to crack wide open in a howling fit of
+hysteria. It was so pat. I couldn't help but let myself go: "Well! This
+looks like Old Home Week!"
+
+Miss Gloria Farrow, Registered Nurse, did not respond to my awkward
+joviality. Her face, if anything, was darker than my thoughts. I doubted
+that she had her telepathy working; people who get that wound up find it
+hard to even see and hear straight, let alone think right. And telepathy
+or perception goes out of kilter first because the psi is a very
+delicate factor.
+
+She eyed me coldly. "You utter imbecile," she snarled. "You--"
+
+"Whoa, baby!" I roared. "Slow down. I'm a bit less than bright, but what
+have I done now?"
+
+I'd have slapped her across the face as an anodyne if she hadn't been
+Mekstrom.
+
+Farrow cooled visibly, then her face sort of came apart and she sort of
+flopped forward onto the bed and buried her face in my shoulder. I
+couldn't help but make comparisons; she was like a hunk of marble, warm
+and vibrant. Like having a statue crying on my shoulder. She sagged
+against me like a loose bag of cement and her hands clutched at my
+shoulder blades like a pair of C-clamps. A big juicy tear dropped from
+her cheek to land on my chest, and I was actually surprised to find that
+a teardrop from a Mekstrom did not land like a drop of mercury. It just
+splashed like any other drop of water, spread out, and made my chest
+wet.
+
+Eventually I held her up from me, tried to shake her gently, and said,
+"Now what's the shooting all about, Farrow?"
+
+She shook her head as if to clear her thinking gear.
+
+"Steve," she said in a quietly serious tone, "I've been such an utter
+fool."
+
+"You're not unique, Farrow," I told her. "People have been doing damfool
+stunts since--"
+
+"I know," she broke in. Then with an effort at light-heartedness, she
+added, "There must be a different version of that Garden of Eden story.
+Eve is always blamed as having tempted Adam. Somewhere, Old Adam must
+have been slightly to blame--?"
+
+I didn't know what she was driving toward, but I stroked her hair and
+waited. She was probably right. It still takes two of a kind to make one
+pair.
+
+"Steve--get out of here! While you're safe!"
+
+"Huh?" I blurted. "What cooks, Farrow?"
+
+"I was a nice patsy," she said. She sat up and wiped her eyes. "I was a
+fool. Steve, if James Thorndyke had asked me to jump off the roof, I'd
+have asked him 'what direction?' That's how fat-headed I am."
+
+"Yes?" Something was beginning to form, now.
+
+"I--led you on, Steve."
+
+That blinkoed me. The phrase didn't jell. The half a minute she'd spent
+bawling on my shoulder with my arms around her had been the first
+physical contact I'd ever had with Nurse Farrow. It didn't seem--
+
+"No, Steve. Not that way. I couldn't see you for Thorndyke any more than
+you could see me for Catherine." Her telepathy had returned, obviously;
+she was in better control of herself. "Steve," she said, "I led you on;
+did everything that Thorndyke told me to. You fell into it like a rock.
+Oh--it was going to be a big thing. All I had to do was to haul you
+deeper into this mess, then I'd disappear strangely. Then we'd
+be--tog--ether--we'd be--"
+
+She started to come unglued again but stopped the dissolving process
+just before the wet and gooey stage set in. She seemed to put a set in
+her shoulders, and then she looked down at me with pity. "Poor esper,"
+she said softly, "you couldn't really know--"
+
+"Know what?" I asked harshly.
+
+"He fooled me--too," she said, in what sounded like a complete
+irrelevancy.
+
+"Look, Farrow, try and make a bit of sense to a poor perceptive who
+can't read a mind. Keep it running in one direction, please?"
+
+Again, as apparently irrelevant, she said, "He's a top grade telepath;
+he knows control--"
+
+"Control--?" I asked blankly.
+
+"You don't know," she said. "But a good telepath can think in patterns
+that prevent lesser telepaths from really digging deep. Thorndyke is
+brilliant, of scholar grade, really. He--"
+
+"Let's get back to it, Farrow. What's cooking?"
+
+Sternly she tossed her head. It was an angry motion, one that showed her
+disdain for her own tears and her own weakness. "Your own sweet
+Catherine."
+
+I eyed her, not coldly but with a growing puzzlement. I tried to
+formulate my own idea but she went on, briskly, "That accident of yours
+was one of the luckiest things that ever happened to you, Steve."
+
+"How long have I been known to be a Mekstrom Carrier?" I asked bluntly.
+
+"No more than three weeks before you met Catherine Lewis," she told me
+as bluntly. "It took the Medical Center that long to work her into a
+position to meet you, Steve."
+
+That put the icing on the cake. If nothing else, it explained why
+Catherine was here willingly. I didn't really believe it because no one
+can turn one hundred and eighty degrees without effort, but I couldn't
+deny the fact that the evidence fits the claim. If what Farrow said were
+true, my marriage to Catherine would have provided them with the same
+lever as the little blonde receptionist. The pile-up must have really
+fouled up their plans.
+
+"It did, Steve," said Farrow, who had been following my mental
+ramblings. "The Highways had to step in and help. This fouled things up
+for both sides."
+
+"Both sides?" I asked, completely baffled.
+
+She nodded. "Until the accident, the Medical Center did not know that
+the Highways existed. But when Catherine dropped completely out of
+sight, Thorndyke did a fine job of probing you. That's when he came upon
+the scant evidence of the Highway Sign and the mental impression of the
+elder Harrison lifting the car so that Phillip could get you out. Then
+he knew, and--"
+
+"Farrow," I snapped, "there are a lot of holes in your story. For
+instance--"
+
+She held up a hand to stop me. "Steve," she said quietly, "you know how
+difficult it is for a non-telepath to find someone he can trust. But I'm
+trying to convince you that--"
+
+I stopped Farrow this time. "How can I believe you now?" I asked her
+pointedly. "You seem to have a part in this side of the quiet warfare."
+
+Nurse Farrow made a wry face as though she'd just discovered that the
+stuff she had in her mouth was a ball of wooly centipedes. "I'm a
+woman," she said simply. "I'm soft and gullible and easily talked into
+complacency. But I've just learned that their willingness to accept
+women is based upon the fact that no culture can thrive without women to
+propagate the race. I find that I am--" She paused, swallowed, and her
+voice became strained with bitterness, "--useful as a breeding animal.
+Just one of the peasants whose glory lies in carrying their heirs. But I
+tell you, Steve--" and here she became strong and her voice rang out
+with a vigorous rejection of her future, "I'll be forever damned if I
+will let my child be raised with the cockeyed notion that he has some
+God-Granted Right to Rule."
+
+My vigilant sense of perception had detected a change in the
+human-pattern in the building. People were moving--no, it was one person
+who was moving.
+
+Down in the laboratory below, and at the other end of the building,
+Catherine was still working over the autoclave and instruments. The
+waspish-looking superintendent had taken off for somewhere else, and
+while Catherine was alone now, she was about to be joined by Dr.
+Thorndyke. Half afraid that my perception of them would touch off their
+own telepathic sense of danger, I watched deliberately.
+
+The door opened and Thorndyke came in; Catherine turned from her work
+and said something, which of course I could not possibly catch.
+
+#What are they saying, Farrow?# I snapped mentally.
+
+"I don't know. They're too far for my range."
+
+I swore, but I didn't really have to have a dialog script. Nor did they
+do the obvious; what they did was far more telling.
+
+Catherine turned and patted his cheek. They laughed at one another, and
+then Catherine began handing Thorndyke the instruments out of the
+autoclave, which he proceeded to mix in an unholy mess in the surgical
+tray. Catherine saw what he was doing and made some remark; then
+threatened him with a pair of haemostats big enough to clamp off a
+three-inch fire hose. It was pleasant enough looking horseplay; the sort
+of intimacy that people have when they've been together for a long time.
+Thorndyke did not look at all frightened of the haemostats, and
+Catherine did not really look as though she'd follow through with her
+threat. They finally tangled in a wrestle for the instrument, and
+Thorndyke took it away from her. They leaned against a cabinet side by
+side, their elbows touching, and went on talking as if they had
+something important to discuss in the midst of their fun. It could have
+been reorientation or it could have been Catherine's real self. I still
+couldn't quite believe that she had played me false. My mind spinned
+from one side to the other until I came up with a blunt question that
+came to my lips without any mental planning. I snapped, "Farrow, what
+grade of telepath is Catherine?"
+
+"Doctor grade," she replied flatly. "Might have taken some pre-scholar
+training if economics hadn't interfered. I'd not really call her Rhine
+Scholar material, but I'm prejudiced against her."
+
+If what Farrow said was true, Catherine was telepath enough to control
+and marshall her mind to a faretheewell. She could think and plan to
+herself in the presence of another telepath without giving her plots
+away.
+
+She was certainly smart enough to lead one half-trained perceptive
+around by a ring in my nose. Me? I was as big a fool as Farrow.
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+
+Nurse Farrow caught my hand. "Steve," she snapped out in a rapid, flat
+voice, "Think only one thought. Think of how Catherine is here; that she
+came here to protect your life and your future!"
+
+"Huh?"
+
+"Think it!" she almost cried. "She's coming!"
+
+I nearly fumbled it. Then I caught on. Catherine was coming; to remove
+the little finger manipulator and to have a chit-chat with me. I didn't
+want to see her, and I was beginning to wish--then I remembered that one
+glimmer out of me that I knew the truth and everything would be higher
+than Orbital Station One.
+
+I shoved my mind into low gear and started to think idle thoughts,
+letting myself sort of daydream. I was convincing to myself; it's hard
+to explain exactly, but I was play-thinking like a dramatist. I fell
+into it; it seemed almost truth to me as I roamed on and on. I'd been
+trapped and Catherine had come here to hand herself over as a hostage
+against my good behavior. She'd escaped the Highways bunch or maybe she
+just left them quietly. Somehow Phelps had seen to it that Catherine got
+word--I didn't know how, but that was not important. The important thing
+was Catherine being here as a means of keeping me alive and well.
+
+I went on thinking the lie. Catherine came in shortly and saw what Nurse
+Farrow was doing.
+
+"I was supposed to do that," said Catherine.
+
+Nurse Farrow straightened up from her work of loosening the straps on
+the manipulator. "Sorry," she said in a cool, crisp voice. "I didn't
+know that. This is usually my job. It's a rather delicate proposition,
+you know." There was a chill of professional rebuff in Farrow's voice.
+It was the pert white hat and the gold pin looking down upon the gray
+uniform with no adornment. Catherine looked a bit uncomfortable but she
+apparently had to take it.
+
+Catherine tried lamely, "You see, Mr. Cornell is my fiancee."
+
+Farrow jumped on that one hard. "I'm aware of that. So let's not forget
+that scholars of medicine do not treat their own loved ones for ethical
+reasons."
+
+Catherine took it like a slap across the face with an iced towel. "I'm
+sure that Dr. Thorndyke would not have let me take care of him if I'd
+not been capable," she replied.
+
+"Perhaps Dr. Thorndyke did not realize at the time that Mr. Cornell
+would be ready for the Treatment Department. Or," she added slyly, "have
+you been trained to prepare a patient for the full treatment?"
+
+"The full treatment--? Dr. Thorndyke did not seem to think--"
+
+"Please," said Farrow with that cold crispness coming out hard, "As a
+nurse I must keep my own opinion to myself, as well as keeping the
+opinions of doctors to myself. I take orders only and I perform them."
+
+That was a sharp shot; practically telling Catherine that she, as a
+nurses' helper, had even less right to go shooting off her mouth.
+Catherine started to reply but gave it up. Instead she came over and
+looked down at me. She cooed and stroked my forehead.
+
+"Ah, Steve," she breathed, "So you're going for the treatment. Think of
+me, Steve. Don't let it hurt too much."
+
+I smiled thinly and looked up into her eyes. They were soft and warm, a
+bit moist. Her lips were full and red and they were parted slightly; the
+lower lip glistened slightly in the light. These were lips I'd kissed
+and found sweet; a face I'd held between my hands. Her hair fluffed
+forward a trifle; threatened to cascade down over her shoulders. No, it
+was not at all hard to lie there and go on thinking all the soft-sweet
+thoughts I'd once hoped might come true--
+
+She recoiled, her face changing swiftly from its mask of sweet concern
+to one of hard calculation. I'd slipped with that last hunk of thinking
+and given the whole affair away.
+
+Catherine straightened up and turned to head for the door. She took one
+step and caved in like a wet towel.
+
+Over her still-falling body I saw Nurse Farrow calmly reloading the
+skin-blast hypo, which she used to fire a second load into the base of
+Catherine's neck, just below the shoulder blades.
+
+"That," said Farrow succinctly, "should keep her cold for a week. I just
+wish I'd been born with enough guts to commit murder."
+
+"What--?"
+
+"Get dressed," she snapped. "It's cold outside, remember?" I started to
+dress as Farrow hurled my clothing out of the closet at me. She went on
+in the meantime: "I knew you couldn't keep it entirely concealed from
+her. She's too good a telepath. So while you were holding her attention,
+I let her have a shot in the neck. One of the rather bad things about
+being a Mekstrom is that minor items like the hypo don't register too
+well."
+
+I stopped. "Isn't that bad? Seems to me that I've heard that pain is a
+necessary factor for the preservation of the--"
+
+"Stop yapping and dress," snapped Farrow. "Pain is useful when it's
+needed. It isn't needed in the case of a pin pricking the hide of a
+Mekstrom. When a Mekstrom gets in the way of something big enough to
+damage him physically, then it hurts him."
+
+"Sort of when a locomotive falls on their head?" I grunted.
+
+"Keep on dressing. We're not out of this jungle yet."
+
+"So have you any plans?"
+
+She nodded soberly. "Yes, Steve. Once you asked me to be your telepath,
+to complete your team. I let you down. Now I've picked you up again, and
+from here on--out--I--"
+
+I nodded. "Sold," I told her.
+
+"Good. Now, Steve, dig the hallway."
+
+I did. There was no one there. I opened my mouth to tell her so, and
+then closed it foolishly.
+
+"Dig the hallway down to the left. Farther. To the door down
+there--three beyond the one you're perceiving now--is there a wheelchair
+there?"
+
+"Wheelchair?" I blurted.
+
+"Steve, this is a hospital. They don't even let a man with an aching
+tooth walk to the toothache ward. He rides. Now, you keep a good esper
+watch on the hall and if anybody looks out while I'm gone, just cast a
+deep dig at their face. It's possible that at this close range I can
+identify them from the perceived image in your mind. Although, God
+knows, no two people ever _see_ anything alike, let alone perceive it."
+
+She slipped out, leaving me with the recumbent form of my former
+sweetheart. Her face had fallen into the relaxed expression of sleep,
+sort of slack and unbuttoned.
+
+#Tough, baby,# I thought as I closed my eyes so that all my energy could
+be aimed at the use of my perception.
+
+Farrow was going down the hall like a professional heading for the
+wheelchair on a strict order. No one bothered to look out; she reached
+the locker room and dusted the wheelchair just as if she'd been getting
+it for a real patient. (The throb in my finger returned for a parthian
+shot and I remembered that I _was_ a real patient!) She trundled the
+chair back and into my room.
+
+"In," she said. "And keep that perception aimed on the hallway, the
+elevator, and the center corridor stairs."
+
+She packed me with a blanket, tucking it so that my shoes and
+overclothing would not show, doing the job briskly. Then she scooped
+Catherine up from the floor and dropped her into my bed, and then rolled
+Catherine into one of those hospital doodads that hospitals use for male
+and female alike as bedclothing.
+
+"Anyone taking a fast dig in here will think she's a patient--unless the
+digger knows that this room is supposed to be occupied by one Steve
+Cornell, obviously male. Now, Steve, ready to steer?"
+
+"Steer?"
+
+"Steer by esper. I'll drive. Oh--I know the way," she told me with a
+chuckle. "You just keep your perception peeled for characters who might
+be over-nosy. I'll handle the rest."
+
+We went along the hallway. I took fast digs at the rooms and hall ahead
+of us; the whole coast seemed clear. Waiting for the two-bit elevator
+was nerve wracking; hospitals always have such poky elevators. But
+eventually it came and we trundled aboard. The pilot was no big-dome. He
+smiled at Nurse Farrow and nodded genially at me. He was probably a
+blank, jockeying an elevator is about the top job for a non-psi these
+days.
+
+But as the elevator started down, a doctor came out of one of the rooms
+on the floor below. He took a fast look at the indicator above the
+elevator door and made a dash to thumb the button. The elevator came to
+a grinding halt and he got on.
+
+This bothered me, but Farrow merely simpered at the guy and melted him
+down to size. She made some remark to him that I couldn't hear, but from
+the sudden increase of his pulse rate, I gathered that she'd really put
+him off guard. He replied in the same unintelligible tone and reached
+for her hand. She held his hand, and if the guy was thinking of me, my
+name is Sing Hoy Low and I am a Chinese Policeman.
+
+He held her hand until we hit the first floor, and he debarked with a
+calf-like glance at Nurse Farrow. We went on to the ground floor and
+down the lower corridor to the end, where Farrow spent another lifetime
+and a half filling out a white cardboard form.
+
+The superintendent eyed me with a sniff. "I'll call the car," she said.
+
+I half-expected Farrow to make some objection, but she quietly nodded
+and we waited for another lifetime until a big car whined to a stop
+outside. Two big guys in white coats came in, tripped the lever on back
+of the wheelchair and stretched me out flat and low-slung on the same
+wheels. It was a neat conversion from wheelchair to wheeled stretcher,
+but as Farrow trundled me out feet first into the cold, I felt a sort of
+nervous chill somewhere south of my navel. She swung me around at the
+last minute and I was shoved head first into the back of the car.
+
+Car? This was a full-fledged ambulance, about as long as a city block
+and as heavy as a battleship. It was completely fitted for everything
+that anybody could think of, including a great big muscular
+turbo-electric power plant capable of putting many miles per behind the
+tail-pipe.
+
+The door closed on my feet, and we took off with Farrow sitting right
+behind the two big hospital attendants, one of whom was driving and the
+other of whom was ogling Farrow in a calculating manner. She invited the
+ogle. Heck, she did it in such a way that I couldn't help ogling a bit
+myself. If I haven't said that Farrow was an attractive woman, it was
+because I hadn't really paid attention to her looks. But now I went
+along and ogled, realizing in the dimmer and more obscure recesses of my
+mind that if I ogled in a loudly lewd perceptive manner, I'd not be
+thinking of what she was doing.
+
+So while I was pleasantly occupied in ogling, Farrow slipped two more
+hypos out from under her clothing. She slipped her hands out sidewise on
+the backs of their seats, put her face between them and said, "Anybody
+got a cigarette, fellows?"
+
+The next that took place happened, in order of occurrence, as follows:
+
+The driver grunted and turned his head to look at her. The other guy
+fumbled for a cigarette. Driver poked at the lighter on the dash, still
+dividing his attention between the road and Nurse Farrow. The man beside
+him reached for the lighter when it popped out and he held it for her
+while she puffed it into action. Farrow fingered the triggers on the
+skin-blast hypos. The man beside the driver replaced the lighter in its
+socket on the dash. The driver slid aside and to the floor, a second
+before the other hospital orderly flopped down like a deflated balloon.
+
+The ambulance took a swoop to the right, nosed down into a shallow ditch
+and leaped like a shot deer out on the other side.
+
+Farrow went over the back of the seat in a flurry and I rolled off of my
+stretcher into the angle of the floor and the sidewall. There was a
+rumble and then a series of crashes before we came to a shuddering halt.
+I came up from beneath a pile of assorted medical supplies, braced
+myself against the canted deck, and looked out the wind-shield. The
+trunk of a tree split the field of view as close to dead center as it
+could be.
+
+"Out, Steve," said Farrow, untangling herself from the steering wheel
+and the two attendants. "Out!"
+
+"What next?" I asked her.
+
+"We've made enough racket to wake the statue of Lincoln. Out and run for
+it."
+
+"Which way?"
+
+"Follow me!" she snapped, and took off. Even in nurse's shoes with those
+semi-heels, Farrow made time in a phenomenal way. I lost ground
+steadily. Luckily it was still early in the afternoon, so I used my
+perception to keep track of her once she got out of sight. She was
+following the gently rolling ground, keeping to the lower hollows and
+gradually heading toward a group of buildings off in the near-distance.
+
+I caught up with her just as we hit a tiny patch of dead area; just
+inside the area she stopped and we flopped on the ground and panted our
+lungs full of nice biting cold air. Then she pointed at the collection
+of buildings and said, "Steve, take a few steps out of this deadness and
+take a fast dig. Look for cars."
+
+I nodded; in a few steps I could send my esper forward to dig the fact
+that there were several cars parked in a row near one of the buildings.
+I wasted no time in digging any deeper, I just retreated into the dead
+area and told her what I'd seen.
+
+"Take another dig, Steve. Take a dig for ignition keys. We've got to
+steal."
+
+"I don't mind stealing." I took another trip into the open section and
+gandered at ignition locks. I tried to memorize the ones with keys
+hanging in the locks but failed to remember all of them.
+
+"Okay, Steve. This is where we walk in boldly and walk up to a couple of
+cars and get in and drive off."
+
+"Yeah, but why--"
+
+"That's the only way we'll ever get out of here," she told me firmly.
+
+I shrugged. Farrow knew more about the Medical Center than I did. If
+that's the way she figured it, that's the way it had to be. We broke out
+of the dead area, and as we came into the open, Farrow linked her arm in
+mine and hugged it.
+
+"Make like a couple of fatuous mushbirds," she chuckled. "We've been out
+walking and communing with nature and getting acquainted."
+
+"Isn't the fact that you're Mekstrom and I'm human likely to cause some
+rather pointed comment?"
+
+"It would if we were to stick around to hear it," she said. "And if they
+try to read our minds, all we have to do is to think nice mushy
+thoughts. Face it," she said quietly, "it won't be hard."
+
+"Huh?"
+
+"You're a rather nice guy, Steve. You're fast on the uptake, you're
+generally pleasant. You've got an awful lot of grit, guts and
+determination, Steve. You're no pinup boy, Steve, but--and this may come
+as a shock to you--women don't put one-tenth the stock in pulchritude
+that men do? You--"
+
+"Hey. Whoa," I bubbled. "Slow down, before you--"
+
+She hugged my arm again. "Steve," she said seriously, "I'm not in love
+with you. It's not possible for a woman to be in love with a man who
+does not return that love. You don't love me. But you can't help but
+admit that I am an attractive woman, Steve, and perhaps under other
+circumstances you'd take on a large load of that old feeling. I'll admit
+that the reverse could easily take place. Now, let's forget all the odd
+angles and start thinking like a pair of people for whom the time, the
+place, and the opposite sex all turned up opportunely."
+
+I couldn't help thinking of Nurse Farrow as--Nurse Farrow. The name
+Gloria did not quite come out. I tried to submerge this mental attitude,
+and so I looked down at her with what I hoped to resemble the expression
+of a love-struck male. I think it was closer to the expression of a
+would-be little-theatre actor expressing lust, and not quite making the
+grade. Farrow giggled.
+
+But as I sort of leered down at her, I had to admit upon proper
+examination of her charm that Nurse Farrow could very easily become
+Gloria, if as she said, we had the time to let the change occur. Another
+idea formed in my mind: If Farrow had been kicked in the emotions by
+Thorndyke, I'd equally been pushed in the face by Catherine. That made
+us sort of kindred souls, as they used to call it in the early books of
+the Twentieth Century.
+
+Gloria Farrow chuckled. "Unlike the old torch-carriers of that day," she
+said, "we rebound a bit too fast."
+
+Then she let my arm go and took my hand. We went swinging across the
+field in a sort of happy comradeship; it must have looked as though we
+were long-term friends. She was a good egg, hurt and beaten down and
+shoved off by Thorndyke, but she had a lot of the good old bounce. Of a
+sudden impulse I wanted to kiss her.
+
+"Go ahead, Steve," she said. "But it'll be for the probable onlookers.
+I'm Mekstrom, you know."
+
+So I didn't try. I just put an arm around her briefly and realized that
+any attempt at affection would be like trying to strike sparks off flint
+with a hunk of flannel.
+
+We walked hand in hand towards the buildings, strolled up saucily
+towards two of the parked cars, made the sort of wave that lovers give
+one another in goodbye when they don't really want to demonstrate their
+affection before ten thousand people and stepped into two cars and took
+off.
+
+Gloria Farrow was in the lead.
+
+We went howling down the road, Farrow in the lead car by a hundred feet
+and me behind her. We went roaring around a curve, over a hill, and I
+had my perception out to its range, which was far ahead of her car. The
+main gate came into range, and we bore down upon that wire and steel
+portal like a pair of madmen.
+
+Gloria Farrow plowed into the gate without letting up. The gate went
+whirling in pieces, glass flew and tires howled and bits of metal and
+plastic sang through the air. Her car weaved aside; I forgot the road
+ahead and put my perception into her car.
+
+Farrow was fighting the wheel like a racing driver in a spin. Her hands
+wrenched the wheel with the swift strength of the Mekstrom Flesh she
+wore, and the wheel bent under her hands. Over and around she went, with
+a tire blown and the lower rail of the big gate hanging onto the fender
+like a dry-land sea-anchor. She juggled the wheel and made a snaky path
+off to one side of the road.
+
+Out of the guardhouse came a uniformed man with a riot gun. He did not
+have time to raise it. Farrow ironed out her course and aimed the
+careening car dead center. She mowed the guard down and a
+half-thousandth of a second later she plowed into the guardhouse. The
+structure erupted like a box of stove-matches hit with a heavy-caliber
+soft-nosed slug, like a house of cards and an air-jet. There was a roar
+and a small gout of flame and then out of the flying wreckage on the far
+side came Farrow and her stolen car. Out of the mess of brimstone and
+shingles she came, turning end for end in a crazy, metal-crushing twist
+and spin. She ground to a broken halt before the last of the debris
+landed, and then everything was silent.
+
+And then for the first and only time in my life I felt the penetrant,
+forceful impact of an incoming thought; a mental contact from another
+mind:
+
+#Steve!# it screamed in my mind, #Get out! Get going! It's your move
+now----#
+
+I put my foot on the faucet and poured on the oil.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+
+My car leaped forward and I headed along the outside road towards the
+nearby highway. Through the busted gate I roared, past the downed guard
+and the smashed guardhouse, past the wreck of Farrow's car.
+
+But Nurse Farrow was not finished with this gambit yet. As I drew even
+with her, she pried herself out of the messy tangle and came across the
+field in a dead run--and how that girl could run! As fast as I was
+going, she caught up; as fast as it all happened I had too little time
+to slow me down before Nurse Farrow closed the intervening distance from
+her wreck to my car and had hooked her arm in through one open window.
+
+My car lurched with the impact, but I fought the wheel straight again
+and Farrow snapped, "Keep going, Steve!"
+
+I kept going; Farrow snaked herself inside and flopped into the seat
+beside me. "Now," she said, patting the dashboard of our car, "It's up
+to the both of us now! Don't talk, Steve. Just drive like crazy!"
+
+"Where--?"
+
+She laughed a weak little chuckle. "Anywhere--so long as it's a long,
+long way from here."
+
+I nodded and settled down to some fancy mile-getting. Farrow relaxed in
+the seat, opened the glove compartment and took out a first aid kit. It
+was only then I noticed that she was banged up quite a bit for a
+Mekstrom. I'd not been too surprised when she emerged from the wreck;
+I'd become used to the idea of the indestructibility of the Mekstrom. I
+was a bit surprised at her being banged up; I'd become so used to their
+damage-proof hide that the idea of minor cuts, scars, mars, and
+abrasions hadn't occurred to me. Yes, that wreck would have mangled a
+normal man into an unrecognizable mess of hamburger. Yet I'd expected a
+Mekstrom to come through it unscathed.
+
+On the other hand, the damage to Farrow's body was really minor. She
+bled from a long gash on her thigh, from a wound on her right arm, and
+from a myriad of little cuts on her face, neck, and shoulders.
+
+So as I drove crazy-fast away from the Medical Center Nurse Farrow
+relaxed in the seat and applied adhesive tape, compresses, and closed
+the gashes with a batch of little skin clips in lieu of sutures. Then
+she lit two cigarettes and handed one of them to me. "Okay now, Steve,"
+she said easily. "Let's drive a little less crazily."
+
+I pulled the car down to a flat hundred and felt the strain go out of
+me.
+
+"As I remember, there's one of the Highways not far from here--"
+
+She shook her head. "No, Steve. We don't want the Highways in Hiding,
+either."
+
+At a mere hundred per I could let my esper do the road-sighting, so I
+looked over at her. She was half-smiling, but beneath the little smile
+was a firm look of self-confidence. "No," she said quietly, "We don't
+want the Highways. If we go there, Phelps and his outfit will turn
+heaven and earth to break it up, now that you've become so important.
+You forget that the Medical Center is still being run to look legal and
+aboveboard; while the Highways are still in Hiding. Phelps could make
+quite a bitter case out of their reluctance to come out into the open."
+
+"Well, where do we go?" I asked.
+
+"West," she said simply. "West, into New Mexico. To my home."
+
+This sort of startled me. Somehow I'd not connected Farrow with any
+permanent home; as a nurse and later as one of the Medical Center, I'd
+come to think of her as having no permanent home of her own. Yet like
+the rest of us, Nurse Farrow had been brought up in a home with a mother
+and a father and probably some sisters and brothers. Mine were dead and
+the original home disbanded, but there was no reason why I should think
+of everybody else in the same terms. After all, Catherine had had a
+mother and a father who'd come to see me after her disappearance.
+
+So we went West, across Southern Illinois and over the big bridge at St.
+Louis into Missouri and across Missouri and West, West, West. We parked
+nights in small motels and took turns sleeping with one of us always
+awake and alert with esper and telepath senses geared high for the first
+sight of any threat. We gave the Highways we came upon a wide berth; at
+no time did we come close to any of their way stations. It made our path
+crooked and much longer than it might have been if we'd strung a line
+and gone. But eventually we ended up in a small town in New Mexico and
+at a small ranch house on the edge of the town.
+
+It is nice to have parents; I missed my own deeply when I was reminded
+of the sweet wonder of having people just plain glad to see their
+children again, no matter what they'd done under any circumstances. Even
+bringing a semi-invalid into their homes for an extended course of
+treatment.
+
+John Farrow was a tall man with gray at the temples and a pair of sharp
+blue eyes that missed nothing. He was a fair perceptive who might have
+been quite proficient if he had taken the full psi course at some
+university. Mrs. Farrow was the kind of elderly woman that any man would
+like to have for a mother. She was sweet and gentle but there was
+neither foolish softness or fatuous nonsense about her. She was a
+telepath and she knew her way around and let people know that she knew
+what the score was. Farrow had a brother, James, who was not at home; he
+lived in town with his wife but came out to the old homestead about once
+every week on some errand or other.
+
+They took me in as though I'd come home with their daughter for
+sentimental reasons; Gloria sat with us in their living room and went
+through the whole story, interrupted now and then by a remark aimed at
+me. They inspected my hand and agreed that something must be done. They
+were extremely interested in the Mekstrom problem and were amazed at
+their daughter's feats of strength and endurance.
+
+My hand, by this time, was beginning to throb again. The infection was
+heading on a fine start down the pinky and middle fingers; the ring
+finger was approaching the second joint to that point where the advance
+stopped long enough for the infection to become complete before it
+crossed the joint. The first waves of that particular pain were coming
+at intervals and I knew that within a few hours the pain would become
+waves of agony so deep that I would not be able to stand it.
+
+Ultimately, Farrow got her brother James to come out from town with his
+tools, and between us all we rigged up a small manipulator for my hand.
+Farrow performed the medical operations from the kit in the back of her
+car we'd stolen from the Medical Center.
+
+Then after they'd put my hand through the next phase, Nurse Farrow
+looked me over and gave the opinion that it was now approaching the time
+for me to get the rest of the full treatment.
+
+One evening I went to bed, to be in bed for four solid months.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I'd like to be able to give a blow by blow description of those four
+solid months. Unfortunately, I was under dope so much of the time that I
+know little about it. It was not pleasant. My arm laid like a log from
+the Petrified Forest, strapped into the machine that moved the joints
+with regular motion, and with each motion starting a dart of fire and
+mangling pain up to the shoulder. Needles entered the veins at the elbow
+and the armpit, and from bottles suspended almost to the ceiling to
+provide a pressurehead, plasma and blood-sustenance was trickled in to
+keep the arm alive.
+
+Dimly I recall having the other arm strapped down and the waves of pain
+that blasted at me from both sides. The only way I kept from going out
+of my mind with the pain was living from hypo to hypo and waiting for
+the blessed blackness that wiped out the agony; only to come out of it
+hours later with my infection advanced to another point of pain. When
+the infection reached my right shoulder, it stopped for a long time; the
+infection rose up my left arm and also stopped at the shoulder. I came
+out of the dope to find James and his father fitting one of the
+manipulators to my right leg and through that I could feel the darting
+pains in my calf and thigh.
+
+At those few times when my mind was clear enough to let me use my
+perception, I dug the room and found that I was lying in a veritable
+forest of bottles and rubber tubes and a swathe of bandages.
+
+Utterly helpless, I vaguely knew that I was being cared for in every
+way. The periods of clarity were fewer, now, and shorter when they came.
+I awoke once to find my throat paralyzed, and again to find that my jaw,
+tongue, and lower face was a solid pincushion of darting needles of
+fire. Later, my ears reported not a sound, and even later still I awoke
+to find myself strapped into a portable resuscitator that moved my chest
+up and down with an inexorable force.
+
+That's about all I know of it. When the smoke cleared away completely
+and the veil across my eyes was gone, it was Spring outside and I was a
+Mekstrom.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I sat up in bed.
+
+It was morning, the sun was streaming in the window brightly and the
+fresh morning air of Spring stirred the curtains gently. It was quite
+warm and the smell that came in from the outside was alive with newborn
+greenery. It felt good just to be alive.
+
+The hanging bottles and festoons of rubber hose were gone. The crude
+manipulators had been stowed somewhere and the bottles of medicine and
+stuff were missing from the bureau. There wasn't even a thermometer in a
+glass anywhere within the range of my vision, and frankly I was so glad
+to be alive again that I did not see any point to digging through the
+joint with my perception to find the location of the medical junk.
+Instead, I just wanted to get up and run.
+
+I did take a swing at the clothes closet and found my stuff. Then I took
+a mild pass at the house, located the bathroom and also assured myself
+that no one was likely to interrupt me.
+
+I was going to shave and shower and dress and go downstairs. I was just
+shrugging myself up and out of bed when Nurse Farrow came bustling up
+the stairs and into the room with no preamble.
+
+"Hi!" I greeted her. "I was going to--"
+
+"Surprise us," she said quickly. "I know. So I came up to see that you
+don't get into trouble."
+
+"Trouble?" I asked, pausing on the edge of the bed.
+
+"You're a Mekstrom, Steve," she told me unnecessarily. Then she caught
+my thought and went on: "It's necessary to remind you. You have to learn
+how to control your strength, Steve."
+
+I flexed my arms. They didn't feel any different. I pinched my muscle
+with my other hand and it pinched just as it always had. I took a deep
+breath and the air went in pleasantly and come out again.
+
+"I don't feel any different," I told her.
+
+She smiled and handed me a common wooden lead pencil. "Write your name,"
+she directed.
+
+"Think I'll have to learn all over?" I grinned. I took the pencil, put
+my fist down on the top of the bureau above a pad of paper and chuckled
+at Farrow. "Now, let's see, my first initial is the letter 'S' made by
+starting at the top and coming around in a sweeping, graceful curve like
+this--"
+
+It didn't come around in any curve. As the lead point hit the paper it
+bore down in, flicked off the tip, and then crunched down, breaking off
+the point and splintering the thin, whittled wood for about an eighth of
+an inch. The fact that I could not control it bothered me inside and I
+instinctively clutched at the shaft of the pencil. It cracked in three
+places in my hand; the top end with the eraser fell down over my wrist
+to the bureau top and rolled in a rapid rattle to the edge where it fell
+to the floor.
+
+"See?" asked Farrow softly.
+
+"But--?" I blundered uncertainly.
+
+"Steve, your muscles and your nervous system have been stepped up
+proportionately. You've got to re-learn the coordination between the
+muscle-stimulus and the feedback information from the work you are
+doing."
+
+I began to see what she meant. I remembered long years ago at school,
+when we'd been studying some of the new alloys and there had been a
+sample of a magnesium-lithium-something alloy that was machined into a
+smooth cylinder about four inches in diameter and a foot long. It looked
+like hard steel. People who picked it up for the first time invariably
+braced their muscles and set both hands on it. But it was so light that
+their initial effort almost tossed the bar through the ceiling, and even
+long after we all knew, it was hard not to attack the bar without using
+the experience of our mind and sense that told us that any bar of metal
+_that_ big had to be _that_ heavy.
+
+I went to a chair. Farrow said, "Be careful," and I was. But it was no
+trick at all to take the chair by one leg at the bottom and lift it chin
+high.
+
+"Now, go take your shower," she told me. "But Steve, please be careful
+of the plumbing. You can twist off the faucet handles, you know."
+
+I nodded and turned to her, holding out a hand. "Farrow, you're a
+brick!"
+
+She took my hand. It was not steel hard. It was warm and firm and
+pleasant. It was--holding hands with a woman.
+
+Farrow stepped back. "One thing you'll have to remember," she said
+cheerfully, "is only to mix with your own kind from now on. Now go get
+that shower and shave. I'll be getting breakfast."
+
+Showering was not hard and I remembered not to twist off the water-tap
+handles. Shaving was easy although I had to change razor blades three
+times in the process. I broke all the teeth out of the comb because it
+was never intended to be pulled through a thicket of piano wire.
+
+Getting dressed was something else. I caught my heel in one trouser leg
+and shredded the cloth. I broke the buckle on my belt. My shoelaces went
+like parting a length of wet spaghetti. The button on the top of my
+shirt pinched off and when I gave that final jerk to my necktie it
+pulled the knot down into something about the size of a pea.
+
+Breakfast was very pleasant, although I bent the fork tines spearing a
+rasher of bacon and removed the handle of my coffee cup without half
+trying. After breakfast I discovered that I could not remove a cigarette
+from the package without pinching the end down flat, and after I
+succeeded in getting one into my mouth by treating both smoke and match
+as if they were made of tissue paper, my first drag on the smoke lit a
+howling furnace-fire on the end that consumed half of the cigarette in
+the first puff.
+
+"You're going to take some school before you are fit to walk among
+normal people, Steve," said Gloria with amused interest.
+
+"You're informing me?" I asked with some dismay, eyeing the wreckage
+left in my wake. Compared to the New Steve Cornell, the famous bull in
+the china shop was Gentle Ferdinand. I picked up the cigarette package
+again; it squoze down even though I tried to treat it gentle; I felt
+like Lenny, pinching the head off of the mouse. I also felt about as
+much of a bumbling idiot as Lenny, too.
+
+My re-education went on before, through, and after breakfast. I
+manhandled old books from the attic. I shredded newspapers. I ruined
+some more lead pencils and finally broke the pencil sharpener to boot. I
+put an elbow through the middle panel of the kitchen door without even
+feeling it and then managed to twist off the door knob. Generally
+operating like a one-man army of vandals, I laid waste to the Farrow
+home.
+
+Having thus ruined a nice house, Gloria decided to try my strength on
+her car. I was much too fast and too hard on the brakes, which of course
+was not too bad because my foot was also too insensitive on the
+go-pedal. We took off like a rocket being launched and then I tromped on
+the brakes (Bending the pedal) which brought us down sharp like hitting
+a haystack. This allowed our heads to catch up with the rest of us; I'm
+sure that if we'd been normal-bodied human beings we'd have had our
+spines snapped. Eventually I learned that everything had to be handled
+as if it were tissue paper, and gradually re-adjusted my reflexes to
+take proper cognizance of the feedback data according to my new body.
+
+We returned home after a hectic twenty miles of roadwork and I broke the
+glass as I slammed the car door.
+
+"It's going to take time," I admitted with some reluctance.
+
+"It always does," smiled Farrow as cheerfully as if I hadn't ruined
+their possessions.
+
+"I don't know how I'm going to face your folks."
+
+Farrow's smile became cryptic. "Maybe they won't notice."
+
+"Now look, Farrow----"
+
+"Steve, don't forget for the moment that you're the only known Mekstrom
+Carrier."
+
+"In other words your parents are due for the treatment next?"
+
+"Oh, I was most thorough. Both of them are in the final stages right
+now. I'm sure that anything you did to the joint will only be added to
+by the time they get to the walking stage. And also anything you did
+they'll feel well repaid."
+
+"I didn't do anything for them."
+
+"You provided them with Mekstrom bodies," she said simply.
+
+"They took to it willingly?"
+
+"Yes. As soon as they were convinced by watching me and my strength.
+They knew what it would be like, but they were all for it."
+
+"You've been a very busy girl," I told her.
+
+She just nodded. Then she looked up at me with troubled eyes and asked,
+"What are you going to do now, Steve?"
+
+"I'm going to haul the whole shebang down like Samson in the Temple."
+
+"A lot of innocent people are going to get hurt if you do that."
+
+"I can't very well find a cave in Antarctica and hide," I replied
+glumly.
+
+"Think a bit, Steve. Could either side afford to let you walk into New
+Washington with the living proof of your Mekstrom Body?"
+
+#Didn't stop 'em before,# I thought angrily. #And it seems to me that
+both sides were sort of urging me to go and do something that would
+uncover the other side.#
+
+"Not deep enough," said Farrow. "That was only during the early phases.
+Go back to the day when you didn't know what was going on."
+
+I grunted sourly, "Look, Farrow, tell me. Why must I fumble my way
+through this as I've fumbled through everything else?"
+
+"Because only by coming to the conclusion in your own way will you be
+convinced that someone isn't lying to you. Now, think it over, Steve."
+
+It made sense. Even if I came to the wrong conclusion, I'd believe it
+more than if someone had told me. Farrow nodded, following my thoughts.
+Then I plunged in:
+
+#First we have a man who is found to be a carrier of Mekstrom's Disease.
+He doesn't know anything about the disease. Right?# (Farrow nodded
+slowly.) #So now the Medical Center puts an anchor onto their carrier by
+sicking an attractive dame on his trail. Um--# At this point I went into
+a bit of a mental whirly-around trying to find an answer to one of the
+puzzlers. Farrow just looked at me with a non-leading expression,
+waiting. I came out of the merry-go-round after six times around the
+circuit and went on:
+
+#I don't know all the factors. Obviously, Catherine had to lead me fast
+because we had to marry before she contracted the disease from me. But
+there's a discrepancy, Farrow. The little blonde receptionist caught it
+in twenty-four hours--?#
+
+"Steve," said Farrow, "this is one I'll have to explain, since you're
+not a medical person. The period of incubation depends upon the type of
+contact. You actually bit the receptionist. That put blood contact into
+it. You didn't draw any blood from Catherine."
+
+"We were pretty close," I said with a slight reddening of the ears.
+
+"From a medical standpoint, you were not much closer to Catherine than
+you have been to me, or Dr. Thorndyke. You were closer to Thorndyke and
+me, say, than you've been to many of the incidental parties along the
+path of our travels."
+
+"Well, let that angle go for the moment. Anyway, Catherine and I had to
+marry before the initial traces were evident. Then I'd be in the
+position of a man whose wife had contracted Mekstrom's Disease on our
+honeymoon, whereupon the Medical Center would step in and cure her, and
+I'd be in the position of being forever grateful and willing to do
+anything that the Medical Center wanted me to do. And as a poor
+non-telepath, I'd probably never learn the truth. Right?"
+
+"So far," she said, still in a noncommittal tone.
+
+"So now we crack up along the Highway near the Harrison place. The
+Highways take her in because they take any victim in no matter what. I
+also presume from what's gone on that Catherine is a high enough
+telepath to conceal her thinking and so to become an undercover agent in
+the midst of the Highways organization. And at this point the long long
+trail takes a fork, doesn't it? The Medical Center gang did not know
+about the Highways in Hiding until Catherine and I barrelled into it end
+over end."
+
+Farrow's face softened, and although she said nothing I knew I was on
+the right track.
+
+#So at this point,# I went on silently, #Medical Center found themselves
+in a mild quandary. They could hardly put another woman on my trail
+because I was already emotionally involved with the missing
+Catherine--and so they decided to use me in another way. I was shown
+enough to keep me busy, I was more or less urged to go track down the
+Highways in Hiding for the Medical Center. After all, as soon as I'd
+made the initial discovery, Phelps and his outfit shouldn't have needed
+any more help.#
+
+"A bit more thinking, Steve. You've come up with that answer before."
+
+#Sure. Phelps wanted me to take my tale to the Government. About this
+secret Highway outfit. But if neither side can afford to have the secret
+come out, how come--?# I pondered this for a long time and admitted that
+it made no sense to me. Finally Farrow shook her head and said,
+
+"Steve, I've got to prompt you now and then. But remember that I'm
+trying to make you think it out yourself. Now consider: You are running
+an organization that must be kept secret. Then someone learns the secret
+and starts heading for the Authorities. What is your next move?"
+
+"Okay," I replied. "So I'm stupid. Naturally, I pull in my horns, hide
+my signs, and make like nothing was going on."
+
+"So stopping the advance of your organization, which is all that Phelps
+really can expect."
+
+I thought some more. #And the fact that I was carrying a story that
+would get me popped into the nearest hatch for the incipient paranoid
+made it all right?#
+
+She nodded.
+
+"And now?" she asked me.
+
+"And now I'm living proof of my story. Is that right?"
+
+"Right. And Steve, do not forget for one moment that the only reason
+that you're still alive is because you are valuable to both sides alive.
+Dead, you're only good for a small quantity of Mekstrom Inoculation."
+
+"Don't follow," I grunted. "As you say, I'm no medical person."
+
+"Alive, your hair grows and must be cut. You shave and trim off beard.
+Your fingernails are pared. Now and then you lose a small bit of hide or
+a few milliliters of blood. These are things that, when injected under
+the skin of a normal human, makes them Mekstrom. Dead, your ground up
+body would not provide much substance."
+
+"Pleasant prospect," I growled. "So what do I do to avert this future?"
+
+"Steve, I don't know. I've done what I can for you. I've effected the
+cure and I've done it in safety; you're still Steve Cornell."
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+
+"Look," I blurted with a sudden rush of brain to the head, "If I'm so
+all-fired important to both sides, how come you managed to sequester me
+for four months?"
+
+"We do have the laws of privacy," said Farrow simply. "Which neither
+side can afford to flout overtly. Furthermore, since neither side really
+knew where you were, they've been busily prowling one another's camps
+and locking up the prowlers from one another's camps, and playing spy
+and counterspy and counter-counterspy, and generally piling it up
+pyramid-wise," she finished with a chuckle. "You got away with following
+that letter to Catherine because uppermost in your mind was the brain of
+a lover hunting down his missing sweetheart. No one could go looking for
+Steve Cornell, Mekstrom Carrier, for reasons not intrinsically private."
+
+"For four months?" I asked, still incredulous.
+
+"Well, one of the angles is that both sides knew you were immobilized
+somewhere, going through this cure. Having you a full Mekstrom is
+something that both sides want. So they've been willing to have you
+cured."
+
+"So long as someone does the work, huh?"
+
+"Right," she said seriously.
+
+"Well, then," I said with a grim smile, "the obvious thing for me to do
+is to slink quietly into New Washington and to seek out some high
+official in secrecy. I'll put my story and facts into his hands, make
+him a Mekstrom, have him cured, and then we'll set up an agency to
+provide the general public with--"
+
+"Steve, you're an engineer. I presume you've studied mathematics. So
+let's assume that you can--er--bite one person every ten seconds."
+
+"That's six persons per minute; three-sixty per hour; and, ah,
+eighty-six-forty per day. With one hundred and sixty million Americans
+at the last census--um. Sixty years without sleep. I see what you mean."
+
+"Not only that, Steve, but it would create a panic, if not a global war.
+Make an announcement like that, and certain of our not-too-friendly
+neighbors would demand their shares or else. So now add up your time to
+take care of about three billion human souls on this Earth, Steve."
+
+"All right. So I'll forget that cockeyed notion. But still, the
+Government should know--"
+
+"If we could be absolutely certain that every elected official is a
+sensible, honest man, we could," said Farrow. "The trouble is that we've
+got enough demagogues, publicity hounds, and rabble-rousers to make the
+secret impossible to keep."
+
+I couldn't argue against that. Farrow was right. Not only that, but
+Government found it hard enough to function in this world of Rhine
+Institute with honest secrets.
+
+"Okay, then," I said. "The only thing to do is to go back to Homestead,
+Texas, throw my aid to the Highways in Hiding, and see what we can do to
+provide the Earth with some more sensible method of inoculation. I
+obviously cannot go around biting people for the rest of my life."
+
+"I guess that's it, Steve."
+
+I looked at her. "I'll have to borrow your car."
+
+"It's yours."
+
+"You'll be all right?"
+
+She nodded. "Eventually I'll be a way station on the Highways, I
+suppose. Can you make it alone, Steve? Or would you rather wait until my
+parents are cured? You could still use a telepath, you know."
+
+"Think it's safe for me to wait?"
+
+"It's been four months. Another week or two--?"
+
+"All right. And in the meantime I'll practice getting along with this
+new body of mine."
+
+We left it there. I roamed the house with Farrow, helping her with her
+parents. I gradually learned how to control the power of my new muscles;
+learned how to walk among normal people without causing their attention;
+and one day succeeded in shaking hands with a storekeeper without giving
+away my secret.
+
+Eventually Nurse Farrow's parents came out of their treatment and we
+spent another couple of days with them.
+
+We left them too soon, I'm sure, but they seemed willing that we take
+off. They'd set up a telephone system for getting supplies so that
+they'd not have to go into town until they learned how to handle their
+bodies properly, and Farrow admitted that there was little more that we
+could do.
+
+So we took off because we all knew that time was running out. Even
+though both sides had left us alone while I was immobilized, both sides
+must have a time-table good enough to predict my eventual cure. In fact,
+as I think about it now, both sides must have been waiting along the
+outer edges of some theoretical area waiting for me to emerge, since
+they couldn't come plowing in without giving away their purpose.
+
+So we left in Farrow's car and once more hit the big broad road.
+
+We drove towards Texas until we came upon a Highway, and then turned
+along it looking for a way station. I wanted to get in touch with the
+Highways. I wanted close communication with the Harrisons and the rest
+of them, no matter what. Eventually we came upon a Sign with a missing
+spoke and turned in.
+
+The side road wound in and out, leading us back from the Highway towards
+the conventional dead area. The house was a white structure among a
+light thicket of trees, and as we came close to it, we met a man busily
+tilling the soil with a tractor plow.
+
+Farrow stopped her car. I leaned out and started to call, but something
+stopped me.
+
+"He is no Mekstrom, Steve," said Farrow in a whisper.
+
+"But this is a way station, according to the road sign."
+
+"I know. But it isn't, according to him. He doesn't know any more about
+Mekstrom's Disease than you did before you met Catherine."
+
+"Then what the devil is wrong?"
+
+"I don't know. He's perceptive, but not too well trained. Name's William
+Carroll. Let me do the talking, I'll drop leading remarks for you to
+pick up."
+
+The man came over amiably. "Looking for someone?" he asked cheerfully.
+
+"Why, yes," said Gloria. "We're sort of mildly acquainted with
+the--Mannheims who used to live here. Sort of friends of friends of
+theirs, just dropped by to say hello, sort of," she went on, covering up
+the fact that she'd picked the name of the former occupant out of his
+mind.
+
+"The Mannheims moved about two months ago," he said. "Sold the place to
+us--we got a bargain. Don't really know, of course, but the story is
+that one of them had to move for his health."
+
+"Too bad. Know where they went?"
+
+"No," said Carroll regretfully. "They seem to have a lot of friends.
+Always stopping by, but I can't help 'em any."
+
+#So they moved so fast that they couldn't even change their Highway
+Sign?# I thought worriedly.
+
+Farrow nodded at me almost imperceptibly. Then she said to Carroll,
+"Well, we won't keep you. Too bad the Mannheims moved, without leaving
+an address."
+
+"Yeah," he said with obvious semi-interest. He eyed his half-plowed
+field and Farrow started her car.
+
+We started off and he turned to go back to his work. "Anything?" I
+asked.
+
+"No," she said, but it was a very puzzled voice. "Nothing that I can put
+a finger on."
+
+"But what?"
+
+"I don't know much about real estate deals," she said. "I suppose that
+one family could move out and another family move in just in this short
+a time."
+
+"Usually they don't let farmlands lie fallow," I pointed out. "If
+there's anything off color here, it's the fact that they changed their
+residence without changing the Highway sign."
+
+"Unless," I suggested brightly, "this is the coincidence. Maybe this
+sign is really one that got busted."
+
+Farrow turned her car into the main highway and we went along it. I
+could have been right about the spoke actually being broken instead of
+removed for its directing purpose. I hoped so. In fact I hoped so hard
+that I was almost willing to forget the other bits of evidence. But then
+I had to face the truth because we passed another Highway Sign and, of
+course, its directional information pointed to that farm. The signs on
+our side of the highway were upside down; indicating that we were
+leaving the way station. The ones that were posted on the left hand side
+were rightside up, indicating that the drive was approaching a way
+station. That cinched it.
+
+#Well,# as I told both Farrow and me, #one error doesn't create a trend.
+Let's take another look!#
+
+One thing and another, we would either hit another way station before we
+got to Homestead, or we wouldn't. Either one could put us wise. So we
+took off again with determination and finally left that side of
+erroneous Highway Signs when we turned onto Route 66. We weren't on
+Route 66 very long because the famous U.S. Highway sort of trends to the
+Northeast and Homestead was in a Southern portion of Texas. We left
+Route 66 at Amarillo and picked up U.S. 87, which leads due South.
+
+Not many miles out of Amarillo we came up another set of Highway Signs
+that pointed us on to the South. I tried to remember whether this
+section led to Homestead by a long route, but I hadn't paid too much
+attention to the maps when I'd had the chance and therefore the facts
+eluded me.
+
+We'd find out, Farrow and I agreed, and then before we could think much
+more about it, we came upon a way station sign that pointed in to
+another farmhouse.
+
+"Easy," I said.
+
+"You bet," she replied, pointing to the rural-type mailbox alongside the
+road.
+
+I nodded. The box was not new but the lettering on the side was. "Still
+wet," I said with a grunt.
+
+Farrow slowed her car as we approached the house and I leaned out and
+gave a cheerful hail. A woman came out of the front door and waved at
+us.
+
+"I'm trying to locate a family named Harrison," I called. "Lived around
+here somewhere."
+
+The woman looked thoughtful. She was maybe thirty-five or so, clean but
+not company-dressed. There was a smudge of flour on her cheek and a
+smile on her face and she looked wholesome and honest.
+
+"Why, I don't really know," she said. "That name sounds familiar, but it
+is not an uncommon name."
+
+"I know," I said uselessly. Farrow nudged me on the ankle with her toe
+and then made a swift sign for "P" in the hand-sign code.
+
+"Why don't you come on in?" invited the woman. "We've got an area
+telephone directory here. Maybe--?"
+
+Farrow nudged me once more and made the sign of "M" with her swift
+fingers. We had hit it this time; here was a woman perceptive and a
+Mekstrom residing in a way station. I took a mild dig at her hands and
+there was no doubt of her.
+
+A man's head appeared in the doorway above the woman; he had a hard face
+and he was tall and broad shouldered but there was a smile on his face
+that spread around the pipe he was biting on. He called, "Come on in and
+take a look."
+
+Farrow made the sign of "T" and "M" and that told me that he was a
+telepath. She hadn't needed the "M" sign because I'd taken a fast
+glimpse of his hide as soon as he appeared. Parrying for time and
+something evidential, I merely said, "No, we'd hate to intrude. We were
+just asking."
+
+The man said, "Oh, shucks, Mister. Come on in and have a cup of coffee,
+anyway." His invitation was swift enough to set me on edge.
+
+I turned my perception away from him and took a fast cast at the
+surrounding territory. There was a mildly dead area along the lead-in
+road to the left; it curved around in a large arc and the other horn of
+this horseshoe shape came up behind the house and stopped abruptly just
+inside of their front door. The density of this area varied, the end in
+which the house was built was so total that I couldn't penetrate, while
+the other end that curved around to end by the road tapered off in
+deadness until it was hard to define the boundary.
+
+If someone were pulling a flanking movement around through that
+horseshoe to cut off our retreat, it would become evident very soon.
+
+A swift thought went through my mind: #Farrow, they're Mekstroms and
+he's a telepath and she's a perceptive, and they know we're friendly if
+they're Highways. If they're connected with Scholar Phelps and his--#
+
+The man repeated, "Come on in. We've some mail to go to Homestead that
+you can take if you will."
+
+Farrow made no sound. She just seesawed her car with three rapid
+back-and-forth jerks that sent showers of stones from her spinning
+wheels. We whined around in a curve that careened the car up on its
+outside wheels. Then we ironed out and showered the face of the man with
+stones from the wheels as we took off. The shower of dust and stones
+blinded him, and kept him from latching onto the tail of the car and
+climbing in. We left him behind, swearing and rubbing dirt from his
+eyes.
+
+We whipped past the other end of the horseshoe area just as a jeepster
+came roaring down out of the thickened part into the region where my
+perception could make out the important things (Like three burly gents
+wearing hunting rifles, for instance.) They jounced over the rough
+ground and onto the lead-in road just behind us; another few seconds of
+gab with our friends and they'd have been able to cut us off.
+
+"Pour it on, Farrow!"
+
+I knew I was a bit of a cowboy, but Farrow made me look like a
+tenderfoot. We rocketed down the winding road with our wheels riding up
+on either side like the course in a toboggan run and Farrow rode that
+car like a test pilot in a sudden thunderstorm.
+
+I was worried about the hunting rifles, but I need not have been
+concerned. We were going too fast to make good aim, and their jeepster
+was not a vehicle known for its smooth riding qualities. They lost one
+character over a rough bounce and he went tail over scalp into the grass
+along the way. He scared me by leaping to his feet, grabbing the rifle
+and throwing it up to aim. But before he could squeeze off a round we
+were out of the lead-in road and on the broad highway.
+
+Once on the main road again, Farrow put the car hard down by the nose
+and we outran them. The jeepster was a workhorse and could have either
+pulled over the house or climbed the wall and run along the roof, but it
+was not made for chase.
+
+"That," I said, "seems to be that."
+
+"Something is bad," agreed Farrow.
+
+"Well, I doubt that they'll be able to clean out a place as big as
+Homestead. So let's take our careful route to Homestead and find out
+precisely what the devil is cooking."
+
+"Know the route?"
+
+"No, but I know where it is on the map and we can figure it out from--"
+
+"Steve, stop. Take a very careful and delicate view over to the right."
+
+"Digging for what?"
+
+"Another car pacing us along a road on the other side of that field."
+
+I tried and failed. Then I leaned back in the seat and closed my eyes
+and tried again. On this second try I got a very hazy perception of a
+large moving mass that could only have been a car. In the car I received
+a stronger impression of weapons. It was the latter that cinched it.
+
+I hauled out my roadmap and turned it to Texas. I thumbed the sectional
+maps of Texas until I located the sub-district through which we were
+passing and then I identified this section of U.S. 87 precisely. There
+was another road parallel and a half mile to the right, a dirt road
+according to the map-legend. It intersected our road a few miles ahead.
+
+My next was a thorough covering of the road behind; as I expected
+another car was pacing us just beyond the range of my perception for
+anything but a rifle aimed at my hide.
+
+Pacing isn't quite the word, I use it in the sense of their keeping up
+with us. Fact is that all of us were going about as fast as we could go,
+with safety of tertiary importance. Anyway, they were pacing us and
+closing down from that parallel road on the right.
+
+I took a fast and very careful scanning of the landscape to our left but
+couldn't find anything. I spent some time at it then, but still came up
+with a blank.
+
+#Turn left at that feeder road a mile ahead,# I thought at Farrow and
+she nodded.
+
+There was one possibility that I did not like to face. We had definitely
+detected pursuit to our right and behind, but not to our left. This did
+not mean that the left-side was not covered. It was quite likely that
+the gang to the rear were in telepathic touch with a network of other
+telepaths, the end of which mental relay link was far beyond range, but
+as close in touch with our position and action as if we'd been in sight.
+The police make stake-out nets that way, but the idea is not exclusive.
+I recall hazing an eloping couple that way once.
+
+But there was nothing to do but to take the feeder road to the left,
+because the devil we could see was more dangerous than the devil we
+couldn't.
+
+Farrow whipped into the side road and we tore along with only a slight
+slowing of our headlong speed. I ranged ahead, worried, suspicious of
+everything, scanning very carefully and strictly on the watch for any
+evidence of attempted interception.
+
+I caught a touch of danger converging up from the South on a series of
+small roads. This I did not consider dangerous after a fast look at my
+roadmap because this series of roads did not meet our side road for a
+long time and only after a lot of turning and twisting. So long as we
+went Easterly, we were okay from that angle.
+
+The gang behind, of course, followed us, staying at the very edge of my
+range.
+
+"You'll have to fly, Farrow," I told her. "If that gang to our South
+stays there, we'll not be able to turn down Homestead way."
+
+"Steve, I'm holding this crate on the road by main force and awkwardness
+as it is."
+
+But she did step it up a bit, at that. I kept a cautious and suspicious
+watchout, worrying in the back of my mind that someone among them might
+turn up with a jetcopter. So long as the sky remained clear--
+
+As time went on, I perceived that the converging car to the South was
+losing ground because of the convolutions of their road. Accordingly we
+turned to the South, making our way around their nose, sort of, and
+crossing their anticipated course to lead South. We hit U.S. 180 to the
+West of Breckenridge, Texas and then Farrow really poured on the coal.
+The idea was to hit Fort Worth and lose them in the city where fun,
+games, and telepath-perceptive hare-and-hounds would be viewed dimly by
+the peaceloving citizens. Then we'd slope to the South on U.S. 81, cut
+over to U.S. 75 somewhere to the South and take 75 like a cannonball
+until we turned off on the familiar road to Homestead.
+
+Fort Worth was a haven and a detriment to both sides. Neither of us
+could afford to run afoul of the law. So we both cut down to sensible
+speeds and snaked our way through the town, with Farrow and me probing
+the roads to the South in hope of finding a clear lane.
+
+There were three cars pacing us, cutting off our retreat Southward. They
+hazed us forward to the East like a dog nosing a bunch of sheep towards
+pappy's barn.
+
+Then we were out of Forth Worth and on U.S. 180. We whipped into Dallas
+and tried the same circumfusion as before and we were as neatly barred.
+So we went out of Dallas on U.S. 67 and as we left the city limits, we
+poured on the oil again, hoping to get around them so that we could turn
+back South towards Homestead.
+
+"Boxed," I said.
+
+"Looks like it," said Farrow unhappily.
+
+I looked at her. She was showing signs of weariness and I realized that
+she'd been riding this road for hours. "Let me take it," I said.
+
+"We need your perception," she objected. "You can't drive and keep a
+ranging perception, Steve."
+
+"A lot of good a ranging perception will do once you drop for lack of
+sleep and we tie us up in a ditch."
+
+"But--"
+
+"We're boxed," I told her. "We're being hazed. Let's face it, Farrow.
+They could have surrounded us and glommed us any time in the past six
+hours."
+
+"Why didn't they?" she asked.
+
+"You ask that because you're tired," I said with a grim smile. "Any
+bunch that has enough cars to throw a barrier along the streets of
+cities like Forth Worth and Dallas have enough manpower to catch us if
+they want to. So long as we drive where they want us to go, they won't
+cramp us down."
+
+"I hate to admit it."
+
+"So do I. But let's swap, Farrow. Then you can use your telepathy on
+them maybe and find out what their game is."
+
+She nodded, pulled the car down to a mere ramble and we swapped seats
+quickly. As I let the crate out again, I took one last, fast dig of the
+landscape and located the cars that were blocking out the passageways to
+the South, West, and North, leaving a nice inviting hole to the
+Easterly-North way. Then I had to haul in my perception and slap it
+along the road ahead, because I was going to ramble far and fast and see
+if I could speed out of the trailing horseshoe and cut out around the
+South horn with enough leeway to double back towards Homestead.
+
+"Catch any plans from them?" I asked Farrow.
+
+There was no answer. I looked at her. Gloria Farrow was semi-collapsed
+in her seat, her eyes closed gently and her breath coming in long,
+pleasant swells. I'd known she was tired, but I hadn't expected this
+absolute ungluing. A damned good kid, Farrow.
+
+At that last thought, Farrow moved slightly in her sleep and a wisp of a
+smile crossed her lips briefly. Then she turned a bit and snuggled down
+in the seat and really hit the slumber-path.
+
+A car came roaring at me with flashing headlamps and I realized that
+dusk was coming. I didn't need the lights, but oncoming drivers did, so
+I snapped them on. The beams made bright tunnels in the light and we
+went along and on and on and on, hour after hour. Now and then I caught
+a perceptive impression the crescent of cars that were corralling us
+along U.S. 67 and not letting us off the route.
+
+I hauled out my roadmap and eyed the pages as I drove by perception.
+U.S. 67 led to St. Louis and from there due North. I had a hunch that by
+the time we played hide and seek through St. Louis and got ourselves
+hazed out to their satisfaction, I'd be able to give a strong guess as
+to our ultimate destination.
+
+I settled down in my seat and just drove, still hoping to cut fast and
+far around them on my way to Homestead.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+
+Three times during the night I tried to flip around and cut my way
+through their cordon, and each time I faced interception. It was evident
+that we were being driven and so long as we went to their satisfaction
+they weren't going to clobber us.
+
+Nurse Farrow woke up along about dawn, stretched, and remarked that she
+could use a toothbrush and a tub of hot water and amusedly berated
+herself for not filling the back seat before we took off. Then she
+became serious again and asked for the details of the night, which I
+slipped her as fast as I could.
+
+We stopped long enough to swap seats, and I stretched out but I couldn't
+sleep.
+
+Finally I said, "Stop at the next dog wagon, Farrow. We're going to eat,
+comes anything."
+
+"Won't that be dangerous?"
+
+"Shucks," I grunted angrily. "They'll probably thank us. They're
+probably hungry too."
+
+"We'll find out."
+
+The smell of a roadside diner is usually a bit on the thick and greasy
+side, but I was so hungry that morning that it smelled like mother's
+kitchen. We went in, ordered coffee and orange juice, and then
+disappeared into the rest rooms long enough to clean up. That felt so
+good we ordered the works and watched the guy behind the fryplate handle
+the bacon, eggs, and home-fries with a deft efficient manner.
+
+We pitched in fast, hoping to beat the flies to our breakfast. We were
+so intent that we paid no attention to the car that came into the lot
+until a man came in, ordered coffee and a roll, and then carried it over
+to our table.
+
+"Fine day for a ride, isn't it?"
+
+I eyed him; Farrow bristled and got very tense. I said, "I doubt that I
+know you, friend."
+
+"Quite likely. But I know you, Cornell."
+
+I took a fast dig; there was no sign of anything lethal except the usual
+collection of tire irons, screwdrivers, and other tools which, oddly
+enough, seldom come through as being dangerous because they're not
+weapons-by-design.
+
+"I'm not heeled, Cornell. I'm just here to save us all some trouble."
+
+#Telepath?#
+
+He nodded imperceptibly. Then he said, "We'll all save time, gasoline,
+and maybe getting into grief with the cops if you take Route 40 out of
+St. Louis."
+
+"Suppose I don't like U.S. 40?"
+
+"Get used to it," he said with a crooked smile. "Because you'll take
+U.S. 40 out of St. Louis whether you like it or not."
+
+I returned his crooked smile. I also dug his hide and he was a Mekstrom,
+of course. "Friend," I replied, "Nothing would convince me, after what
+you've said, that U.S. 40 is anything but a cowpath; slippery when wet;
+and impassible in the Early Spring, Late Summer, and the third Thursday
+after Michelmas."
+
+He stood up. "Cornell, I can see your point. You don't like U.S. 40. So
+I'll help you good people. If you don't want to drive along such a lousy
+slab of concrete, just say the word and we'll arrange for you to take it
+in style, luxury, and without a trace of pain or strain. I'll be seein'
+you. And a very pleasant trip to you, Miss Farrow."
+
+Then the character got up, went to the cashier and paid for our
+breakfast as well as his own. He took off in his car and I have never
+seen him since.
+
+Farrow looked at me, her face white and her whole attitude one of
+fright. "U.S. 40," she said in a shaky voice, "runs like a stretched
+string from St. Louis to Indianapolis."
+
+She didn't have to tell me any more. About sixty miles North of
+Indianapolis on Indiana State Highway 37 lies the thriving metropolis of
+Marion, Indiana, the most important facet of which (to Farrow and me) is
+an establishment called the Medical Research Center.
+
+Nothing was going to make me drive out of St. Louis along U.S. 40.
+Period; End of message; No answer required.
+
+Nothing, because I was very well aware of their need to collect me alive
+and kicking. If I could not roar out of St. Louis in the direction I
+selected, I was going to turn my car end for end and have at them. Not
+in any mild manner, but with deadly intent to do deadly damage. If I'd
+make a mild pass, they'd undoubtedly corral me by main force and carry
+me off kicking and screaming. But if I went at them to kill or get
+killed, they'd have to move aside just to prevent me from killing
+myself. I didn't think I'd get to the last final blow of that
+self-destruction. I'd win through.
+
+So we left the diner after a breakfast on our enemy's expense account
+and took off again.
+
+I was counting on St. Louis. The center of the old city is one big
+shapeless blob of a dead area; so nice and cold that St. Louis has
+reversed the usual city-type blight area growth. Ever since Rhine, the
+slum sections have been moving out and the new buildings have been
+moving in. So with the dead area and the brand-new, wide streets and
+fancy traffic control, St. Louis was the place to go in along one road,
+get lost in traffic, and come out, roaring along any road desirable. I
+could not believe that any outfit, hoping to work under cover, could
+collect enough manpower and cars to block every road, lane, highway and
+duckrunway that led out of a city as big as St. Louis.
+
+Again they hazed us by pacing along parallel roads and behind us with
+the open end of their crescent aimed along U.S. 67. We went like hell;
+without slowing a bit we sort of swooped up to St. Louis and took a fast
+dive into that big blob-shaped dead area. We wound up in traffic and
+tied Boy Scout knots in our course. I was concerned about overhead
+coverage from a 'copter even though I've been told that the St. Louis
+dead area extends upward in some places as high as thirteen thousand
+feet.
+
+The only thing missing was some device or doodad that would let us use
+our perception or telepathy in this deadness while they couldn't. As it
+was, we were as psi-blind as they were, so we had to go along the
+streets with our eyes carefully peeled for cars of questionable
+ownership. We saw some passenger cars with out-of-state licenses and
+gave them wide clearances. One of them hung on our tail until I
+committed a very neat coup by running through a stoplight and
+sandwiching my car between two whopping big fourteen-wheel moving vans.
+I'd have enjoyed the expression on the driver's face if I could have
+seen it. But then we were gone and he was probably cussing.
+
+I stayed between the vans as we wound ourselves along the road and
+turned into a side street.
+
+I stayed between them too long.
+
+Because the guy in front slammed on his air-brakes and the big van came
+to a stop with a howl of tires on concrete. The guy behind did not even
+slow down. He closed in on us like an avalanche. I took a fast look
+around and fought the wheel of my car to turn aside, but he whaled into
+my tail and we went sliding forward. I was riding my brakes but the mass
+of that moving van was so great that my tires just wore flats on the
+pavement-side.
+
+We were bearing down on that stopped van and it looked as though we were
+going to be driving a very tall car with a very short wheelbase in a
+very short time.
+
+Then the whole back panel of the front van came tumbling towards me from
+the top, pivoting on a hinge at the bottom, making a fine ramp. The van
+behind me nudged us up the ramp and we hurtled forward against a thick,
+resilient pad that stopped my car without any damage either to the car
+or to the inhabitants.
+
+Then the back panel closed up and the van took off.
+
+Two big birds on each side opened the doors of our car simultaneously
+and said "Out!"
+
+The tall guy on my side gave me a cocksure smile and the short guy said,
+"We're about to leave St. Louis on U.S. 40, Cornell. I hope you won't
+find this journey too rough."
+
+I started to take a swing, but the tall one caught my elbow and threw me
+off balance. The short one reached down and picked up a baseball bat.
+"Use this, Cornell," he told me. "Then no one will get hurt."
+
+I looked at the pair of them, and then gave up. There are odd characters
+in this world who actually enjoy physical combat and don't mind getting
+hurt if they can hurt the other guy more. These were the type. Taking
+that baseball bat and busting it over the head of either one would be
+the same sort of act as kids use when they square off in an alley and
+exchange light blows which they call a "cardy" just to make the fight
+legal. All it would get me was a sore jaw and a few cracked ribs.
+
+So after my determination to take after them with murderous intent,
+they'd pulled my teeth by scooping me up in this van and disarming me.
+
+I relaxed.
+
+The short one nodded, although he looked disappointed that I hadn't
+allowed him the fun of a shindy. "You'll find U.S. 40 less rough than
+you expected," he said. "After all, it's like life; only rough if you
+make it rough."
+
+"Go to hell and stay there," I snapped. That was about as weak a
+rejoinder as I've ever emitted, but it was all I could get out.
+
+The tall one said, "Take it easy, Cornell. You can't win 'em all."
+
+I looked across the nose of our trapped car to Farrow. She was leaning
+against the hood, facing her pair. They were just standing there at
+ease. One of them was offering a cigarette and the other held a lighter
+ready. "Relax," said the one with the smokes. The other one said, "Might
+as well, Miss Farrow. Fighting won't get nobody nowhere but where you're
+going anyway. Might as well go on your own feet."
+
+Scornfully, Farrow shrugged. "Why should I smoke my own?" she asked
+nobody in particular.
+
+Mentally I agreed: #Take 'em for all they're worth, Farrow!# And then I
+reached for one, too. Along the side of the van were benches. I sat
+down, stretched out on my back and let the smoke trickle up. I finished
+my cigarette and then found that the excitement of this chase, having
+died so abruptly, left me with only a desire to catch up on sleep.
+
+I dozed off thinking that it wasn't everybody who started off to go to
+Homestead, Texas, and ended up in Marion, Indiana.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Scholar Phelps did not have the green carpet out for our arrival, but he
+was present when our mobile prison cell opened deep inside of the
+Medical Center grounds. So was Thorndyke. Thorndyke and three nurses of
+Amazon build escorted Farrow off with the air of captors collecting a
+traitor.
+
+Phelps smiled superciliously at me and said, "Well, young sir, you've
+given us quite a chase."
+
+"Give me another chance and we'll have another chase," I told him
+grumpily.
+
+"Not if we can help it," he boomed cheerfully. "We've big plans for
+you."
+
+"Have I got a vote? It's 'Nay!' if I do."
+
+"You're too precipitous," he told me. "It is always an error, Mr.
+Cornell, to be opinionated. Have an open mind."
+
+"To what?"
+
+"To everything," he said with an expansive gesture. "The error of all
+thinking, these days, is that people do not think. They merely follow
+someone else's thinking."
+
+"And I'm to follow yours?"
+
+"I'd prefer that, of course. It would indicate that you were possessed
+of a mind of your own; that you weren't merely taking the lazy man's
+attitude and following in the footsteps of your father."
+
+"Skip it," I snapped. "Your way isn't--"
+
+"Now," he warned with a wave of a forefinger like a prohibitionist
+warning someone not to touch that quart, "One must never form an opinion
+on such short notice. Remember, all ideas are not to be rejected just
+because they do not happen to agree with your own preconceived notions."
+
+"Look, Phelps," I snapped, deliberately omitting his title which I knew
+would bite a little, "I don't like your personal politics and I deplore
+your methods. You can't go on playing this way--"
+
+"Young man, you err," he said quietly. He did not even look nettled that
+I'd addressed him in impolite (if not rough) terms. "May I point out
+that I am far ahead of your game? Thoroughly outnumbered, and in
+ignorance of the counter-movement against me until you so vigorously
+brought it to my attention; within a year I have fought the
+counter-movement to a standstill, caused the dispersement of their main
+forces, ruined their far-flung lines of communication, and have so
+consolidated my position that I have now made open capture of the main
+roving factor. The latter is you, young man. A very disturbing influence
+and so very necessary to the conduct of this private war. You prate of
+my attitude, Mr. Cornell. You claim that such an attitude must be
+defeated. Yet as you stand there mouthing platitudes, we are preparing
+to make a frontal assault upon their main base at Homestead. We've waged
+our war of attrition; a mere spearhead will break them and scatter them
+to the far winds."
+
+"Nice lecture," I grunted. "Who are your writers?"
+
+"Let's not attempt sarcasm," he said crisply. "It sits ill upon you, Mr.
+Cornell."
+
+"I'd like to sit on you," I snapped.
+
+"Your humor is less tolerable than your sarcasm."
+
+"Can it!" I snapped. "So you've collected me. I'll still--"
+
+"You'll do very little, Mr. Cornell," he told me. "Your determination to
+attack us tooth and nail was an excellent program, and with another type
+of person it might have worked. But I happen to know that your will to
+live is very great, young man, and that in the final blow, you'd not
+have the will to die great enough to carry your assault to its
+completion."
+
+"Know a lot, don't you."
+
+"Yes, indeed I do. So now if you're through trying to fence at words,
+we'll go to your quarters."
+
+"Lead on," I said in a hollow voice.
+
+With an air of stage-type politeness, he indicated a door. He showed me
+out and followed me. He steered me to a big limousine with a chauffeur
+and offered me cigarettes from a box on the arm rest as the driver
+started the turbine. The car purred with that muted sound of
+well-leashed power.
+
+"You could be of inestimable value to us," he said in a conversational
+tone. "I am talking this way to you because you can be of much more
+value as a willing ally than you would be if unwilling."
+
+"No doubt," I replied dryly.
+
+"I suggest you set aside your preconceived notions and employ a modicum
+of practical logic," suggested Scholar Phelps. "Observe your position
+from a slightly different reign of vantage. Be convinced that no matter
+what you do or say, we intend to make use of you to the best of our
+ability. You are not entertaining any doubts of that fact, I'm sure."
+
+I shrugged. Phelps was not asking me these things, the inquisitor was
+actually telling me. He went right on telling me:
+
+"Since you will be used no matter what, you might consider the
+advisability of being sensible, Mr. Cornell. In blunt words, we are
+prepared to meet cooperation with certain benefits which will not be
+proffered otherwise."
+
+"In blunter words you are offering to hire me."
+
+Scholar Phelps smiled in a superior manner. "Not that blunt, Mr.
+Cornell, not that crude. The term 'hire' implies the performance of
+certain tasks in return for stipulated remuneration. No, my intention is
+to give you a position in this organization the exact terms of which are
+not clearly definable. Look, young man, I've indicated that your willing
+cooperation is more valuable to us than otherwise. Join us and you will
+enjoy the freedom of our most valued and trusted members; you will take
+part in upper level planning; you will enjoy the income and advantages
+of top executive personnel." He stopped short and eyed me with a
+peculiar expression. "Mr. Cornell, you have the most disconcerting way.
+You've actually caused me to talk as if this organization were some sort
+of big business instead of a cultural unit."
+
+I eyed him with the first bit of humor I'd found in many days. "You seem
+to talk just as though a cultural unit were set above, beyond, and
+spiritually divorced from anything so sordid as money, position, and the
+human equivalent of the barnyard pecking order," I told him. "So now
+let's stop goofing off, and put it into simple terms. You want me to
+join you willingly, to do your job for you, to advance your program. In
+return for which I shall be permitted to ride in the solid gold
+cadillac, quaff rare champagne, and select my own office furniture.
+Isn't that about it?"
+
+Scholar Phelps smiled, using a benign expression that indicated that he
+was pleased with himself, but which had absolutely nothing to do with
+his attitude towards me or any of the rest of the human race.
+
+"Mr. Cornell, I am well aware of the time it may take for a man to
+effect a change in his attitude. In fact, I would be very suspicious if
+you were to make an abrupt reversal. However, I have outlined my
+position and you may have time to think it over. Consider, at the very
+least, the fact that while cooperation will bring you pleasure and
+non-cooperation will bring you pain, the ultimate result will be that we
+will make use of your ability in either case. Now--I will say no more
+for the present."
+
+The limousine had stopped in front of a four story brick building that
+was only slightly different in general architecture than others in the
+Medical Center. I could sense some slight difference, but when I took a
+dig at the interior I found to my amazement that this building had been
+built deliberately in a dead zone. The dead area stood up in the clarity
+like a little blob of black ink at the bottom of a crystal clear
+swimming pool, seen just before the ink began to diffuse.
+
+Scholar Phelps saw my look of puzzlement and said, suavely, "We've
+reversed the usual method of keeping unwilling guests. Here we know
+their frame of mind and attitude; therefore to build the place in a dead
+area keeps them from plotting among themselves. I trust that your
+residence herein will be only temporary, Mr. Cornell."
+
+I nodded glumly. I was facing those last and final words: _Or Else!_
+
+Phelps signed a register at a guard's station in the lobby. We took a
+very fast and efficient elevator to the third floor and Phelps escorted
+me along a hallway that was lined with doors, dormitory style. In the
+eye-level center of each door was a bull's eye that looked like one-way
+glass and undoubtedly was. I itched to take a look, but Phelps was not
+having any; he stopped my single step with a hand on my arm.
+
+"This way," he said smoothly.
+
+I went this way and was finally shown into one of the rooms. My nice
+clean cell away from home.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+
+As soon as Phelps was gone, I took a careful look at my new living
+quarters. The room itself was about fourteen by eighteen, but the end in
+which I was confined was only fourteen by ten, the other eight feet of
+end being barred off by a very efficient-looking set of heavy metal rods
+and equally strong cross-girdering. There was a sliding door that fit in
+place as nicely as the door to a bank vault; it was locked by heavy
+keeper-bars that slid up from the floor and down from the ceiling and
+they were actuated by hidden motors. In the barrier was a flat
+horizontal slot wide enough to take a tray and high enough to pass a
+teacup. The bottom of this slot was flush with a small table that
+extended through the barrier by a couple of feet on both sides so that a
+tray could be set down on the outside and slipped in.
+
+I tested the bars with my hands, but even my new set of muscles wouldn't
+flex them more than a few thousandths of an inch.
+
+The walls were steel. All I got as I tried them was a set of
+paint-clogged fingernails. The floor was also steel. The ceiling was a
+bit too high for me to tackle, but I assumed that it, too, was steel.
+The window was barred from the inside, undoubtedly so that any visitor
+from the outside could not catch on to the fact that this building was a
+private calaboose.
+
+The--er--furnishings of this cold storage bin were meager of minimum
+requirements. A washstand and toilet. A bunk made of metal girders
+welded to the floor. The bedding rested on wide resilient straps fixed
+to the cross-bars at top and bottom of the bed. A foam-rubber mattress,
+sheets, and one blanket finished off the bed.
+
+It was a cell designed by Mekstroms to contain Mekstroms and by
+wiseacres to contain other wiseacres. The non-metallic parts of the room
+were, of course, fireproof. Anything I could get hold of was totally
+useless as a weapon or lever or tool; anything that might have been
+useful to a prisoner was welded down.
+
+Having given up in the escape department, I sat on my bunk and lit a
+cigarette. I looked for tell-tales, and found a television lens set
+above the door of the room eight feet outside of my steel barrier.
+Beside the lens was a speaker grille and a smaller opening that looked
+like a microphone dust cover.
+
+With a grunt, I flipped my cigarette at the television lens. I hit just
+above the hole, missing it by about an inch. Immediately a
+tinny-sounding voice said,
+
+"That is not permitted, Mr. Cornell. You are expected to maintain some
+degree of personal cleanliness. Since you cannot pick up that cigarette
+butt, you have placed an unwelcome task upon our personnel. One more
+infraction of this nature and you will not be permitted the luxury of
+smoking."
+
+"Go to the devil!" I snapped.
+
+There was no reply. Not even a haughty chuckle. The silence was worse
+than any reply because it pointed out the absolute superiority of their
+position.
+
+Eventually I dozed off, there being nothing else to do. When I awoke
+they'd shoved a tray of food in on my table. I ate unenthusiastically. I
+dozed again, during which time someone removed the tray. When I woke up
+the second time it was night and time to go to bed, so I went. I woke up
+in the morning to see a burly guy enter with a tray of breakfast. I
+attempted to engage him in light conversation but he did not even let on
+that I was in the cell. Later he removed the tray as silently as he'd
+brought it, and I was left with another four hours of utter boredom
+until the same bird returned with a light lunch. Six hours after lunch
+came a slightly more substantial dinner, but no talk.
+
+By bedtime the second night I was getting stir-crazy.
+
+I hit the sack at about nine thirty, and tossed and turned, unable to
+drop off because I was not actually tired. I was also wondering when
+they'd come around with their brain-washing crew, or maybe someone who'd
+enter with an ultimatum.
+
+On the following morning, the tray-bearer was Dr. Thorndyke, who sat on
+the chair on the outside of my bars and looked at me silently. I tried
+giving him stare for stare, but eventually I gave up and said, "So now
+where do we go?"
+
+"Cornell, you're in a bad spot of your own making."
+
+"Could be," I admitted.
+
+"And yet, really, you're more of a victim of circumstances."
+
+"Forgetting all the sideplay, I'm a prisoner," I told him curtly. "Let's
+face a few facts, Thorndyke, and stop tossing this guff."
+
+"All right," he said shortly, "The facts are these: We would prefer that
+you help us willingly. We'd further prefer to have you as you are. That
+is, un-reoriented mentally."
+
+"You couldn't afford to trust me," I grunted.
+
+"Maybe we can. It's no secret that we've latched on to quite a number of
+your friends. Let's assume that they will all be well-treated if you
+agree to join us willingly."
+
+"I'm sure that the attitude of any of my friends is such that they'd
+prefer me to stand my ground rather than betray their notions of right
+and wrong." I told him.
+
+"That's a foolish premise," he replied. "You could no more prevail
+against us than you could single-handedly overthrow the Government.
+Having faced that fact, it becomes sound and sensible to accept the
+premise and then see what sort of niche you can carve out of the new
+order."
+
+"I don't like your new order," I grunted.
+
+"Many people will not," he admitted. "But then, people do not really
+know what's good for them."
+
+I almost laughed at him. "Look," I said, "I'd rather make my own
+ignorant mistakes than to have some Great Father supervise my life. And
+speaking of fathers, we've both got to admit that God Himself permits us
+the complete freedom of our wills."
+
+Thorndyke sneered at me. "If we're to quote the Scripture," he said
+sourly, "I'll point out that 'The Lord Thy God is a jealous God,
+visiting His wrath even upon seven generations of those who hate Him.'"
+
+"Granted," I replied calmly, "But whether we love Him or hate Him is
+entirely up to our own particular notion. Now--"
+
+"Cornell, stop talking like an idiot. Here, too, you can take your
+choice. I'm not ordering you. I'm just trying to point out that whether
+you go on suffering or enjoying life is entirely up to your own
+decision. And also your decision will help or hinder others."
+
+"You're entirely too Godlike," I told him.
+
+"Well," he said, "think it over."
+
+"Go to the devil!"
+
+"Now, that's a very weak response," he said loftily, "Doing nobody any
+good or harm. Just talk. So stop gabbing and think."
+
+Thorndyke left me with my thoughts. Sure, I had bargaining power, but it
+was no good. I'd be useful only until they discovered some method of
+inoculating normal flesh with Mekstrom's Disease, and once that was
+taken care of, Steve Cornell would be a burden upon their resources.
+
+So that was the morning of my third day of incarceration and nothing
+more took place all day. They didn't even give me anything to read, and
+I almost went nuts. You have no idea of how long fourteen hours can be
+until you've been sitting in a cell with absolutely nothing to do. I
+exercised by chinning myself on the bars and playing gymnastics. I
+wanted to run but there was not enough room. The physical thrill I got
+out of being able to chin myself with one hand wore off after a half
+hundred pull-ups because it was no great feat for a Mekstrom. I did
+push-ups and bridges and other stunts until I was bored again.
+
+And all the while, my thinking section was going around and around. The
+one main point that I kept coming back to was a very unpleasant future
+to face:
+
+It was certain that no matter what I did, nor how I argued, I was going
+to help them out. Either I would do it willingly or they'd grow tired of
+the lecture routine and take me in for a mental re-evaluation, after
+which (Being not-Steve Cornell any more) I'd join their ranks and do
+their bidding. About the only thing I could look at with self-confidence
+was my determination to hold out. If I was going to join them, it would
+be after I were no longer the man I am, but reoriented into whatever
+design they wanted. And that resolve was weakened by the normal human
+will to live. You can't make a horse drink water, but you can lead a
+human being to a well and he will drink it dry if you keep a shotgun
+pointed in his direction.
+
+And so it ended up with my always wondering if, when the cards were all
+dealt out face up, whether I would have the guts to keep on saying 'No'
+right up to the point where I walked into their department of
+brain-washing. In fact, I was rather afraid that in the last moment I'd
+weaken, just to stay being me.
+
+That uncertainty of mine was, of course, just the idea they wanted to
+nourish in my mind. They were doing it by leaving me alone with my
+mental merry-go-round.
+
+Again I hit the sack out of sheer boredom and I turned and tossed for
+what seemed like hours before I dropped off to sleep, wondering and
+dreaming about who was to be the next visitor with a bill of goods to
+sell.
+
+The next visitor came in about midnight, or thereabouts. I woke up with
+the realization that someone had come in through the outer door and was
+standing there in the semi-dark caused by a bright moon shining in
+through my barred window.
+
+"Steve," she said, in a near whisper.
+
+"Go away," I told her. "Haven't you done enough already?"
+
+"Oh, please, Steve. I've got to talk to you."
+
+I sat on the edge of my bunk and looked at her. She was fully dressed;
+her light printed silk was of the same general pattern and fit that she
+preferred. In fact, Catherine looked as I'd always seen her, and as I'd
+pictured her during the long hopeless weeks of our separation.
+
+"You've got something to add?" I asked her coldly.
+
+"I've got to make you understand, Steve," she pleaded.
+
+"Understand what?" I snapped. "I know already. You deliberately set out
+to marry, or else-how tie some emotional cable onto me. God knows that
+you succeeded. If it hadn't been for that accident, I'd have been nailed
+down tight."
+
+"That part is true," she whispered.
+
+"Naturally, you've got justification."
+
+"Well, I have."
+
+"So has any burglar."
+
+She shook her head at me. "Steve, you don't really understand. If only
+you could read my mind and know the truth--"
+
+She let this trail off in a helpless awkwardness. It was one of those
+statements that are meaningless because it can be said by either friend
+or foe and cannot be checked.
+
+I just looked at her and suddenly remembered something:
+
+This was the first time in my life that I was in a position to do some
+verbal fencing with a telepath on even terms. I could say 'Yes' and
+think 'No' with absolute impunity. In fact, I might even have had an
+edge, since as a poor non-telepath I did have some training in
+subterfuge, falsehood, and diplomatic maneuver that the telepath
+couldn't have. Catherine and I, at long last, were in the position of
+the so-called good old days when boys and girls couldn't really know the
+truth about one another's real thoughts.
+
+"So what's this truth?" I demanded.
+
+"Steve, answer me truly. Have you ever been put on an odious job, only
+to find that the job is really pleasant?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then hear me out. I--in fact, no woman--takes kindly to being directed
+to do what I did. I was told to meet you, to marry--" Her face looked
+flustered and it might have been a bit flushed for all I knew. I
+couldn't see color enough in the dim light to be sure. "--And then I met
+you, Steve, and I found out that you were really a very nice sort of
+guy."
+
+"Well, thanks."
+
+"Don't be bitter. Hear the truth. If Otto Mekstrom had not existed, if
+there were no such thing as Mekstrom's Disease, and I had met you freely
+and openly as men and women meet, I'd have come to feel the same, Steve.
+I must make you understand that my emotional attachment to you was not
+increased nor decreased by the fact that my physical actions were
+directed at you. If anything, my job was just rendered pleasantly
+easier."
+
+I grunted. "And so you were made happy."
+
+"Yes," she whispered. "And I was going to marry you and live honestly
+with you--"
+
+"Heck of a marriage with the wife in the Medical Center for Mekstrom's
+Disease and our first child--"
+
+"Steve, you poor fool, don't you understand? If our child came as
+predicted, the first thing I'd do would be to have the child inoculate
+the father? Then we'd be--"
+
+"Um," I grunted. "I hadn't thought of that." This was a flat lie. I'd
+considered it a-plenty since my jailing here. Present the Medical Center
+with a child, a Mekstrom, and a Carrier, and good old pappy would be no
+longer needed.
+
+"Well, after I found out all about you, Steve, that's what I had in
+mind. But now--"
+
+"Now what?" I urged her gently. I had a hunch that she was leading up to
+something, but ducking shy about it until she managed to find out how I
+thought. It would have been all zero if we'd been in a clear area, but
+as it was I led her gently on.
+
+"But now I've failed," she said with a slight wail.
+
+"What do they do with failures?" I asked harshly. "Siberia? Or a gunny
+sack weighted down with an anvil? Or do they drum you out of the corps?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+I eyed her closely. I was forced to admit that no matter how Catherine
+thought, she was a mighty attractive dish from the physical standpoint.
+And regardless of the trouble she'd put me through, I could not overlook
+the fact that I had been deep enough in love to plan elopement and
+marriage. I'd held her slender body close, and either her response had
+been honestly warm or Catherine was an actress of very rare physical
+ability. Scholar Phelps could hardly have picked a warmer temptress in
+the first place; putting her onto me now was a stroke of near-genius.
+
+I got up from the edge of my bunk and faced her through my bars. She
+came close, too, and we looked into each other's faces over a cross-rail
+of the heavy fence.
+
+I managed a wistful grin at her. "You're not really a failure yet, are
+you, kid?"
+
+"I don't quite know how to--to--" she replied.
+
+I looked around my little cell with a gruesome gesture. "This isn't my
+idea of a pleasant home. And yet it will be my home until someone
+decides that I'm too expensive to keep."
+
+"I know," she breathed.
+
+Taking the bit in my teeth, I said, "Catherine even though--well, heck.
+I'd like to help you."
+
+"You mean that?" she asked in almost an eager voice.
+
+"It's not impossible to forget that we were eloping when all this
+started."
+
+"It all seems so long ago," she said with a thick voice. "And I wish we
+were back there--no, Steve, I wish Mekstrom's Disease had never
+happened--I wish--"
+
+"Stop wishing and think," I told her half-humorously. "If there were no
+Mekstrom's Disease, the chances are that we'd never have met in the
+first place."
+
+"That's the cruel part of it all," she cried. And I mean _cried_.
+
+I rapped on the metal bars with a fist. "So here we are," I said
+unhappily. "I can't help you now, Catherine."
+
+She put her hands through the bars and held my face between them. She
+looked searching into my eyes, as if straining to force her blocked
+telepath sense through the deadness of the area. She leaned against the
+steel but the barrier was very effective; our lips met through the cold
+metal. It was a very unsatisfactory kiss because we had to purse our
+lips like a pair of piccolo players to make them meet. It was like
+making love through a keyhole.
+
+This unsatisfactory lovemaking did not last long. Unsteadily, Catherine
+said, "I want you, Steve."
+
+Inwardly I grinned, and then with the same feeling as if I'd laughed out
+loud at a funeral, I said, "Through these steel bars?"
+
+She brought out a little cylindrical key. Then went to a brass wall
+plate beside the outer door, inserted the key, and turned. The sliding
+door to my cell opened on noiseless machined slides.
+
+Then with a careful look at me, Catherine slipped a little shutter over
+the glass bull's eye in the door. Her hand reached up to a hidden toggle
+above the door and as she snapped it, a thick cover surged out above the
+speaker, television lens, and microphone grille, curved down and shut
+off the tell-tales with a cushioned sound. Apparently the top management
+of the joint used these cells for other things than mere containment of
+unruly prisoners. I almost grinned; the society that Scholar Phelps
+proposed was not the kind that flourished in an atmosphere of trust, or
+privacy--except for the top brass.
+
+Catherine turned from her switch plate and came across the floor with
+her face lifted and her lips parted.
+
+"Hold me, Steve."
+
+My hand came forward in a short jab that caught her dead center in the
+plexus below the ribs. Her breath caught in one strangled gasp and her
+eyes went glassy. She swayed stiffly in half-paralysis. My other hand
+came up, closing as it rose, until it became a fist that connected in a
+shoulder-jarring wallop on the side of her jaw. Her head snapped up and
+her knees caved in. She folded from the hips and went down bonelessly.
+From her throat came the bubbly sound of air being forced painfully
+through a flaccid wet tube.
+
+I jumped outside of the cell barrier because I was certain that they had
+some means of closing the cell from a master control center. I don't
+know much about penology, but that's the way I'd do it. I was
+half-surprised that I'd been able to get away with this much.
+
+Catherine stirred and moaned, and I stopped long enough to take the key
+out of the wall plate. The cell door closed on its silent slides.
+
+I had hardly been able to more than run the zipper up my shirt when the
+door opened and I had to dance like a fool to get behind it. The door
+admitted a flood of bright light from the corridor, and Dr. James
+Thorndyke. The cell door must have been bugged.
+
+Thorndyke came in behind a large automatic clutched in one nervous fist.
+He strained his eyes at the gloom that was not cut by the ribbon of
+light.
+
+And then I cut him down with a solid slice of my right hand to the base
+of his neck. I remembered to jump off the ground as the blow went home;
+there was a sickening crunch of bone and muscle as Thorndyke caved
+forward to the floor. He dropped the gun, luckily, as his body began to
+twitch and kick spasmodically as the life drained out of him.
+
+I re-swallowed a mouthful of bitter bile as I reached down to pick up
+his gun. Then the room got hot and unbearably small and I felt a frantic
+urge to leave, to close the door upon that sight.
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+
+I was yards away from my door before my panic left me. Then I remembered
+where and who I was and took a fast look around. There was no one else
+in the corridor, of course, or I would not have been able to cut and run
+as I had. But I looked around anyway until my reasoning power told me
+that I had done little to help my position.
+
+Like the canary, my plans for escape ended once I was outside of my
+cage. I literally did not know what to do with my new-found freedom. One
+thing was becoming painfully obvious: I'd be pinned down tight once I
+put a foot outside of the dead area in which this building was
+constructed. What I needed was friends, arms, ammunition, and a good,
+solid plan of escape. I had neither; unless you call my jailed friends
+such help. And there I could not go; the tell-tales would give me away
+to the master control center before I could raise my small--and
+unarmed--army.
+
+So I stood there in the brightly lighted corridor and tried to think. I
+got nowhere, but I was driven to action again by the unmistakable sound
+of the elevator at the end of the corridor.
+
+I eyed the various cell doors with suspicion; opening any but an empty
+room would cause some comment from the occupant, which again would give
+me away. Nor did I have time to canvass the joint by peeking into the
+one-way bull's eyes, peering into a semi-gloom to see which room was
+empty.
+
+So instead of hiding in the corridor, I sloped towards the elevator and
+the stairwell that surrounded it, hoping that I could make it before the
+elevator rose to my floor.
+
+I know that my passage must have sounded like a turbojet in full flight,
+but I made the stairway and took a headlong leap down the first short
+flight of stairs just as the elevator door rolled open. I hit the wall
+with a bumping crash that jarred my senses, but I kept my feet and
+looked back up the stairs.
+
+I caught a flash of motion; a guard sauntering past the top of the well,
+a cigarette in one hand and a lazy-looking air about him. He was
+expecting no trouble, and so I gave him none.
+
+I crept up the stairs and poked my head out just at the floor level.
+
+The guard, obviously confident that nothing, but nothing, could ever
+happen in this welded metal crib, jauntily peered into a couple of the
+rooms at random, took a long squint at the room I'd recently vacated,
+and then went on to the end of the hall where he stuck a key in a
+signal-box. On his way back he paused again to peer into my room,
+straining to see if he could peer past the little shutter over the
+bull's eye. Then he shrugged unhappily, and started to return.
+
+I loped down the stairs to the second floor and waited. The elevator
+came down, stopped, and the guard repeated his desultory search, not
+stopping to pry into any darkened rooms.
+
+Just above the final, first-floor flight, I stopped and sprawled on the
+floor with only my head and the nose of my gun over the top step. Below
+was the guard's desk and standing beside the desk with anger in every
+line of his ugly face was Scholar Phelps!
+
+The elevator came down, stopped, and the guard walked out, to be nailed
+by Phelps.
+
+"Your job," snapped the good Scholar coldly, "says you are to walk."
+
+"Well, er--sir--it's--"
+
+"Walk!" stormed Phelps angrily. "You can't cover that stairway in the
+elevator, you fumbling idiot."
+
+"But, sir--"
+
+"Someone could easily come down while you go up."
+
+"I know that, sir, but--"
+
+"Then why do you disobey?" roared Phelps.
+
+"Well, you see, sir, I know how this place is built and no one has ever
+made it yet. Who could?" The guard looked mystified.
+
+Phelps had to face that fact. He did not accept it gracefully. "My
+orders are orders," he said stiffly. "You'll follow them. To the last
+letter."
+
+"Yes sir. I will."
+
+"See that you do. Now, I'm going up. I'll ride and you walk. Meet me on
+the fourth and bring the elevator down with you."
+
+"Yessir."
+
+I sloped upstairs like a scared rabbit. Up to the third again where I
+moved down the corridor and slipped into the much-too-thin niche made by
+a door. Stolidly the guard came up the stairs, crossed in front of the
+elevator with his back to me, turned the far corner and went on up to
+the fourth.
+
+As his feet started up the stairs, I was behind him; by the time he
+reached the top, I was half way up.
+
+Phelps said, "Now, from this moment on, Waldron, you'll follow every
+order to the absolute letter. And when I ring, don't make the error of
+bringing the elevator. Send it. It'll come up and stop without a pilot."
+
+"Yes sir. I'm sorry sir. But you understand, sir, there isn't really
+much to guard, sir."
+
+"Then guard nothing. But guard it well, because a man in your position
+is gauged in success by the amount of boredom he creates for himself."
+
+The guard started down and I darted up to poke my head out to see where
+Phelps was going. As I neared the floor level, I had a shock like
+someone hurling twenty gallons of ice water in my face. The top floor
+was the end of the dead area, and I--
+
+--pulled my head down into the murk like a diver taking a plunge.
+
+So I stood there making like a guppy with my head, sounding out the
+boundary of that deadness, ducking down as soon as the mental murk gave
+me a faint perception of the wall and ceiling above me. Then I'd move
+aside and sound it again. Eventually I found a little billowing furrow
+that rose above the floor level and I crawled out along the floor, still
+sounding and moving cautiously with my body hidden in the deadness that
+rose and fell like a cloud of murky mental smoke to my sense of
+perception.
+
+I would have looked silly to any witness; wallowing along the floor like
+a porpoise acting furtive in the bright lights.
+
+But then I couldn't go any farther; the deadness sank below the floor
+level and left me looking along a bare floor that was also bare to my
+sense of perception.
+
+I shoved my head out of the dead zone and took a fast dig, then dropped
+back in again and lay there re-constructing what I'd perceived mentally.
+I did it the second time and the third, each time making a rapid scan of
+some portion of that fourth floor.
+
+In three fast swings, I collected a couple of empty offices, a very
+complete hospital set-up operating room, and a place that looked like a
+consultation theatre.
+
+On my fourth scan, I whipped past Scholar Phelps, who was apparently
+deep in some personal interest.
+
+I rose at once and strode down the hall and snapped the door open just
+as Phelps' completely unexpecting mind grasped the perceptive fact that
+someone was coming down his hallway wearing a great big forty five
+automatic.
+
+"Freeze!" I snapped.
+
+"Put that weapon down, Mr. Cornell. It, nor its use, will get your
+freedom."
+
+"Maybe all I want out of life is to see you leave it," I told him.
+
+"You'd not be that foolish, I'm sure," he said.
+
+"I might."
+
+He laughed, with all the self-confidence in the world. "Mr. Cornell, you
+have too much will to live. You're not the martyr type."
+
+"I might turn out to be the cornered-rat type," I told him seriously.
+"So play it cagey, Phelps."
+
+"Scholar Phelps, please."
+
+"I wouldn't disgrace the medical profession," I told him. "So--"
+
+"So what do you propose to do about this?"
+
+"I'm getting out."
+
+"Don't be ridiculous. One step out of this building and you'll return
+within a half minute. How did you get out?"
+
+"I was seduced out. Now--"
+
+"I'd advise you to surrender; to stop this hopeless attempt; to put that
+weapon down. You cannot escape. There are, in this building, your mental
+and intellectual superiors whose incarceration bear me witness."
+
+I eyed him coldly and quietly. "I'm not convinced. I'm out. And if you
+could take a dig below you'd see a dead man and an unconscious woman to
+bear me witness. I broke your Dr. Thorndyke's neck with a chop of my
+bare hand, Phelps; I knocked Catherine cold with a fist. This thing
+might not kill you, but I'm a Mekstrom, too, and so help me I can cool
+you down but good."
+
+"Violence will get you nothing."
+
+"Try my patience. I'll bet my worthless hide on it." Then I grinned at
+him. "Oh, it isn't so worthless, is it?"
+
+"One cry from me, Mr. Cornell, and--"
+
+"And you'll not live to see what happens. I've killed once tonight. I
+didn't like it. But the idea is not as new now as it was then. I'll kill
+you, Phelps, if for no other reason than merely to keep my word."
+
+With a sneer, Phelps turned to his desk and I stabbed my perception
+behind the papers and stuff to the call button; then I launched myself
+across the room like a rocket, swinging my gun hand as I soared. The
+steel caught him on the side of the head and drove him back from his
+call button before his finger could press it. Then I let him have a fist
+in the belly because the pistol swat hadn't much more than dazed him.
+The fist did it. He crumpled in a heap and fought for breath
+unconsciously.
+
+I turned to the wall he'd been eyeing with so much attention.
+
+There was row upon row of small kine tubes, each showing the dark
+interior of a cell. Below each was a row of pilot lights, all dark.
+
+On his desk was a large bank of push buttons, a speaker, and a
+microphone. And beside the push button set-up was a ledger containing a
+list of names with their cell numbers.
+
+I found Marian Harrison; pushed her button, and heard her ladylike snore
+from the speaker. A green lamp winked under one of the kine tubes and I
+walked over and looked into the darkened cell to see her familiar hair
+sprawled over a thick pillow.
+
+I went to the desk and snapped on the microphone.
+
+"Marian," I said. "MARIAN! HEY! MARIAN HARRISON!"
+
+In the picture tube there was a stir, then she sat up and looked around
+in a sort of daze.
+
+"Marian, this is Steve Cornell, but don't--"
+
+"Steve!"
+
+"--cry out," I finished uselessly.
+
+"Where are you?" she asked in a whisper.
+
+"I'm in the con room."
+
+"But how on Earth--?"
+
+"No time to gab. I'll be down in a rush with the key. Get dressed!"
+
+"Yes, Steve."
+
+I took off in a headlong rush with the 'Hotel Register' in one hand. I
+made the third floor and Marian's cell in slightly more than nothing
+flat, but she was ready when I came barging into her room. She was out
+of the cell before it hit the backstop and following me down the hall
+towards her brother's room.
+
+"What happened?" she asked breathlessly.
+
+"Later," I told her. I opened Phillip Harrison's cell. "You go wake up
+Fred Macklin and tell him to come here. Then get the Macklin
+girl--Alice, it says here--and the pair of you wake up others and start
+sending 'em up stairs. I'll call you on the telltale as soon as I can."
+
+Marian took off with the key and the register and I started to shake
+Phillip Harrison's shoulder. "Wake up!" I cried. "Wake up, Phillip!"
+
+Phillip made a noise like a baby seal.
+
+"Wake up!"
+
+"Wha--?"
+
+"It's Steve Cornell. Wake up!"
+
+With a rough shake of his head, Phillip groaned and unwound himself out
+of a tangle of bedclothing. He looked at me through half-closed glassy
+eyes. Then he straightened and made a perilous course to the washstand
+where he sopped a towel in cold water and applied it to his face, neck,
+and shoulders. When he dropped the towel in the sink, his expression was
+fresher and his eyes were mingled curiosity and amazement.
+
+"What gives?" he asked, starting to dress in a hurry.
+
+"I busted out, slugged Scholar Phelps, and took over the master control
+room. I need help. We can't keep it long unless we move fast."
+
+"Yeah man. Any moving will be fast," he said sourly. "Got any plans?"
+
+"We've--"
+
+The door opened to let Fred Macklin enter. He carried his shirt and had
+been dressing on the run. "What goes on?" he asked.
+
+"Look," I said quickly. "If I have to stop and give anybody a rundown,
+we'll have no time to do what has to be done. There are a couple of
+sources of danger. One is the guard down at the bottom of the stairway.
+The other is the possible visitor. You get a couple of other young,
+ambitious fellows and push that guard post over, but quick."
+
+"Right. And you?"
+
+"I've got to keep our hostage cold," I snapped. "And I'm running the
+show by virtue of being the guy that managed to bust loose."
+
+In the hallway there was movement, but I left it to head back to Scholar
+Phelps. I got there in time to hear him groan and make scratching noises
+on the carpet. I took no chances; I cooled him down with a short jab to
+the pit of the stomach and doubled him over again.
+
+He was sleeping painfully but soundlessly when Marian came in.
+
+I turned to her. "You're supposed to be waking up--"
+
+"I gave the key and the register to Jo Anne Tweedy," she said. "Jo
+Anne's the brash young teenager you took a bump with in Ohio. She's
+competent, Steve. And she's got the Macklin twins to help her. Waking up
+the camp is a job for the junior division." She eyed the recumbent
+Phelps distastefully. "What have you in mind for him?"
+
+"He's valuable," I said. "We'll use him to buy our freedom."
+
+The door opened again, interrupting Marian. It was Jonas Harrison. He
+stood there in the frame of the door and looked at us with a sort of
+grim smile. I had never met the old patriarch of the Harrison Family
+before, but he lived up to my every expectation. He stood tall and
+straight; topped by a wealth of snow white hair, white eyebrows, and the
+touch of a white moustache. His eyes contrasted with the white; a rich
+and startling brown.
+
+This was a man to whom I could hand the basic problem of engineering our
+final escape; Jonas Harrison was capable of plotting an airtight
+getaway.
+
+His voice was rich and resonant; it had a lift in its tone that sounded
+as though his self-confidence had never been in danger of a set-back:
+"Well, son, you seem to have accomplished quite a job this night. What
+shall we do next?"
+
+"Get the devil out of here," I replied--
+
+--wondering just exactly how I'd known so instantly that this was Jonas
+Harrison. The rich and resonant voice had flicked a subsurface
+recollection on a faint, raw spot and now something important was
+swimming around in the mire of my mind trying to break loose and come
+clear.
+
+I turned from the sword-sharp brown eyes and looked at Marian. She was
+almost as I had first seen her: Not much make-up if any at all, her hair
+free of fancy dressing but neat, her legs were bare and healthy-tanned.
+
+I looked at her, and for a half dozen heartbeats her image faded from my
+sight, replaced by the well remembered figure of Catherine as I had
+known her first. It was a dizzy-making montage because my perception
+senses the real figure of Marian, superimposed on the visual
+memory-image of Catherine. Then the false sight faded and both
+perception and eyesight focused upon the true person of Marian Harrison.
+
+Marian stood there, her face softly proud. Her eyes were looking
+straight into mine, as if she were mentally urging me to fight that
+hidden memory into full recollection.
+
+Then I both saw and perceived something that I had never noticed before.
+A fine golden chain hung around her throat, its pendant hidden from
+sight beneath the edge of her bodice. But my sense of perception dug a
+modest diamond, and I could even dig the tiny initials engraved in the
+metal circlet:
+
+     SC-MH
+
+To dig anything that fine, I knew that it must be of importance to me.
+And then I knew that it had once been so very personally my own
+business, for the submerged recollection came bursting up to the top of
+my mind. Marian Henderson had been mine once long ago!
+
+Boldly I stepped forward and took the chain between my fingers. I
+snapped it, and held the ring. "Will you wear it again, my dear?"
+
+She held up her left hand for me to slip it on. "Steve," she breathed,
+"I've never stopped wearing it, not really."
+
+"But I didn't see it until now--"
+
+Jonas Harrison said, "No, Steve, you couldn't see it until you
+remembered."
+
+"But look--"
+
+"Blame me," he said in his firm determined voice. "The story begins and
+ends with you, Steve. When Marian contracted Mekstrom's Disease, she
+herself insisted that you be spared the emotional pain that the rest of
+us could not avoid. So I erased her from your mind, Steve, and submerged
+any former association. Then when the Highways in Hiding came to take us
+in, I left it that way because Marian was still as unattainable to you
+as if she were dead. If an apology is needed, I'll only ask that you
+forgive my tampering with your mind and personality."
+
+"Apologize?" I exploded. "I'm here, we're here, and you've just provided
+me with a way out of this mousetrap!"
+
+"A way out?" he murmured, in that absent way that telepaths have when
+they're concentrating on another mind. Fast comprehension dawned in the
+sharp brown eyes and he looked even more self-confident and determined.
+Marian leaned back in my arms to look into my eyes. "Steve," she cried,
+"it's simply got to work!" Gloria Farrow merely said, "He'll have to
+have medication, of course," and went briskly to a wall cabinet and
+began to fiddle with medical tools. Howard Macklin and Jonas Harrison
+went into a deep telepathic conference that was interrupted only when
+Jonas Harrison turned to Phillip to say, "You'll have to provide us with
+uninterrupted time, somehow."
+
+Marian disengaged herself reluctantly and started to propel me out of
+the room. "Go help him, Steve. What we are going to do is not for any
+non-telepath to watch."
+
+Outside, Phillip threatened me with the guard's signal-box key. "Mind
+telling a non-telepath what the devil you cooked up?"
+
+I smiled. "If your father has the mental power to erase Marian from my
+mind, he also has the power to do a fine reorientation job on Scholar
+Phelps. Once we get the spiderwebs cleaned out of the top dog, we start
+down the pyramid, line by line and echelon by echelon, with each
+reoriented recruit adding to our force. Once we get this joint operating
+on the level, we can all go to work for the rest of the human race!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is little left to tell. The Medical Center and the Highways in
+Hiding are one agency dedicated to the conquest of the last and most
+puzzling of the diseases and maladies that beset Mankind. We are no
+closer to a solution than we ever were, and so I am still a very busy
+man.
+
+I have written this account and disclosed our secret because we want no
+more victims of Mekstrom's Disease to suffer.
+
+So I will write finish with one earnest plea and one ray of hope:
+
+Please do not follow one of our Highways unless you are already
+infected. Since I cannot hope to inoculate the entire human race, and
+will not pick or choose certain worthy types for special attention, I
+will deal only with those folks who find Mekstrom's Disease among their
+immediate family. Such people need never be parted from their loved
+ones. The rest of you will have to wait your turn.
+
+But we'll get to it sooner or later. Thirty days ago, Steve, Junior, was
+born. He's a healthy little Mekstrom, and like his pappy, Steve Junior
+is a carrier, too.
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+[Transcriber's note: Back cover]
+
+
+
+
+QUEST IMPOSSIBLE
+
+
+Someone had stolen an important part of Steve Cornell's life.
+
+It was bad enough when his fiancee vanished. It was infinitely worse
+when everyone in the world insisted it couldn't have happened the way he
+knew it had.
+
+In a world where ESP and telepathy were normal, it was difficult to keep
+secrets. But Steve's search for his missing sweetheart brought him to
+the threshold of one of the greatest secrets of all time. And it was
+obvious that somebody would stop at nothing to keep him from uncovering
+it.
+
+What were the oddly sinister symbols along otherwise ordinary roads?
+What was behind the spreading plague called Mekstrom's Disease? Why were
+there "blank" spots where telepathy didn't work? Who was the elusive
+enemy with powers even beyond those ESP had bestowed on mankind?
+
+And, most important of all ... could Steve find that enemy before they
+made him vanish too?
+
+A Lancer Book . Never Before Complete In Paperback
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Highways in Hiding, by George Oliver Smith
+
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