Part 3

And so forth. That was what the computer had said. Of course, the computer was far from infallible, but its analysis and recommendations were utterly logical on the basis of the information given it. That was exactly why they were carefully ignored.

It was a gamble, and no one was more aware of this than Faircloth. All Security personnel were withdrawn from the Chicago area, Psi-High and otherwise, except for a small crew headed by Ted Marino, who were scattered throughout the city. A gamble, but it was not entirely guesswork that made Paul so certain that the Alien, if left quite alone, would try to make contact with a Psi-High mind sooner or later. Of course, that conclusion itself was the result of logical reasoning. No matter what efforts were made to remove logic from the approach, it crept in. It had to creep in.

It was logical that a telepathically sensitive creature visiting a strange planet would seek to learn something about the segment of the population that could expose his presence. He would seek signs of his own kind of thought. Paul knew too well that a Psi-High mind that was cut off and alone was a sick mind. That was why Psi-Highs always settled in the cities, why they sought each other with such fierce, desperate clannishness which in itself had bred suspicion of them in the minds of psi-negatives. It was not a matter of choice, with them. It was a desperate need. And Paul knew how overpowering that need could be.

No, logically, the Alien would make contact with a human Psi-High, sooner or later. It would not be difficult to keep control of such a contact. The Psi-Highs were very few, numbering in the hundreds, scattered in colonies in the larger cities of the North American States. With painstaking care each one was contacted and warned, and those in Security Service were spotted in the most likely places for the contact they were waiting for. The roads were left free, and the airports and spaceports were not checked. An invisible network of human minds lay across the country, delicately tuned, waiting for the spark of contact.

Faircloth was asleep when the call finally came. He rolled groggily out of bed, his heart racing, and groped for the visiphone screen. Ted Marino's face materialized on the silvery curve; a frightened, shaking Marino whose eyes were wide with horror, whose hands jerked nervously as he unsuccessfully tried to control them. His voice was on the thin edge of hysteria. "He hit me, Paul. Just a little while ago."

Paul leaned forward, staring at the pale form in the screen. "Ted, are you hurt?"

"No, no. But oh, god!"

"It couldn't have been just another Psi-High contacting you? It's deadly important, Ted--"

Marino shook his head vehemently. "No, no, no. It _couldn't_ have been. I've been in Psi-High contact enough to know what it's like. This was different. It was like he'd lifted off my skull and scooped out my brains."

Faircloth lit a smoke, trembling. "Did you try to fight it?"

The man nodded. "I tried. He was clear in before I knew what had happened, but I tried. I--I think it puzzled him. It didn't do any good at all. He just brushed it aside."

"Ted," said Faircloth. "Now listen. Forget about it. Don't write up a report. Don't even think about it. As far as you're concerned, the job is over. Get dressed, and travel south--down to Florida, Rio, any old place, it doesn't matter where, just go. Use an expense account and have yourself the time of your life."

Marino's eyes opened in amazement. "Are you crazy? I thought this was what--"

"It is. Do what I say and don't worry about it. You're finished on this job. When you've gotten a good rest come back to the Hoffman Center and take up your training with Dr. Abrams where you left off." Paul flipped the switch and turned back to the room, his heart pounding a staccato cadence in his throat. He grinned triumphantly and began to pack his bag.

The chase was on, but this time, the mouse was chasing the cat.

VI

As if a dam had broken, the reports began streaming in. Three more came from Chicago. Then a call came from Cleveland, from a Psi-High technician there who was not remotely connected with the Federal Security Commission. Then from Pittsburgh, then New Philadelphia. Like a fearful, ominous flood the reports of the Alien's contacts swarmed in. And Paul Faircloth and Jean Sanders were ready for them.

Their headquarters was a small suite of rooms in a middle class residential hotel in the heavily populated metropolitan area between Washington and Baltimore. Few of the Federal Security agents, Psi-High or otherwise, knew this. They knew only a visiphone priority code number, and a special word-key for scrambling. This was as Faircloth insisted. Of all the agents posted and assigned, only Paul, Jean, and Roberts knew the true nature of the operation, and each of them worked out their own illogical details without telling the others.

The wisdom of such a procedure was graphically illustrated a dozen times over for the Alien at work was thorough. An operative in Pittsburgh had attempted resistance to the Alien's telepathic overtures, as instructed, and suffered a burst of wrath that had left him blubbering in a corner for three days until a crew from Hoffman Center straightened him out with a week's diet of amphetamine and glucose. More and more, the Alien's puzzlement and frustration and wrath began to seep through, and Paul and Jean watched the reports, and nodded approvingly. Three times, when they were sure that the Alien had left a locality, they ordered cleanup squads to make raids on his former quarters, quizzing the inhabitants and neighbors, asking a multitude of idiotic questions, uncovering a half a dozen descriptions and leads which they assiduously ignored. Then they began stabbing erratically at locations where the Alien had _not_ yet been, raids which were carried out with a viciousness and singleness of mind that left the unfortunates who were questioned quaking in their boots. On these raids, even the agents themselves were confused as to their purpose.

And there were other tactics, a myriad of disjointed, unconnected, abortive, harassing procedures, as though the whole search had suddenly fallen into the hands of a madman. A rocketship bound for Venus was delayed four days beyond an opposition, adding a half-million dollars to the cost of fueling it. A whole series of road blocks were thrown up between New York and New Philadelphia, virtually paralyzing the commercial traffic between the cities for two days. Quite suddenly, the order went out to close down on all passengers in the great St. Louis-New York rolling roads, and Robert Roberts put in a grueling week soothing the ruffled feelings of the businessmen who had been held up and the companies whose products had spoiled when the swift-moving strips had ground to a halt.

The news that there _was_ an Alien from the stars at large, that Federal Security was waging a vast underground battle to capture him, was no longer a deep secret. The tension mounted daily.

And bit by bit, carefully sifted bits of information were dropped into the minds of the Psi-Highs who were still in the Alien's path. Long hours were spent in the headquarters suite planning the pattern to be used. But in the end it was a pattern well chosen and worth the effort because it was soon evident that the Alien was heading for the great metropolitan area which surrounded the nation's capitol.

No attempt was made to contact him. It had been entirely passive. The Alien's overtures had received no response other than futile attempts at shielding; no analyses of his contacts were attempted, and this knowledge was planted so that the Alien was sure to learn it. Warnings of traps were planted in his path, "secret" knowledge of closing dragnets and carefully devised Psi-High weapons to be used against him; occasionally such warnings were followed by abortive raids, either too early or too late to meet him, lead by psi-negative Security men who had no more idea what they were doing than the man in the moon. But one by one, key facts were planted, pointing always in one direction, aimed at one man, and always the Alien moved toward the city.

* * * * *

Paul Faircloth and Jean Sanders seldom left their headquarters. Their job was to keep the pattern moving, and to plan out their individual parts quite separate from each other. It was terrifically wearing. As the tension mounted, both of them grew more haggard. Paul had not found time to shave in a week, and there were dark circles under the girl's eyes. Much of the time she just sat, tense, listening, waiting. Other times she helped him work as he fed data into the teletype and tape readers which had been set up in their quarters. But even amid the tension and exhaustion of the work neither of them could forget the simple, awful fact that Paul Faircloth had been exposed as a Psi-High, and that somehow, they would have to rearrange all that the future had held for them both.

Each morning they spread the reports out on the table before them. "Closer," Paul said one day. "And it's on his own volition. He hasn't been pushed. On the contrary, he's been left quite out in the cold. And he doesn't like it."

The girl nodded and glanced at the papers. "And he's definitely trying to ask questions. Karns' call last night showed that better than any other. And of course Karns didn't know any answers."

Faircloth nodded. "None of them know the answers. That's the beauty of it. Try as he will, he doesn't get anywhere."

"Not yet." The girl rose, walking across the room. "Paul, I'm afraid. We're shooting in the dark. We don't know what we're fighting against."

"Are you sorry you're in on it?"

"Oh, no!" She turned around, her face stricken. "I'd never want you to think that, never." His mind was suddenly filled with shadows, impressions struggling to get through, impressions that would make the use of words ridiculous. "Oh, Paul, I'm afraid! For you, for both of us. If anything should happen--"

"Nothing's going to happen, darling--"

"But what about _us_? If something goes wrong. Roberts knows about you."

Paul's eyes could not meet hers. "It was bound to be found out sometime. I'd rather Roberts knew than Ben Towne."

The girl's eyes were wide with fright. "But we shouldn't be together! Oh, Paul, how did he find out? Why did anyone have to find out?" And then she was sobbing in his arms, and he held her close, trying to comfort her as her body shook against his chest. "Jeannie," he murmured. "Please, darling, don't--"

"But it's so unfair! Why shouldn't I be allowed to marry you if I want to?"

"You know why, darling! It's the law. We tried to fight it but the people are afraid of us. There's nothing we can do about it. They passed the law, and they think it's right."

"Ben Towne thinks it's right!" she burst out scornfully. Her tears were hot on his cheek.

"Towne backed it to the hilt, I know. But people are afraid of a man carrying a single psi-positive gene, like you and me. What would they do if they doubled? How could we tell what our children would be like? Look, darling, think! You're just getting a grip on your faculties now. You're learning how to use your psi-powers, and look what you're doing! You can almost get through to me, and I've had no formal training at all, I've been underground, just training myself as best I could. You're nearly top-grade, Dr. Abrams says you'll have almost complete control in five years, and I could too, with the proper training. What would our children be like with the factor on both sides?"

"Well, what would be wrong with it?" The girl was fighting back the tears. "Are we such monsters? Have we done things so terrible that we have to be caged like animals and kept under control like criminals?"

Paul shook his head. "People only know what they hear. Ben Towne has been a terrible, vicious enemy, and enough people believe him to give him tremendous power. The people are nervous, and fearful, and there's nothing we can do about it." He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed at her face with it. "We've got a job to do, Jeannie. It might be the most important thing that Psi-Highs have ever tried to do. We can't flop on this job."

"But Towne will just turn it against us--"

"Not if we work it right. And I've got a hunch that we're working it right."

VII

The visiphone buzzed shrilly that afternoon, and Roberts' worried face appeared in the screen. "Paul," he said sharply. "There are some bad rumors around. I think something's up."

Paul cursed. "What kind of rumors?"

"All kinds," said Roberts sourly. "They're saying the hunt for the Alien is a fraud, that nobody is doing anything at all about it. There were a couple of out-and-out charges that Psi-Highs are teaming up with the Alien to make an attack on the government--"

"My god, can't somebody put the lid on that man?"

"That wasn't Towne's work. It was some other Federal Isolationist Senator on one of the propaganda programs the Normal Supremacy party has on TV. There's talk that the Civil Rights bloc in the Liberal Council is getting ready to switch to the American Council side and force a Presidential election. And that could put Towne in the White House. He's getting ready to move, Paul. We haven't got very long. The word has been sneaking out all over. Towne is behind it, of course, but he's smooth; oh, he's smooth. Congress hasn't been joined into two solid political parties for two hundred years, but they're doing it now, and it'll be a bloody battle. If Towne can get the Civil Rights bloc to switch to his Council he's got the Senate in the palm of his hand."

"Who's the leader of the Civil Rights men?" Faircloth's voice was sharp.

"That's just the thing. It has been Mike Veriday. His brother's a Psi-High. But his stock has taken an awful nosedive since this rumor campaign started. The polls have got him trailing Kingsley from Kentucky by three per cent, losing ground fast. Now Kingsley, it seems, is in some mean financial trouble that Towne got him into, and Towne is ready to clear him of some nasty charges if he plays along--" He paused for a long moment. "We haven't got much time, Paul."

"Well, I hope we don't need much. But I think you can call in as many of our men as you need to. If things get too hot for you, list Jean and myself as missing, and throw out a dragnet for us. Because I think we'll be very much outside the law in another day or so."

Roberts blinked at him. "Better tell me what you're planning, Paul."

"Don't worry what I'm planning. The less you know about it the better. Just one thing, though. You remember Eagle Rock? The place we built up on Timagami when we were in college? Put three men at a number where I can reach them, and give them the location of Eagle Rock. Then tell them to stand by with a fast jet scooter. Got that? And don't let _this_ leak, no matter what happens."

"I wish you'd tell me--"

"We're fighting for our lives, now, Bob. And for every Psi-High in the country. I won't tell you."

Roberts nodded, and doused his cigar. "Eagle Rock," he said. "You can count on it."

Paul flipped the set off and sank back to wait for the Alien to make contact.

* * * * *

He struck at ten o'clock that evening, with a ferocity beyond their wildest expectations.

They had known that he was near. The reports had come in, and they had plotted and calculated his pathway, and waited. It was only a matter of time, and the carefully planted information built a tangled, devious circle with a single Psi-High individual in the center.

Jean Sanders.

It had to be Jean. Paul hated it. He wished it could be him, that he could somehow protect her, but Jean Sanders was the only possible person to bait the trap. Her psi-powers had been developed carefully and painstakingly for years under the care of Dr. Reuben Abrams and his staff at the Hoffman Medical Center. A Psi-High individual was helpless to use his powers without training. Just as a child was trained through long, gruelling years to use the mental faculties of thought, and perception, and logic, a psi-positive mind required training to control its powers of perception and physical control, if its powers were ever to be used.

Paul knew that all too well. He had the psi-positive factor, too. He had not realized, in his teens, when he had plagued and baited the two Psi-High boys in his high school class, that there might be a time factor in psi-positive developement. Other Psi-Highs showed the signs of abnormal sensory apparatus at the age of one, or three, or seven. The schools caught them, tested them, registered them and sent them out into a life of fear and suspicion and hatred. They were considered freaks, the more dangerous because there was no physical identification that could be used to separate them from ordinary human beings.

And certain men had seen the great power that stood waiting for the man who took advantage of the people's fears. Ambition is blinding; certain men could see the danger to the comfortable, careless wielding of power if Psi-High minds were to work their way into government. But minds, like Paul Faircloth's mind, matured at different ages, and at different times. And some slipped through the barrage of testing, undetected, only to discover later that it was not the backs of the cards they were reading, but the mind of their opponent that held the cards.

The faculty was feeble in people like Paul. He could not read minds. He could not sort and integrate the confused tendrils of conscious and unconscious thought that broke like an endless stream from a human mind; he could not separate the reality of here-and-now thinking from the strands of fantasy, and memory, and supposition, and frustration, and desire, and half-understanding, and confusion that lay beneath the surface of those minds. He could detect falsehood and he could feel suspicion; he could sense love as he had never felt it before, and he could feel himself gripped in the helpless frustration of pity; he could savor excitement with a thousand tingling nerves, and he could sense the blackest depths of despair, but he could not sort them out to make a coherent picture of the thoughts streaming from a human mind. It took a lifetime of training of a Psi-High mind to do that.

But Jean Sanders could. That was why she was waiting in the room with him when the Alien struck.

She was walking across the room when it happened. She stiffened, screamed, and even Paul's untrained mind caught the impact of the wave of fear and revulsion that swept from her mind. She sank to the floor, and Paul stood by, watching helplessly as she twisted and writhed in the blind agony of the powerful invasion. "Please," she choked, white faced. "Get me a pillow. Then--then listen--"

"Don't fight him," Paul whispered. "Let him in. Let him clear in. And then jump on him for all you're worth. Dig, dig deep--"

Her eyes became huge, like the eyes of an animal, frightened beyond hope, cornered, attacked and helpless to fight back. Her neck strained back, and her teeth clenched. The blood drained from her face as she began moaning. "I can't, Paul--" she cried, "I--I can't get in--"

"You've got to--" Frantically Paul tried to thrust out with his mind, tried to dig through the wall of immense power that was present in the room. The Alien was close, very close, and the presence of his mind was overwhelming. Paul tried to break through, and then suddenly he felt a pang of white heat sear through his brain, driving him back, a sharp, savage stroke that doubled him up, clasping his hands helplessly to his ears as he fell and writhed on the floor in pain. And then suddenly it was gone as swiftly as it had come. He lay panting for a moment. Then he managed to crawl across the room to Jean. He sank his head to her chest, heard the slow pounding of her heart. He shook her, gently; her eyes flickered open, her face filled with horror and loathing. "Oh, Paul, I got--I got so little--"

"What did you get, darling?"

"Nothing. A picture or two, nothing more. Oh, he was so strong, I couldn't make a dent--"

"What pictures?"

She sat up, her breath coming in gasps. "Nothing definite. Ben Towne--yes, there was something about him--just the flash of a mental picture, no rationality connected with it. And some papers, some sort of file--" She clasped her hands to her head. "He--he stripped me clean! I can't--"

"Jeannie! There must have been something else--"

She looked up at him, a strange light in her eyes. "I don't understand it," she whispered. "There was a picture of a farm--yes, a farm, and a dog, and blood on a pair of pants--"

Paul sat back, staring at her stupidly. And then, suddenly, a light flashed on in his mind, a flash so incredible that he hardly dared think of it. In an instant he was on his feet, the blood pounding in his throat. He began throwing clothes into a bag as the girl sat there, watching him dully, in growing alarm. "Stay here," he said. "I'll call you--"

"Paul--where--"

"It's my show, now, darling. Wait, rest, you'll be all right. Rest, and say a prayer or two. Because I've got this Alien nailed for sure this time."

* * * * *

It was incredibly dangerous and utterly necessary. Paul found a visiphone booth in the rear of a station where there were few people, and quickly threw an adapter across the camera, and spun a roll of film in. The film started when the party at the other end flipped on the switch. The conversation was brief. Paul gave the address of a roof-garden apartment in Central Washington, and then disconnected. After removing the film, he reconnected with a number he had given Roberts a few hours before. Ted Marino's face appeared, and Paul heaved a sigh of relief. "How many men do you have, Ted?"

"Two."

"All Psi-High?"

"Certainly."

Paul nodded. "All right, we're beyond the law from now on, Ted. If you or any of the rest want out, take off."

Marino's dark eyes sparkled. "Roberts said this is the kill," he said.

"It's not the kill you think. But it's a kill, all right. Take the men to this address." He gave the roof-garden number. "Have a jet scooter there, and see that nobody spots it. Use Security insignia. Send out a bleeper if anything goes wrong. I'll be there."

He rang off, and moments later was rising high above the city in his own scooter. In ten minutes he had reached the roof-garden, and settled the little ship down gently on its gyros. He walked inside and sat down in the darkness, and waited.

He heard another jet scooter land. Marino walked in with two other men Paul remembered vaguely. He nodded to them, and they also sat down. Paul fingered the shocker in his pocket, his nerves screaming a thousand warnings in his ears.

The guard robot on the ground floor bleeped sharply. Paul reached for the lock-release switch, and heard the elevator start to whine. He unlocked the door and left it ajar, then motioned to one of the men. "Cover the hallway, and back them up when they come. Don't be surprised at who it is."

The man disappeared down the hall. Paul sat quietly, and then heard the elevator open. There were footsteps, and a tapping sound. The footsteps stopped at the door.

"Come on in," he called sharply. "Bob'll be with you in just a minute."

The door swung open and Senatorial Councilman Ben Towne walked into the room, followed by two tight-faced men. One of the men had a hand in his jacket pocket. Towne blinked at Faircloth, and his grin began to fade into alarm. "Who in the hell are you?"

"One of Roberts' men."

"Roberts said you had the Alien," Towne snarled. His green eyes peered around the room.