Part 2

Emil began to stride nervously back and forth before the lounge. He swung suddenly on Saxon, saying, "Look, that post on General Atomic's research bureau is still open. I can promise you three times your present salary, and a bonus besides."

"Liar," replied Saxon without hesitation. "I don't need a machine to tell you're lying." He laughed shortly.

The N.P.A.'s plump face looked puzzled. He made rapid adjustments on the machine, bent over the dials again.

"He's not lying," he said in a queer voice. "He knows you intend to kill him as soon as you squeeze him dry of information."

Saxon caught sight of Ileth's white, strained face and grinned at her. She had been as surprised, he read her thoughts, as himself at Emil's opportune entrance. Obviously, Emil had not been supposed to put in an appearance until she had a try at him first.

It was all verification that General Atomic was trying to steal the stellar drive. But Saxon had been able to catch only the scantiest of details from Emil's mind.

General Atomic not only wanted the drive, he sensed, but a monopoly on it. That meant killing or buying off everyone in Government's Bureau of Research who knew the secret of the drive.

Emil said to Saxon, "Suppose I contact General Atomic and put it up to them. I'll confess my orders were to question you, then dispose of you. Frankly, Ileth's reports have convinced us that you couldn't be bought."

"What makes you think that I can now? Anyway, what guarantee have I that their promises aren't as empty as yours?" he asked sceptically.

Georg, the neuro-psychoanalyst, pursed thick lips and interjected himself into the conversation. "General Atomic abides by its contracts," he pointed out.

"Yes. When it's to their advantage."

Emil's eyes blazed; red stained his pale cheek. "Do you mean to imply, sir, that General Atomic is treacherous?"

"Exactly."

"Emil!" said the plump N.P.A., sharply.

Slowly the flush receded from Emil's cheeks, but he held himself stiff as a ram-rod and his eyes were angry.

The N.P.A. turned back to Saxon. "At least, you admit that General Atomic abides by its contracts as long as it's to their advantage."

Saxon nodded, seeing already what was coming.

"Then," pursued Georg. "It certainly would be to their advantage to preserve you alive until you could build a stellar drive. After that...." He shrugged. "You're an intelligent man, Saxon. Rated one of the best physicists in the Empire, in fact. It seems to me that you could easily convince General Atomic that it would be of advantage to them to keep you alive indefinitely. What would you say to a hundred thousand credits a year?"

"Not enough."

"_Two hundred thousand?_"

"One or two ..." Saxon began, then paused in consternation. He had been tricked!

There was a self-satisfied smile on the neuro-psychoanalyst's pudgy features. He had not spoken aloud the words, "Two hundred thousand," but had thought them at Saxon!

"He's a telepath!" said the N.P.A., and began to disconnect the discs from Saxon's body and stow them back in the case.

"A telepath!" Emil ejaculated. "He's a telepath?"

"Exactly," agreed the N.P.A. in dry tones. "I suspected it from the first, but frankly I couldn't believe it. I've never encountered a true telepath before. I didn't think there were any. Individuals who are unusually canny at reading expression, yes. But never any true telepaths. I'm going to request General Atomic to let me perform an autopsy after he's been disposed of. Possibly he's a mutant."

"Disposed of?" ejaculated the blond Emil. "But great stars, Georg! He's invaluable to us. Not only does he possess the secret of the stellar drive, but he can...."

"You're the executive!" retorted Georg sharply, "but I advise you to shoot him now! This second!"

"What do you mean?"

"You're not stupid, man! How much information has he picked from our brains already? If he should escape, the plan would have to be sacrificed. Everything might be lost." Then, sharply, "And don't think about the plan! Shoot him!"

Saxon could read growing conviction in the blond man's mind. He saw Emil's hand, holding the dart gun, begin to rise.

"Look out, Emil!" shrieked Ileth suddenly.

But Saxon had already snatched the plump N.P.A. off his feet, yanking him between himself and Emil. He heard a sharp plop. The N.P.A.'s body quivered as it intercepted Emil's poisoned dart. Saxon realized he was holding aloft a dead man.

The muscles in his burly naked shoulders hunched. He hurled the dead N.P.A. at the blond man who went down, bowled over backwards by the body.

Emil's head struck the plastic floor with a sickening crunch. Saxon caught a painful mental flash as unconsciousness gripped the blond man.

Without a pause, he leaped for Ileth. The girl was fumbling at her waist, where her gun's muzzle had become entangled. Only the fact that the muzzle had caught in her waist band saved him.

She flinched back as Saxon's hand closed on the gun, tore it loose from her grip. There was a rip of cloth and the dart gun came away. Ileth's skirt, freed of its supporting waistband, slid down about her ankles.

Saxon leaped backward, threatening the N.P.A.'s flabbergasted assistant as well as the girl.

"Don't move! Either of you."

The N.P.A.'s assistant was obviously terrified and had no intention of budging.

"_Oh, my skirt!_" Ileth's wild thought came clear as a bell to Saxon, and the girl rolled her eyes toward her feet, where the cloth lay in a black ring. But she didn't move.

Saxon grinned. "Obviously," he said, "you haven't any weapon concealed about yourself. You can pick up your skirt, Ileth."

She snatched it about her waist again, holding the foot long tear together with her hand.

"I'm leaving," he said, "but remember, I can read your thoughts. If either of you make a move towards that audio during the next ten minutes, I'll pop back in and fill you as full of darts as a porcupine."

And he backed, still grinning, through the door.

III

The huge structure, housing Government's Bureau of Research, was aflame with light when Saxon climbed from the robot cab and approached the entrance. The shadowy figure of a guard challenged him.

Saxon produced his papers, submitted to a fingerprint test.

"So, it's you, all right," the guard growled. "Where the hell have you been? The T.I.S. has been scouring the city for you."

Saxon asked, "Is Villainowski in? I want to see him."

"Not half as bad," said the guard, "as he wants to see you." He stuck his head inside the guardroom, yelled, "Hey, Webb, come relieve me. That missing physicist has shown up. I've got to take him up to the chief."

"I can find my way," Saxon assured him dryly.

"I've got my orders," retorted the man, "to escort you, and escorted you'll be."

As they took the lift, Saxon probed gently into the guard's mind. He was thinking about a Venusian dancer performing at the Sun Palace on Greater Broadway. Either he didn't know why Villainowski wanted him, or he was more interested in the dancer.

Saxon sighed in resignation.

Chief Villainowski was a small wiry man of Polish descent who had led none too reputable a life, although it was not generally known. Jon Saxon, regarding him across the polished desk, read suspicion and wonder in the chief's mind. Villainowski was never able to reconcile Saxon's appearance with his indisputable scientific attainments.

"_Looks like a plug ugly_," Villainowski was thinking although he was far from a beauty himself. "_Ought to be a prize fighter instead of a physicist!_"

"Will you pray tell me," he asked aloud of the amused Saxon, "what the hell possessed you to sneak out the night before we leave?"

Saxon grinned like a mastiff. "It was that General Atomic affair. I haven't told you, but I met one of their agents, a girl by the name of Ileth Urban, about a month ago."

"Black-headed girl?" asked the third man in the room. He had his chair leaned against the wall. A tall, angular, sandy-haired man with pale blue eyes like gimlets. "Does she have hazel-green eyes, small delicate features? Ears peaked like an animal's...."

"I hadn't noticed the ears," Saxon confessed, swinging toward the sandy-haired man.

Gavin Murdock, T.I.S. agent, had been assigned as T.I.S. representative to this first expedition beyond the Solar System. He said, "No, I guess not. She wears her hair in a page-boy bob."

Villainowski interrupted: "Well, damn it, man, who gave you permission to horn in on the T.I.S.'s work?"

"I knew her. She'd been set to pump me dry of information by General Atomic. If anyone could get anything out of her, I could."

"You don't fancy yourself much," the chief grunted with a touch of asperity. "What did you find out?"

Saxon related events just as they had transpired, omitting only the alien telepaths in the street and his own telepathic ability.

"By Pluto!" exploded Villainowski when he had concluded. "We can grab the lot of them."

"Not so fast," Murdock interrupted from his chair against the wall. "What proof have you? Only Saxon's word. It won't hold in a court of law."

"But the girl!" Villainowski protested. "She's General Atomic's representative on the expedition. You don't intend to let her--"

"It's better to have her where we can watch her," the T.I.S. agent returned. "Saxon can keep an eye on her. He seems to be able to pry more out of her than any of my agents have. If he can persuade her that he hasn't told us about the fracas in her apartment...."

"I can convince her of that, I think," said Saxon. "But she doesn't know anything...."

"Except," Murdock interrupted again, "that she's to take orders from an agent known as Q62. At least, she should lead us to him." He paused, regarded Saxon with his penetrating pale blue eyes. "What the devil did you do to her, man, to get that information out of her? Stick darts under her finger nails?"

In both Murdock's and Villainowski's mind Saxon read a cold determination to keep him under surveillance as well as the girl.

* * * * *

Villainowski, he knew, hated the corporations in general, but it was nothing to the black flame of hatred that consumed the man whenever he thought of General Atomic. It was almost psychopathic. He had never forgotten or forgiven General Atomic, Saxon knew, for stealing his first three discoveries and then disgracing him.

It was a queer friendship that existed between the two men questioning Saxon--the gaunt cold-blooded manhunter, who had sent a girl with whom he was infatuated to the Lunar Penal Colony, and Villainowski, the small wiry scientist, ex-Jovian slaver, and at present head of the first expedition into deep space.

"Well," the sandy-haired Murdock repeated inexorably, "how did she happen to tell you about Q62?"

"It was a slip," explained Saxon. "I followed it up."

"She's not given to making slips," Murdock pointed out. "Not Ileth Urban."

When Saxon didn't reply, the T.I.S. agent said, "Saxon, we've investigated your past pretty thoroughly. We did the same with every man and woman connected with this expedition. We encountered a strange thing. Saxon, who are your parents?"

Jon Saxon could feel his stomach contract. "I don't know. I haven't any recollection before my eleventh year." He could feel Murdock's probing blue eyes, sense his scepticism.

"You've a convenient memory, because we've been unable to find any trace of your parents or birth prior to your enrollment in the Institute. A thousand years ago your case would have been unusual, but it could have happened. But today, with our universal system of records, it's impossible. I've never encountered a parallel case to yours."

"I'm sorry," said Saxon dryly, "but I do seem to have been born, don't I? And somehow escaped the census."

Murdock smiled a wintry smile. "There were funds deposited at the Institute for your education. We haven't been able to trace those funds either. In fact, every way we've turned, we've run into a blank wall."

"I'm sorry," said Saxon again, "but I can't help you. I have absolutely no memory before I was eleven. Don't think it hasn't worried me. I asked the T.I.S. to investigate it years ago. They couldn't find anything then. It's not surprising they haven't found anything this time."

"You won't object to being examined by our N.P.A.?"

"No," replied Saxon.

Villainowski spoke into an inter-communicating audio, "Send in the N.P.A."

The neuro-psychoanalyst must have been waiting outside because he entered immediately. Saxon regarded him curiously. Government's N.P.A. was a lean Cassius-like individual with an ingratiating smile. Saxon had taken an immediate dislike to him when he had first seen him prowling about the corridors of the research building, but he knew the man was a brilliant psychologist.

The N.P.A. approached Saxon rubbing his hands together and smiling. "So this is the subject. How are you, Jon? There's no need to ask questions. I've studied your record. No question but what there's a mental block, is there? Hope we can break it. Sit here, if you don't mind."

Saxon took the chair indicated, the N.P.A. facing him.

"Take one of these." He held out a box of hypno-pills.

Saxon selected one, gulped it down. He made no effort to read the minds of Murdock, Villainowski or the N.P.A.

The neuro-psychoanalyst was wearing a revolving mirror about an inch in diameter on a band about his forehead. He set the mirror in motion which caught the room light, alternately darkening and flashing.

"Look into the light, Jon," he said in a calm, sure voice. "Relax and watch the light. You are going to sleep when I count three. You can feel the effect of the hypno-pill already. When I count three you sleep, sleep.... One." A pause. "Two." Pause. "Three...."

* * * * *

After half an hour the N.P.A.'s voice wasn't so sure. He had given Jon three more pills, had tried all the devices at the command of the largest neural-clinic in the Empire without the slightest effect. Jon Saxon continued to regard the N.P.A. with a half hidden gleam of amusement in his dark gray eyes.

The neuro-psychoanalyst sat back, mopped his perspiring face with his handkerchief. "It's no use!" he said in a strained voice. "He can't be hypnotized!"

"I could have told you that," replied Saxon. "Do you think I haven't tried to have the block broken before?"

The N.P.A. swore and got to his feet. "Well, why didn't you say so?" he shouted. It was the first time Saxon had ever seen him lose his temper.

"Because these gentlemen have been suspicious of me." He indicated Murdock and Villainowski. "If I had offered any objections to being hypnotized, they'd have been sure that I was afraid to."

All at once, Saxon experienced the peculiar tingling in scalp and skin that warned him the alien creatures, whom he had met in the street, were present. He couldn't possibly be mistaken. Once having experienced that peculiar inhuman feel it was not to be forgotten or confused.

Not only were they invisible, but neither doors nor walls seemed to offer any resistance to them.

"_Who are you?_" he concentrated, but his thought met that strange mental barrier. There was no answer.

He realized that the three men were watching him with a curious tenseness.

Suddenly the N.P.A.'s jaw dropped. An expression of complete astonishment lit up his face. "I've got it! I've got it!" he cried.

"Got what?" growled Villainowski, moving uneasily behind his massive desk.

"Saxon! Saxon, that's who! My Lord, why didn't it occur to me before. He's a--"

The words died suddenly on the N.P.A.'s lips. An expression of fright crossed his lean features. Then, without a sound, he crumpled to the carpet.

Jon Saxon, staring in horror, realized that the tingling of his skin was diminishing. The telepaths were withdrawing.

At the same instant Murdock's chair hit the floor as he leaped across the room, dropped to his knee beside the prone figure of the N.P.A. For a moment he was bent over the body like a bronze statue, then he turned his face up to Villainowski.

Saxon, who had read his thoughts, was amazed at Murdock's passionless expression.

"He's dead," the T.I.S. agent said in a toneless voice. "I wouldn't have believed it, if I hadn't seen it happen, but he's deader than the moon."

IV

Bong! Bong! Bong! Bong! rang the warning gong, reverberating through the launching pit.

Mustapha IX had shaken hands for the last time with Villainowski and hurried down the gangplank. The ports were all sealed; crew at their stations. Outside the pits, the frenzied crowd was delirious with excitement. Wasn't it man's first attempt to reach the stars?

Bong! Bong! Bong! Bong! Bong!

On the last stroke the _Shooting Star_ fell silent except for the muffled roar of her tubes warming. At the same instant the crowd grew impossibly still.

The raw fear, which had made itself felt in spite of the festivities, rode to the surface. The strange psychological dread of deep space.

A woman in the relatives' stand suddenly buried her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking with violent sobs. She was the wife of the master mechanic on the third's watch. A gray-faced man moved towards the woman, patted her shoulders.

Just then a continuous violent explosion shook the frail stand like an earth tremor. The _Shooting Star_ burst from the pits, trailing a comet-tail of orange flame.

"Oh, my husband!" wailed the woman, "oh, my husband!" but her voice was drowned in the roar.

* * * * *

Jon Saxon threw off his safety belt, glanced across at the strained white face of Ileth Urban in the next acceleration chair. "Buck up," he grinned. "It's too late to change your mind now."

The girl nervously tucked a curl in place, smiled uncertainly. "Heaven help me! Are we going to share all my thoughts during the rest of the voyage?"

"Hell, no," said Saxon. "I want to preserve some of my illusions." He leaned towards her. "I'll strike a bargain with you, though. If you don't mention that I'm a telepath, I'll not report our--er--experience last night."

"You mean you haven't said anything?"

"No," said Saxon. "Why should I? I didn't have proof. Who'd want to tackle General Atomic without cast-iron evidence? On second thought, who'd want to tackle General Atomic at all? No one would believe me, anyway. Just like they won't believe you if you tell them I'm a telepath."

Saxon could see the girl reach a decision. "Oh, I wouldn't say that," he broke in before she could voice her thought. "You've lots of other courses. You could snub me or spread tales behind my back."

"I didn't say it!" she retorted hotly. "I thought it. My Lord, I can't even call my thoughts my own!"

"Then it's a bargain."

"I didn't say so."

"No. But you've decided to...."

She stamped her feet. "That's what I mean! That's what I mean!"

"Calm down," he said. "Half the staff is staring at you."

Ileth drew a deep breath, shrugged. A grim smile flashed across her pretty patrician features.

"If you can stand it," she replied with an unexpected twinkle in her hazel-green eyes, "I suppose I can too."

He stood up. "Like to meet the rest of the staff? Fine. You're all settled in your cabin, aren't you? No? Then I'll give you a hand as soon as we finish our tour of introduction."

Ileth's eyes had grown darker and darker.

"Now don't lose your temper," he said hastily.

"I haven't said a damn word. At least let me get my answers out of my mouth."

Saxon laughed, taking her arm. "Come along. We're accelerating at one G constant. We'll have no trouble moving around." He hesitated, then asked in an off hand manner,

"Has Q62 identified himself yet?"

Ileth looked startled, frightened. She tried to draw away but Saxon held onto her arm. "No. No, he hasn't. Please let go. You're hurting me, Jon."

But he didn't release her. "Is he aboard the ship?"

"No. I don't know. General Atomic didn't notify me that he would be." Abruptly, Ileth didn't seem confused any longer. She raised her chin, looked Saxon nakedly in the eyes making no effort to conceal her thoughts. "I think he is," she said simply. "But I don't know. He hasn't identified himself, if he is. I--I haven't seen anyone aboard that I know. I think I'm the only General Atomic agent aboard, and I'm an accredited representative."

Saxon regarded her a moment without speaking. The girl was telling the truth as far as she knew. There could be no doubt about that.

* * * * *

Saxon introduced Ileth to Brand, Government's bio-chemist, to Mercedes, the gray-haired middle-aged woman who was Government's authority in anthropology. He made the circuit of the lounge with her, letting her chat with ethnologists and semantics experts, psycho-historians and zoologists--all of Government's brilliant array of specialists. And all the while he kept his mind open and alert, sifting their varied thought patterns for a betraying sign.

He didn't intercept a single suspicious thought.

They all seemed to be just exactly what they were supposed to be, each one an expert in his field, eager and enthusiastic investigators beginning an unparalleled adventure. Saxon could discover no evidences that any of them had sold out to General Atomic.

If Q62 or any General Atomic agent were among Government's staff, they were perfect in dissembling their thoughts.

From the lounge, Saxon showed Ileth about the ship. He could see it was an experience for the girl.

The _Shooting Star_ had been built along the general design of a cruiser, heavily armed and armored against the possibilities of hostile races inhabiting the planets of the Alpha Centaurian suns.

Her crew was small. Government's staff of scientists numbered fourteen; and only four of the corporations were represented: General Atomic, Tri-World, Amalgamated Plastic and United Spaceways. In spite of the mass of equipment and a year's emergency ration of fuel and supplies, they were not crowded.

Saxon led Ileth through the control room, the officer's mess, the engine room and observation deck. Everywhere they went, Saxon probed the brains of crew and officers.

At the end of two hours, he still had found exactly nothing. Apparently Q62 was not aboard. Ileth asked slyly, "Did you find him?"

They had entered the deck on which the cabins were located and were passing the closed door of number seven.

"Q62?" said Saxon with a puzzled frown. "No--" He halted abruptly, seizing the girl's arm.

"Jon! What is it?"

"Be quiet!"

Saxon's scalp was tingling as if minute electrical shocks were coursing through the roots of his hair.

The Aliens?

The feel was unmistakable to his extra-human sixth sense. And it was emanating from Cabin Seven!

Like a cat he reached the door in one silent bound, pressed the button. The panel slid back noiselessly. Except for a blade of light lancing into the cabin from the lighted passage, only darkness lurked beyond the doorway.

The alien unhuman feel was suddenly so strong that it was like a cold draft pouring through the blackened entrance, sending chills rippling up his spine.

Ileth's eyes were enormous. Saxon could hear her frightened erratic breathing. Her fear-thoughts beat at his brain. "_What is it? What has he found? What's wrong?_"

In spite of himself, Saxon could feel the blood drain out of his cheeks. He wanted suddenly to slam the door and run blindly down the corridor, away from that strange creature lurking in the dark of Cabin Seven.

He controlled himself, reached noiselessly inside the door, pressed the switch. Light flooded the cabin.

"Why, it's just a girl!" said Ileth, who was peering wide-eyed over Saxon's shoulder. She giggled nervously.

Saxon stared at the occupant of the cabin, scarcely crediting his eyes. It was a girl right enough, a flaxen haired girl sleeping easily on her back in the narrow bunk.