"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.