Beam left.

Very shortly he was driving across town toward his own labs, the small and independent research outfit that he headed, unsupported by a government grant. Resting on the seat beside him was the portable TV unit; it was still silent.

“First of all,” Beam’s gowned technician declared, “it has a power supply approximately seventy times that of a portable TV pack. We picked up the Gamma radiation.” He displayed the usual detector. “So you’re right, it’s not a TV set”

Gingerly, Beam lifted the small unit from the lab bench. Five hours had passed, and still he knew nothing about it. Taking firm hold of the back he pulled with all his strength. The back refused to come off. It wasn’t stuck: there were no seams. The back was not a back; it only looked like a back.

“Then what is it?” he asked.

“Could be lots of things,” the technician said noncommittally; he had been roused from the privacy of his home, and it was now two-thirty in the morning. “Could be some sort of scanning equipment. A bomb. A weapon. Any kind of gadget.” Laboriously, Beam felt the unit all over, searching for a flaw in the surface. “It’s uniform,” he murmured. “A single surface.”

“You bet. The breaks are false—it’s a poured substance. And,” the technician added, “it’s hard. I tried to chip off a representative sample but—” He gestured. “No results.”

“Guaranteed not to shatter when dropped,” Beam said absently. “New extra-tough plastic.” He shook the unit energetically; the muted noise of metal parts in motion reached his ear. “It’s full of guts.”

“We’ll get it open,” the technician promised, “but not tonight.”

Beam replaced the unit on the bench. He could, with bad luck, work days on this one item—to discover, after all, that it had nothing to do with the murder of Heimie Rosenburg. On the other hand …

“Drill me a hole in it,” he instructed. “So we can see it.”

His technician protested: “I drilled; the drill broke. I’ve sent out for an improved density. This substance is imported; somebody hooked it from a white dwarf system. It was conceived under stupendous pressure.”

“You’re stalling,” Beam said, irritated. “That’s how they talk in the advertising media.”

The technician shrugged. “Anyhow, it’s extra hard. A naturally-evolved element, or an artificially-processed product from somebody’s labs. Who has funds to develop a metal like this?”

“One of the big slavers,” Beam said. “That’s where the wealth winds up. And they hop around to various systems … they’d have access to raw materials. Special ores.”

“Can’t I go home?” the technician asked. “What’s so important about this?”

“This device either killed or helped kill Heimie Rosenburg. We’ll sit here, you and I, until we get it open.” Beam seated himself and began examining the check sheet showing which tests had been applied. “Sooner or later it’ll fly open like a clam—if you can remember that far back.”

Behind them, a warning bell sounded.

“Somebody in the anteroom,” Beam said, surprised and wary. “At two-thirty?” He got up and made his way down the dark hall to the front of the building. Probably it was Ackers. His conscience stirred guiltily: somebody had logged the absence of the TV unit.

But it was not Ackers.

Waiting humbly in the cold, deserted anteroom was Paul Tirol; with him was an attractive young woman unknown to Beam. Tirol’s wrinkled face broke into smiles, and he extended a hearty hand. “Beam,” he said. They shook. “Your front door said you were down here. Still working?”

Guardedly, wondering who the woman was and what Tirol wanted, Beam said: “Catching up on some slipshod errors. Whole firm’s going broke.”

Tirol laughed indulgently. “Always a japer.” His deep-set eyes darted; Tirol was a powerfully-built person, older than most, with a somber, intensely-creased face. “Have room for a few contracts? I thought I might slip a few jobs your way… if you’re open.”

“I’m always open,” Beam countered, blocking Tirol’s view of the lab proper. The door, anyhow, had slid itself shut. Tirol had been Heimie’s boss … he no doubt felt entitled to all extant information on the murder. Who did it? When? How? Why? But that didn’t explain why he was here.

“Terrible thing,” Tirol said crudely. He made no move to introduce the woman; she had retired to the couch to light a cigarette. She was slender, with mahogany-colored hair; she wore a blue coat, and a kerchief tied around her head.

“Yes,” Beam agreed. “Terrible.”

“You were there, I understand.”

That explained some of it. “Well,” Beam conceded, “I showed up.”

“But you didn’t actually see it?”

“No,” Beam admitted, “nobody saw it. Interior is collecting specification material. They should have it down to one card before morning.”

Visibly, Tirol relaxed. “I’m glad of that. I’d hate to see the vicious criminal escape. Banishment’s too good for him. He ought to be gassed.”

“Barbarism,” Beam murmured dryly. “The days of the gas chamber. Medieval.”

Tirol peered past him. “You’re working on—” Now he was overtly beginning to pry. “Come now, Leroy. Heimie Rosenburg—God bless his soul—was killed tonight and tonight I find you burning the midnight oil. You can talk openly with me; you’ve got something relevant to his death, haven’t you?”

“That’s Ackers you’re thinking of.”

Tirol chuckled. “Can I take a look?”

“Not until you start paying me; I’m not on your books yet.”

In a strained, unnatural voice, Tirol bleated: “I want it.”

Puzzled, Beam said: “You want what?”

With a grotesque shudder, Tirol blundered forward, shoved Beam aside, and groped for the door. The door flew open and Tirol started noisily down the dark corridor, feeling his way by instinct toward the research labs.

“Hey!” Beam shouted, outraged. He sprinted after the older man, reached the inner door, and prepared to fight it out. He was shaking, partly with amazement, partly with anger. “What the hell?” he demanded breathlessly. “You don’t own me!”

Behind him the door mysteriously gave way. Foolishly, he sprawled backward, half-falling into the lab. There, stricken with helpless paralysis, was his technician. And, coming across the floor of the lab was something small and metallic. It looked like an oversized box of crackers, and it was going lickety-split toward Tirol. The object—metal and gleaming—hopped up into Tirol’s arms, and the old man turned and lumbered back up the hall to the anteroom.

“What was it?” the technician said, coming to life.

Ignoring him, Beam hurried after Tirol. “He’s got it!” he yelled futilely.

“It—” the technician mumbled. “It was the TV set. And it ran.”

II

The file banks at Interior were in agitated flux.

The process of creating a more and more restricted category was tedious, and it took time. Most of the Interior staff had gone home to bed; it was almost three in the morning, and the corridors and offices were deserted. A few mechanical cleaning devices crept here and there in the darkness. The sole source of life was the study chamber of the file banks. Edward Ackers sat patiently waiting for the results, waiting for specifications to come in, and for the file machinery to process them.

To his right a few Interior police played a benign lottery and waited stoically to be sent out for the pick-up. The lines of communication to Heimie Rosenburg’s apartment buzzed ceaselessly. Down the street, along the bleak sidewalk, Harvey Garth was still at his propaganda booth, still flashing his BANISH it! sign and muttering in people’s ears. There were virtually no passersby, now, but Garth went on. He was tireless; he never gave up.

“Psychopath,” Ackers said resentfully. Even where he sat, six floors up, the tinny, carping voice reached his middle ear.