The machine had been built to do something else. The murder of Heimie Rosenburg was incidental.

Against the nocturnal skyline, a huge stone residence loomed. Ackers inspected it from a distance. There were no lights burning; everything was locked up tight. Spread out before the house was an acre of grass. David Lantano was probably the last person on Earth to own an acre of grass outright; it was less expensive to buy an entire planet in some other system.

“Let’s go,” Ackers commanded; disgusted by such opulence, he deliberately trampled through a bed of roses on his way up the wide porch steps. Behind him flowed the team of shock-police.

“Gosh,” Lantano rumbled, when he had been roused from his bed. He was a kindly-looking, rather youthful fat man, wearing now an abundant silk dressing robe. He would have seemed more in place as director of a boys’ summer camp; there was an expression of perpetual good humor on his soft, sagging face. “What’s wrong, officer?”

Ackers loathed being called officer. “You’re under arrest,” he stated.

“Me?” Lantano echoed feebly. “Hey, officer, I’ve got lawyers to take care of these things.” He yawned voluminously. “Care for some coffee?” Stupidly, he began puttering around his front room, fixing a pot.

It had been years since Ackers had splurged and bought himself a cup of coffee. With Terran land covered by dense industrial and residential installations there was no room for crops, and coffee had refused to “take” in any other system. Lantano probably grew his somewhere on an illicit plantation in South America—the pickers probably believed they had been transported to some remote colony.

“No thanks,” Ackers said. “Let’s get going.”

Still dazed, Lantano plopped himself down in an easy chair and regarded Ackers with alarm. “You’re serious.” Gradually his expression faded; he seemed to be drifting back to sleep. “Who?” he murmured distantly.

“Heimie Rosenburg.”

“No kidding.” Lantano shook his head listlessly. “I always wanted him in my company. Heimie’s got real charm. Had, I mean.”

It made Ackers nervous to remain here in the vast lush mansion. The coffee was heating, and the smell of it tickled his nose. And, heaven forbid—there on the table was a basket of apricots.

“Peaches,” Lantano corrected, noticing his fixed stare. “Help yourself.”

“Where—did you get them?”

Lantano shrugged. “Synthetic dome. Hydroponics. I forget where … I don’t have a technical mind.”

“You know what the fine is for possessing natural fruit?”

“Look,” Lantano said earnestly, clasping his mushy hands together. “Give me the details on this affair, and I’ll prove to you I had nothing to do with it. Come on, officer.”

“Ackers,” Ackers said.

“Okay, Ackers. I thought I recognized you, but I wasn’t sure; didn’t want to make a fool of myself. When was Heimie killed?”

Grudgingly, Ackers gave him the pertinent information.

For a time Lantano was silent. Then, slowly, gravely, he said: “You better look at those seven cards again. One of those fellows isn’t in the Sirius System … he’s back here.”

Ackers calculated the chances of successfully banishing a man of David Lantano’s importance. His organization—Interplay Export—had fingers all over the galaxy; there’d be search crews going out like bees. But nobody went out banishment distance. The condemned, temporarily ionized, rendered in terms of charged particles of energy, radiated outward at the velocity of light. This was an experimental technique that had failed; it worked only one way.

“Consider,” Lantano said thoughtfully. “If I was going to kill Heimie—would I do it myself? You’re not being logical, Ackers. I’d send somebody.” He pointed a fleshy finger at Ackers. “You imagine I’d risk my own life? I know you pick up everybody … you usually turn up enough specifications.”

“We have ten on you,” Ackers said briskly.

“So you’re going to banish me?”

“If you’re guilty, you’ll have to face banishment like anyone else. Your particular prestige has no bearing.”

Nettled, Ackers added, “Obviously, you’ll be released. You’ll have plenty of opportunity to prove your innocence; you can question each of the ten specifications in turn.”

He started to go on and describe the general process of court procedure employed in the twenty-first century, but something made him pause. David Lantano and his chair seemed to be gradually sinking into the floor. Was it an illusion? Blinking, Ackers rubbed his eyes and peered. At the same time, one of the policemen yelped a warning of dismay; Lantano was quietly leaving them.

“Come back!” Ackers demanded; he leaped forward and grabbed hold of the chair. Hurriedly, one of his men shorted out the power supply of the building; the chair ceased descending and groaned to a halt. Only Lantano’s head was visible above the floor level. He was almost entirely submerged in a concealed escape shaft.

“What seedy, useless—“ Ackers began.

“I know,” Lantano admitted, making no move to drag himself up. He seemed resigned; his mind was again off in clouds of contemplation. “I hope we can clear all this up. Evidently I’m being framed. Tirol got somebody who looks like me, somebody to go in and murder Heimie.”

Ackers and the police crew helped him up from his depressed chair. He gave no resistance; he was too deep in his brooding.

The cab let Leroy Beam off in front of the bar. To his right, in the next block, was the Interior Building… and, on the sidewalk, the opaque blob that was Harvey Garth’s propaganda booth.

Entering the bar, Beam found a table in the back and seated himself. Already he could pick up the faint, distorted murmur of Garth’s reflections. Garth, speaking to himself in a directionless blur, was not yet aware of him.

“Banish it,” Garth was saying. “Banish all of them. Bunch of crooks and thieves.” Garth, in the miasma of his booth, was rambling vitriolically.

“What’s going on?” Beam asked. “What’s the latest?”

Garth’s monologue broke off as he focussed his attention on Beam. “You in there? In the bar?”

“I want to find out about Heimie’s death.”

“Yes,” Garth said. “He’s dead; the files are moving, kicking out cards.”

“When I left Heimie’s apartment,” Beam said, “they had turned up six specifications.” He punched a button on the drink selector and dropped in a token.

“That must have been earlier,” Garth said; “they’ve got more.”

“How many?”

“Ten in all.”

Ten. That was usually enough. And all ten of them laid out by a robot device … a little procession of hints strewn along its path: between the concrete side of the building and the dead body of Heimie Rosenburg.

“That’s lucky,” he said speculatively. “Helps out Ackers.”

“Since you’re paying me,” Garth said, “I’ll tell you the rest. They’ve already gone out on their pick-up: Ackers went along.”

Then the device had been successful. Up to a point, at least. He was sure of one thing: the device should have been out of the apartment. Tirol hadn’t known about Heimie’s death rattle; Heimie had been wise enough to do the installation privately.

Had the rattle not brought persons into the apartment, the device would have scuttled out and returned to Tirol. Then, no doubt, Tirol would have detonated it. Nothing would remain to indicate that a machine could lay down a trail of synthetic clues: blood type, fabric, pipe tobacco, hair... all the rest, and all spurious.

“Who’s the pick-up on?” Beam asked.

“David Lantano.”

Beam winced. “Naturally. That’s what the whole thing’s about; he’s being framed!”

Garth was indifferent; he was a hired employee, stationed by the pool of independent researchers to siphon information from the Interior Department. He had no actual interest in politics; his Banish It! was sheer window-dressing.