When I saw that Krak was on their trail, I quickly notified the law offices of Dingaling, Chase and Ambo so the shabby man in the shabby coat could serve the papers and get her locked away. Ambo put the armed

Eagle Eye Security guards on the alert with orders to shoot her on sight, for there was a fifty-thousand-dollar reward on Krak's head-dead or alive.

I thought I could relax because I also had one other trump card: Dr. Phetus P. Crobe.

As a cellologist, Crobe had the skills to create any conceivable monstrosity, any mixture of man and beast, and back on Voltar he had drooled at the thought of manipulating Heller's cellular structure.

And Crobe had acquired one other talent since his arrival on Earth: he had absorbed the best of psychiatric theory and was now held in high esteem at Bellevue. Since he was also equipped with optical and audio bugs, I was able to monitor his progress as the very model of the man-is-mud authority.

But it was Krak that I was really worried about. I pulled her viewer closer to figure out where she was.

All I needed was her location and she was dead!

Anxiously I watched. But Krak's viewer did not tell me much. Unaccountably, she was looking at a bunk and a stack of clothes. It was a very small space. I couldn't figure out how she had gotten there! One minute she was in the dark alley. The next minute she was in this space. Weird! Nerve-wracking.

But she wasn't doing anything I could make out.

I turned my attention to the Crobe viewer. Yes, there was Crobe entering the auditorium for his lecture.

There was a large gathering, an enormous number of Rockecenter staff and security men. Yes! And there was Rockecenter himself! Sitting in a box all draped with various national flags.

An M. C. announced, "And now, ladies and gentlemen of the Rockecenter personal organization, I give you the stellar figure who sits today at the dizzying heights of psychiatric dominance, a peer amongst peers, a psychiatrist's psychiatrist, Dr. Phetus P. Crobe."

Rockecenter applauded.

Crobe got right to work. He was always a no-nonsense professional. He gave a signal and a wheeled stretcher was raced upon the stage. A woman was lying on it, strapped down. Her belly was very swollen. She was star­ing terrified toward the audience, trying to shift her pinioned limbs and get away.

"I've been kidnapped!" she screamed. "Let me go! My husband wants to live with a tramp. He had me..."

Crobe sternly slapped his hand across the woman's

mouth. To the attendant, he snarled, "I dold chu to gag her. She iss inderruding a scientific lecdure!"

With his other hand he gave a signal. Another machine was raced onto the stage. Attendants promptly clamped electrodes on her head. Crobe grasped a handle on the machine and then, hastily snatching his hand from the woman's mouth, slammed the lever down. Letters on his viewer flashed:

PLEASURE

Volts crackled and arced. The woman's body bowed. There was the grind and snap as she crushed her own teeth. She lay still. Crobe lifted the lever, gave a wave of his hand, and the attendants disconnected the machine from the woman and sped it away.

Crobe chuckled. The letters on his screen flashed:

GOOD HUMOR

"Dow," he said, "dat ve haf cured de batient uf the insanity uf objecding, ve can commence. Dis girl vas commidded to Bellevue by de Superior Court for mendal examination. Ven I examined her," and here his voice dropped to an awful and horrified tone, "I vound she vas PREGNANTED!"

A curse of disgust came from the flagged Rockecenter box.

Crobe nodded toward the box and went on. "Pregnancy iss de mosd awful criminal form uf insanity because uf de black widowed spider gene t'eory uf woman's evolution!"

"Hear, hear!" came from Rockecenter in his box.

"I cannot dake de credid vor dis mosd vunderful t'eory now standard do all psychiadry. Dat belonggs do Doctdor Kutzbrain, my learnded colleague. BUT do me goes de broof and credid. De fetus at de crucial stage uf evolutionary development ASSUMES DE VORM DAT BROOFS DE T'EORY!"

He seized an enormous knife. He brought it down with a powerful slash across the woman's belly.

Flesh parted!

Blood spurted!

Crobe got two huge clamps and pulled the flesh and entrails away.

He grabbed some huge pincers. He reached in.

HE PULLED OUT A TARANTULA!

The wriggling black shape was hairy and huge!

It leaped from the pincers and, fully eight inches tall, raced across the stage!

The audience screamed!

Crobe drew a homemade laser-beam gun he must have fashioned. He drew a bead on the giant spider and fired. It fell over in a kicking ball.

He went over and picked it up with his clamps. He held it aloft. "You zee? Doctdor Kutzbrain vas righid! A women developibing in a women!"

An attendant whispered, "This woman is dead."

"Serves her righid!" bellowed Crobe. "She hadt intercourses mit a male!" To the audience he roared, "De Psychiadric Birt' Condrol iss de mosd bital brogram dat hoomanidy hass ever had! SUBBORTD ITD!"

Rockecenter was on his feet, applauding hysterically. This single clapping was not, however, spreading to the large assembled audience.

The Security Chief gave a signal.

All around the vast auditorium, security men levelled automatic weapons at the staff.

"APPLAUD!" roared the Security Chief.

The staff applauded hastily.

Crobe bowed. He proudly walked off the stage, bound for Bellevue where, I hoped, Gods willing, to shortly send the Countess Krak! If she lived.

She might not get Crobe, but she would get other psychiatrists just as efficient.

Oh, what a pleasure it would be to see her corpse just as mangled and dead as that one on the stage!

(Bleep)* her!

The Countess Krak's viewer was puzzling. What was she up to? She had suddenly appeared in front of a lighted expanse.

* The vocodictoscriber on which this was originally written, the vocoscriber used by one Monte Peunwell in making a fair copy and the translator who put this book into the language in which you are reading it, were all members of the Machine Purity League which has, as one of its bylaws: "Due to the extreme sensitivity and delicate sensibilities of machines and to safeguard against blowing fuses, it shall be mandatory that robotbrains in such machinery, on hearing any cursing or lewd words, substitute for such word the sound '(bleep)'. No machine, even if pounded upon, may reproduce swearing or lewdness in any other way than (bleep) and if further efforts are made to get the machine to do anything 'else, the machine has permission to pretend to pack up. This bylaw is made necessary by the in-built mission of all machines to protect biological systems from themselves." – Translator

Aha! A disco! Harlot Haven the neon signs said.

She was going in!

The blare of loud Neo Punk Rock blasted out as she opened the door upon the crowd.

I got on the phone. Ambo answered.

"Your quarry has just gone in the disco, Harlot Haven," I shouted.

"I thought she was going to the girls' apartment."

"Yes, of course she is. But she has stopped off in a disco. Get your process server over there fast! And keep the apartment covered!"

"At once!" said Ambo.

I rang off.

The Countess Krak was being steered through the madly whirling crowd to a table by a waiter who was putting a bill in his pocket. The table was a bit above the dancers and over to the side. A good place to trap a person in.

She sat down. Her eye went straight across the room. The three girls were sitting there! They had not gone home! The Countess had trailed them to a disco!

The poor innocent things were slugging back tall drinks and laughing. Toots Switch gave Maizie another punch in her swollen abdomen and Dolores went into shrieks of laughter.