That was soon enough.

'Thanks a lot,' he said to Dave De Winter, who stood awkwardly in the middle of the office, wearing his splendid green and silver CLEAN uniform. 'You trot on back to Engel I'll keep in touch with you.' He left the office on a dead run, then, racing down the stairs to the ground floor.

Presently, he was on his way to the satellite.

When the jet'ab had landed at the field, Cravelli hurried down the ramp, purchased a ticket from the nude, golden-haired attendant, and then rushed through gate five, searching for Francy's door.

705, it was - or so he recalled, but under so much tension he felt rattled. With five thousand doors spread out in corridor after corridor - and all around him, on every side, the animated pics of the girls twisted and chirped, trying to snare his attention and entice him to the joys inside.

I'll have to consult the satellite's directory, he decided. That would waste precious time, but what alternative did he have ? Feverishly, he loped down the corridor until he arrived at the immensely extensive, cross-indexed, illuminated directory board, with all its names winking on and off as rooms emptied and refilled, as customers hurried in and out.

It was 507, and it was empty of customers.

When he opened the door Francy said, 'Hello!' and sat up, then, blinking in surprise to see him.

'Mr. Cravelli,' she said uncertainly. 'Is everything all right ?' She slid from the bed, wearing a pale smock of some cheap thin material, and came hesitantly up to him, her body bare and smooth. 'What can I do for you ? Are you here for...'

'Not for pleasure,' Tito Cravelli informed her. 'Button up your damn smock and listen to me. Is there any way you can get George Walt up here ?'

Fancy pondered. "They never visit a crib, normally. I...'

'Suppose there was trouble. A customer refusing to pay.'

'No. A bouncer would show up then. But George Walt would come here if they thought the FBI

or some other police agency had moved in here and was officially arresting us girls.' She pointed to an obscure button on the wall. 'For such an emergency. They have a regular neurosis about the police; they think it's bound to come, sooner or later - they must have a guilty conscience about it. The button, connects to that great big office of theirs.'

'Ring the button,' Cravelli said, and got out his laser rifle seating himself on Francy's bed, he began to assemble it.

Minutes passed.

Standing uneasily at the door, listening, Francy said 'What's going to happen in here Mr.

Cravelli ? I hope there's no ..."

'Be quiet,' he said sharply.

The door of the room opened.

The mutants George Walt stood in the entrance, one hand on the knob, the other three gripping short lengths of metal piping.

Tito Cravelli leveled the laser rifle and said, 'My intention is not to kill both of you but merely one of you. That'll leave the other with half a dead brain, one dead eye, and a deteriorating body attached to him. I don't think you'd appreciate that. Can you threaten me with anything equally dreadful ? I seriously doubt it.'

After a pause one of them - he did not know which - said, 'What - do you want ?' The face was twisting and livid, the two eyes, not in unison, staring, one of them at Tito, the other at his laser rifle.

'Come in and close the door,' Tito Cravelli said.

'Why ?' George Walt demanded. 'What's this all about, anyhow ?'

'Just come on in,' Tito said, and waited.

The mutants entered. The door shut after them and they stood facing him, still gripping the three lengths of metal piping. 'This is George,' the head said presently. 'Who are you ? Let's be reasonable; if you're dissatisfied with the service you've received from this woman - no, can't you see this is a strong-arm robbery ?' the head interrupted itself as the other brother took control of the vocal apparatus. 'He's here to rob us; he brought that weapon with him, didn't he ?'

'You're going to get in touch with Verne Engel,' Tito said. 'And he's going to get in touch with his gunsel, Herbert Lackmore. Together you're going to call this Lackmore back in. We'll do it from your office; obviously we can't call from this woman's crib.' To Francy he said, 'You go ahead of them, lead the way. Start now, please. There's no excess of time.' Within him his pyloric valve began to writhe in spasms; he gritted his teeth and for an instant shut his eyes.

A length of piping whistled past his head.

Tito Cravelli fired the laser rifle at George Walt. One of the two bodies sagged, hit in the shoulder; it was wounded but not dead. 'You see ?' Cravelli said. 'It would be terrible for the one of you that survived.'

'Yes,' the head said, bobbing up and down in a grotesque pumpkin-like fit of nodding. 'We'll work with you, whoever you are. We'll call Engel; we can get this all straightened out. Please.'

Both eyes, each fixed on a different spot, bulged in glazed fear. The right one, on the same side as the laser-wound, had become opaque with pain.

'Good enough,' Tito Cravelli said. He thought, I may be Attorney General yet. Herding them with his laser rifle, be moved George Walt toward the door.

7

The weapon which Herb Lackmore had been provided with contained a costly replica of the encephalic wave-pattern of James Briskin. He needed merely to place it within a few miles of

Briskin, screw in the handle and then, with a switch, detonate it.

It was a mechanism, he decided, which supplied little, if any, personal satisfaction. However, at least it would do the job and that, in the long run, was all that counted. And certainly it insured his personal escape, or at least greatly aided it.

At this moment, nine o'clock at night, Jim Briskin sat upstairs in a room at the Galton Plaza

Hotel, in Chicago, conferring with aides and idea-men; pickets of CLEAN, parading before the notably first class hotel, had seen him enter and had conveyed the word to Lackmore.

I'll do it at exactly nine-fifteen, Lackmore decided. He sat in the back of a rented wheel, the mechanism assembled beside him; it was no larger than a football but rather heavy. It hummed faintly, off-key.

I wonder where the funds for this apparatus appeared from, he wondered. Because these items cost a hell of a lot, or so I've read.

He was, a few minutes later, just making the final preparatory adjustments when two dark, massive, upright shapes materialized along the nocturnal sidewalk close beside the wheel. The shapes appeared to be wearing green and silver uniforms which sparkled faintly, like moonlight.

Cautiously, with a near-Psionic sense of suspicions, Lackmore rolled down the wheel window.

'What do you want ?' he asked the two CLEAN members.

'Get out,' one of them said brusquely.

'Why ?' Lackmore froze, did not budge. Could not.

There's been an alteration of plans. Engel just now buzzed us on the portable seek-com. You're to give that boulder back to us.'

'No,' Lackmore said. Obviously, the CLEAN movement had at the last moment sold out; he did not know exactly why, but there it was. The assassination would not take place as planned - that was all he knew, all he cared about. Rapidly, he began to screw the handle in.

'Engel says to forget it!' the other CLEAN man shouted. 'Don't you understand ?'

'I understand,' Lackmore said, and groped for the detonating switch.

The door of his wheel popped open. One of the CLEAN men grabbed him by the collar, yanked him from the back seat and dragged him kicking and thrashing from the wheel and out onto the sidewalk. The other snatched up the boulder, the expensive weapon, from him and swiftly, expertly, unscrewed the detonating handle.

Lackmore bit and fought. He did not give up.