Chapter II

Ileth's apartment was on the ninety-eighth level, flush against the transparent plastic dome which hermetically sealed in Adirondaka.

Jon Saxon followed the girl out of the lift, watching her with admiration.

She was a slim, long legged creature in chartreuse green, jodhpur-like trousers that moulded her slender waist and rounded hips with amazing fidelity before flaring at her thighs.

Ileth Urban was as fetching a bit of scientist-bait as General Atomic could have desired.

All the corporations used these girls. They scoured the Solar System for the cleverest, most beautiful ones to be found. They paid them fantastic wages and trained them to worm secrets from susceptible males. Scientific Mata Hari's.

Government itself used them, Saxon was fully aware. Only by employing even more ruthless measures than the corporations was government able to maintain itself. Government had the finest research department anywhere. And the Terrestial Intelligence Service was the most efficient organization of its kind. Not only that; Government had power, power unbelievable in its Space Navy.

Ileth paused, allowing him to come abreast of her, her hazel-green eyes smiling at him.

Saxon hastily blocked out her thoughts in embarrassment. "_You're a pretty little Judas_," he thought, then glanced up as a bright glare lit the night sky.

A trail of orange flame streaked above the city and disappeared like a meteor in reverse. The _Morning Star_, a crack luxury liner, was heading out for Venus. It must be nineteen hours.

"Our last night," said Ileth softly. "Tomorrow we'll be leaving for Alpha Centauri like that ship."

They had reached a door in the glistening plastic face of a building. The door opened automatically, responsive to the girl's personal vibration.

Saxon saw a lambent darkness beyond the entrance. The ceiling of Ileth's apartment was the transparent rind of the city itself. The moon streamed through the crystal plastic, lighting it faintly.

His nerves tightened, his sixth sense of feel exploring the apartment for a trap.

But no warning tingle prickled his skin. Then the lights came on as Ileth passed inside. They glowed from the walls like cold flame.

With a sigh of relief, Saxon saw that the chamber was empty.

"Sit down," said Ileth, "I'll get you a drink." She disappeared through a doorway across the room, stripping her yellow green jacket from her shoulders as she went.

Jon Saxon sank onto a lounge, following Ileth's progress by her thoughts.

"_Soda. Where's that soda? Oh, here it is. Emil must have put it there. Like a man._" Then, "_Contact Emil?_"

A moment's indecision. Saxon could almost hear the girl thinking. "_Not yet_," she decided with a mental shiver. "_Saxon would be no good to us dead._" Then, "_Make the drink strong. Take a gallon to make him drunk. Big brute. Shoulders like a door. I could...._"

Saxon hastily blocked out her thought in embarrassment. The girl's mind was too graphic.

For the hundredth time his brain grappled with the identity of those alien telepaths who had warned him in the street tonight.

The radiation branch of Government's Bureau of Research had been experimenting with thought projection. Could they have been successful? It might account for the alien feel he had experienced for that impenetrable barrier which had defeated his attempt to reach their minds.

A machine?

Unconsciously, he shook his head. His sixth sense, the ability not only to feel a presence but identify it almost as if he were seeing it, convinced him that there had been life in the street, a strange invisible form of life possibly; but the reality of it was inescapable. In some ways his heightened sense of feel was more reliable than his ears or eyes.

Ileth returned bearing a tray with glasses, a decanter of whiskey and soda. "I wasn't long, was I?"

* * * * *

There was a hard bright glitter in her hazel-green eyes. Saxon saw that she had changed to a halter and skirt of Martian microweb. He swallowed, feeling a pulse beginning to tick in his throat. The microweb was as black as the girl's hair, but not anywhere so thick.

Only her cold determination to keep him there until after the sailing, which he could feel like a dash of cold water, defeated her purpose.

She handed him a glass, set the tray on an end table, switched on the telecaster.

Instead of music, the newscaster was blaring forth the announcement of the expedition to Alpha Centauri.

"... greatest page in the annals of the Empire. Tomorrow at nine hours the _Shooting Star_ with a picked crew, with a staff of specialists and representatives from all the great corporations will blast off for Alpha Centauri.

"Under the directorship of John Villainowski of Government's Bureau of Research, the man who developed the stellar drive, the expedition plans to investigate the planetary systems of the Centaurian suns.

"His excellency, Mustapha IX, will be present...."

Ileth snapped off the telecaster.

"Jon," she asked and leaned against him, "why did you sneak out tonight of all nights?"

He sensed the girl's tension, knew that it would be difficult to fool her. Suddenly, he decided to quit beating around the bush and strike straight into the heart of the opposing forces.

"I know you're an agent of General Atomic, Ileth. I've...!" He paused.

Ileth had gasped and drawn back from him. Her thoughts were in turmoil. "_Emil! I must reach Emil!_" was clear.

Saxon went on inexorably. "I've wind of a plot by General Atomic against the _Shooting Star_. If they could get their hands on the stellar drive, no doubt they could control deep space. They'd be in a position to dictate to Government."

Ileth was thinking furiously now, Saxon realized, trying to figure how much he knew and how much he was guessing.

He laughed without amusement. He knew damned little, too damned little.

Only this morning, he had intercepted the stray thought of one of his co-workers and realized that the man had sold out to General Atomic. To his horror he had read in the man's mind where General Atomic, after securing the stellar drive, intended to overthrow Government.

How General Atomic planned to get the drive, who else was in the plot, the man hadn't known. He had been bribed to take orders from a G.A. agent, whom he knew only as Q62.

Saxon couldn't inform the T.I.S. of his knowledge. He had no proof, except what he had read in this one man's mind.

He had told Villainowski of his suspicions. The chief had promised to set the T.I.S. onto the case, but they had turned up no evidence of any kind against the great corporation.

General Atomic had done its work with utmost secrecy, not letting its right hand know what its left hand was doing.

Saxon was desperate. He grasped the girl's slight shoulders. "What do you know about it, Ileth?"

"I don't know anything. Oh Lord, Jon, I'm to be General Atomic's representative aboard the _Shooting Star_, and they've told me nothing of any plot against the ship. Nothing, Jon, I swear it."

With a disheartening feeling of defeat, Jon realized the girl was telling the truth. She had been told nothing of General Atomic's plan. She, too, he read in her frightened thoughts, had been instructed to take orders from a General Atomic's agent whom she knew as Q62.

"Who's Q62?" he shot at her.

Ileth's hazel-green eyes were enormous. "You! How did you know?"

"Who's Q62?"

"I don't know. I've never met him."

"How will you know him?"

"I don't know. They said he would be able to identify himself. That's all. They wouldn't tell me how."

All at once Saxon's skin began to prickle its warning of danger. He released the girl, wheeled towards the door just as it was flung viciously back.

He saw three men in the opening and reached for his dart gun.

With a half sob, Ileth hurled herself on him, bearing him backward to the couch, her arms around his chest, her long legs tangled with his.

"Emil!" she panted. "Quick! He's got a gun!"

"Easy. Easy. Easy," said a man's low amused voice.

Jon Saxon succeeded in throwing Ileth off his chest and surging to his feet. He found himself staring into the tiny barrel of a dart gun. The dart gun was being held steady as a rock by a gray-eyed, yellow-haired man with a faint smile on his wide thin lips.

Saxon let his hand fall away from his holster.

"Get his gun, Ileth."

"Right, Emil."

Saxon felt the girl's cool fingers slip inside his blouse, pluck his automatic from his holster.

"Has he any other weapons?"

She patted Saxon deftly, impersonally, shook her head, her black hair swinging.

"No. That's all."

The blond man lowered his gun. "You may sit down, sir."

Saxon sat down.

* * * * *

There were two others behind the blond man but Saxon kept his eyes on Emil, recognizing a dangerous type. Obviously well educated, intelligent, the blond man was fiercely loyal to General Atomic.

Not such a queer combination in these times, Saxon thought; when the corporations had come to replace countries in men's loyalties.

The anarchist revolt against Bureaucratic-Socialism had seriously weakened Terra and corporate business had fought its way back to power. Determined never again to permit the sacred laws of property to be so violated, it had fastened its tentacles to the very roots of society. It organized a government in an image of itself--a corporate government.

Men became known no longer as American or Spanish but as General Atomic men, or Tri-World men, or Corporate Government men and were as blindly patriotic to their corporations as they had been in earlier ages to the lands of their birth.

Such a one, Saxon recognized, was Emil of General Atomic, a fanatic who would consider it the greatest honor to die for his company.

"You realize, sir," said Emil, "that we regret very much what we must do."

"Why do it, then?" Jon Saxon asked bluntly.

The blond Emil looked shocked. "Are you suggesting treason, sir?"

"I'm not suggesting anything," replied Saxon, who had already read his death sentence in Emil's brain. "But you don't expect me to give you any information, when you plan to kill me immediately after."

Emil's expression was vaguely disturbed. "Nonsense! I'm commissioned to offer you a post in General Atomic's research department at twice your present salary, if you can give us the information we wish."

But Saxon still read nothing but inexorable death in Emil's mind.

"Eyewash," he said.

In the ensuing silence the men's thoughts beat at Saxon's brain like the confusing racket of people talking all at once.

At length Emil moved aside, saying, "We're prepared for obstinacy. Georg, take over."

A plump man of middle age drew up a chair facing Saxon.

"Georg," explained Emil, "is an N.P.A."

Saxon stared into the moon faced neural-psychoanalyst. The man possessed the most unusual pair of twinkling blue eyes like bits of glass, a smooth pink face, thin sandy hair. He was dressed like Emil in loose, comfortable coveralls of a gray siliconex.

He took Saxon's wrist, said pleasantly, "Hmmm, pulse rapid but strong. Unusual nervous control. Strip to the waist, if you please."

As Saxon pulled off his blouse, the plump N.P.A. turned to the third man, obviously his assistant, and said, "Bring the machine, Alph."

The man called Alph lugged a heavy case in front of the couch, opened it. Georg began to attach saucer shaped suction discs to Saxon's temples, the base of his skull, his solar plexus. Wires led from the discs to the machine in the black case.

"Quite ready," said Georg to Emil. "Ask any questions you wish."

Saxon could feel a delicate tingle rippling up his spine into his brain like a mild electric shock. Emil asked, "Do you know the secret of Villainowski's stellar drive?"

"No," returned Saxon. "That's preposterous. No one understands that except Villainowski himself. Do you think Government would be so stupid as to let the secret out?"

The plump N.P.A. who had been studying a bank of dials, looked up and said, "He's lying. From that I would infer that he understands the stellar drive."

"What?" gasped Emil.

With a sinking heart Jon Saxon realized that the blond man had not been expecting such luck. They had thought that he might be able to give them some clue to the stellar drive, but not that he actually could reproduce it.

"What's his torture coefficient?" Emil shot at the N.P.A.

Georg adjusted several dials. The tingling became livid fire coursing up Saxon's spine. His eyes closed, he crushed his lips between his teeth until a trickle of blood coursed down his chin.

The room swayed sickeningly. Sweat burst from his pores, made his sick white face glisten in the indirect lighting.

Then as sudden as it came, the fire smoldered and died out of his spine.

He heard the N.P.A. speak in an awed voice, "His torture coefficient is below his will to live. He'll die first."

* * * * *

Emil began to stride nervously back and forth before the lounge. He swung suddenly on Saxon, saying, "Look, that post on General Atomic's research bureau is still open. I can promise you three times your present salary, and a bonus besides."

"Liar," replied Saxon without hesitation. "I don't need a machine to tell you're lying." He laughed shortly.

The N.P.A.'s plump face looked puzzled. He made rapid adjustments on the machine, bent over the dials again.

"He's not lying," he said in a queer voice. "He knows you intend to kill him as soon as you squeeze him dry of information."

Saxon caught sight of Ileth's white, strained face and grinned at her. She had been as surprised, he read her thoughts, as himself at Emil's opportune entrance. Obviously, Emil had not been supposed to put in an appearance until she had a try at him first.

It was all verification that General Atomic was trying to steal the stellar drive. But Saxon had been able to catch only the scantiest of details from Emil's mind.

General Atomic not only wanted the drive, he sensed, but a monopoly on it. That meant killing or buying off everyone in Government's Bureau of Research who knew the secret of the drive.

Emil said to Saxon, "Suppose I contact General Atomic and put it up to them. I'll confess my orders were to question you, then dispose of you. Frankly, Ileth's reports have convinced us that you couldn't be bought."

"What makes you think that I can now? Anyway, what guarantee have I that their promises aren't as empty as yours?" he asked sceptically.

Georg, the neuro-psychoanalyst, pursed thick lips and interjected himself into the conversation. "General Atomic abides by its contracts," he pointed out.

"Yes. When it's to their advantage."

Emil's eyes blazed; red stained his pale cheek. "Do you mean to imply, sir, that General Atomic is treacherous?"

"Exactly."

"Emil!" said the plump N.P.A., sharply.

Slowly the flush receded from Emil's cheeks, but he held himself stiff as a ram-rod and his eyes were angry.

The N.P.A. turned back to Saxon. "At least, you admit that General Atomic abides by its contracts as long as it's to their advantage."

Saxon nodded, seeing already what was coming.

"Then," pursued Georg. "It certainly would be to their advantage to preserve you alive until you could build a stellar drive. After that...." He shrugged. "You're an intelligent man, Saxon. Rated one of the best physicists in the Empire, in fact. It seems to me that you could easily convince General Atomic that it would be of advantage to them to keep you alive indefinitely. What would you say to a hundred thousand credits a year?"

"Not enough."

"_Two hundred thousand?_"

"One or two ..." Saxon began, then paused in consternation. He had been tricked!

There was a self-satisfied smile on the neuro-psychoanalyst's pudgy features. He had not spoken aloud the words, "Two hundred thousand," but had thought them at Saxon!

"He's a telepath!" said the N.P.A., and began to disconnect the discs from Saxon's body and stow them back in the case.

"A telepath!" Emil ejaculated. "He's a telepath?"

"Exactly," agreed the N.P.A. in dry tones. "I suspected it from the first, but frankly I couldn't believe it. I've never encountered a true telepath before. I didn't think there were any. Individuals who are unusually canny at reading expression, yes. But never any true telepaths. I'm going to request General Atomic to let me perform an autopsy after he's been disposed of. Possibly he's a mutant."

"Disposed of?" ejaculated the blond Emil. "But great stars, Georg! He's invaluable to us. Not only does he possess the secret of the stellar drive, but he can...."

"You're the executive!" retorted Georg sharply, "but I advise you to shoot him now! This second!"

"What do you mean?"

"You're not stupid, man! How much information has he picked from our brains already? If he should escape, the plan would have to be sacrificed. Everything might be lost." Then, sharply, "And don't think about the plan! Shoot him!"

Saxon could read growing conviction in the blond man's mind. He saw Emil's hand, holding the dart gun, begin to rise.

"Look out, Emil!" shrieked Ileth suddenly.

But Saxon had already snatched the plump N.P.A. off his feet, yanking him between himself and Emil. He heard a sharp plop. The N.P.A.'s body quivered as it intercepted Emil's poisoned dart. Saxon realized he was holding aloft a dead man.

The muscles in his burly naked shoulders hunched. He hurled the dead N.P.A. at the blond man who went down, bowled over backwards by the body.

Emil's head struck the plastic floor with a sickening crunch. Saxon caught a painful mental flash as unconsciousness gripped the blond man.

Without a pause, he leaped for Ileth. The girl was fumbling at her waist, where her gun's muzzle had become entangled. Only the fact that the muzzle had caught in her waist band saved him.

She flinched back as Saxon's hand closed on the gun, tore it loose from her grip. There was a rip of cloth and the dart gun came away. Ileth's skirt, freed of its supporting waistband, slid down about her ankles.

Saxon leaped backward, threatening the N.P.A.'s flabbergasted assistant as well as the girl.

"Don't move! Either of you."

The N.P.A.'s assistant was obviously terrified and had no intention of budging.

"_Oh, my skirt!_" Ileth's wild thought came clear as a bell to Saxon, and the girl rolled her eyes toward her feet, where the cloth lay in a black ring. But she didn't move.

Saxon grinned. "Obviously," he said, "you haven't any weapon concealed about yourself. You can pick up your skirt, Ileth."

She snatched it about her waist again, holding the foot long tear together with her hand.

"I'm leaving," he said, "but remember, I can read your thoughts. If either of you make a move towards that audio during the next ten minutes, I'll pop back in and fill you as full of darts as a porcupine."

And he backed, still grinning, through the door.