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Highways in Hiding

by George O. Smith · English · Gutenberg #20519 · 463,611 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Highways in Hiding

Author: George O. Smith


        
Release date: February 6, 2007 [eBook #20519]
                Most recently updated: January 1, 2021

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HIGHWAYS IN HIDING ***




Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net









                            HIGHWAYS IN HIDING

                             GEORGE O. SMITH




A LANCER BOOK   1967

Copyright 1956 by George O. Smith
_Highways in Hiding_ is based upon material originally copyrighted by
Greenleaf Publishing Co., 1955.

All rights reserved

Library of Congress Catalog Card No.: 56-10457
Printed in the U.S.A.
_Cover painting by Roy G. Krenkel_

LANCER BOOKS, INC., 185 MADISON AVENUE, NEW YORK, N.Y. 10016

[Transcriber's note: This is a rule 6 clearance. PG has not been able
to find a U.S. copyright renewal.]




    _For my drinking uncle DON and, of course MARIAN_




_Historical Note_


In the founding days of Rhine Institute the need arose for a new
punctuation mark which would indicate on the printed page that the
passage was of mental origin, just as the familiar quotation marks
indicate that the words between them were of verbal origin. Accordingly,
the symbol # was chosen, primarily because it appears on every
typewriter.

Up to the present time, the use of the symbol # to indicate directed
mental communication has been restricted to technical papers, term
theses, and scholarly treatises by professors, scholars, and students of
telepathy.

Here, for the first time in any popular work, the symbol # is used to
signify that the passage between the marks was mental communication.

Steve Cornell, _M. Ing._




STALEMATE


Macklin said, "Please put that weapon down, Mr. Cornell. Let's not add
attempted murder to your other crimes."

"Don't force me to it, then," I told him.

But I knew I couldn't do it. I hated them all. I wanted the whole
Highways in Hiding rolled up like an old discarded carpet, with every
Mekstrom on Earth rolled up in it. But I couldn't pull the trigger. The
survivors would have enough savvy to clean up the mess before our bodies
got cold, and the Highways crowd would be doing business at the same old
stand. Without, I might add, the minor nuisance that people call Steve
Cornell.

What I really wanted was to find Catherine.

And then it came to me that what I really wanted second of all was to
possess a body of Mekstrom Flesh, to be a physical superman....




I


I came up out of the blackness just enough to know that I was no longer
pinned down by a couple of tons of wrecked automobile. I floated on soft
sheets with only a light blanket over me.

I hurt all over like a hundred and sixty pounds of boil. My right arm
was numb and my left thigh was aching. Breathing felt like being stabbed
with rapiers and the skin of my face felt stretched tight. There was a
bandage over my eyes and the place was as quiet as the grave. But I knew
that I was not in any grave because my nose was working just barely well
enough to register the unmistakable pungent odor that only goes with
hospitals.

I tried my sense of perception, but like any delicate and critical
sense, perception was one of the first to go. I could not dig out beyond
a few inches. I could sense the bed and the white sheets and that was
all.

Some brave soul had hauled me out of that crack-up before the fuel tank
went up in the fire. I hope that whoever he was, he'd had enough sense
to haul Catherine out of the mess first. The thought of living without
Catherine was too dark to bear, and so I just let the blackness close
down over me again because it cut out all pain, both physical and
mental.

The next time I awoke there was light and a pleasant male voice saying,
"Steve Cornell. Steve, can you hear me?"

I tried to answer but no sound came out. Not even a hoarse croak.

The voice went on, "Don't try to talk, Steve. Just think it."

#Catherine?# I thought sharply, because most medicos are telepath, not
perceptive.

"Catherine is all right," he replied.

#Can I see her?#

"Lord no!" he said quickly. "You'd scare her half to death the way you
look right now."

#How bad off am I?#

"You're a mess, Steve. Broken ribs, compound fracture of the left tibia,
broken humerus. Scars, mars, abrasions, some flashburn and post-accident
shock. And if you're interested, not a trace of Mekstrom's Disease."

#Mekstrom's Disease--?# was my thought of horror.

"Forget it, Steve. I always check for it because it's been my specialty.
Don't worry."

#Okay. So how long have I been here?#

"Eight days."

#Eight days? Couldn't you do the usual job?#

"You were pretty badly ground up, Steve. That's what took the time. Now,
suppose you tell me what happened?"

#Catherine and I were eloping. Just like most other couples do since
Rhine Institute made it difficult to find personal privacy. Then we
cracked up.#

"What did it?" asked the doctor. "Perceptives like you usually sense
danger before you can see it."

#Catherine called my attention to a peculiar road sign, and I sent my
perception back to take another dig. We hit the fallen limb of a tree
and went over and over. You know the rest.#

"Bad," said the doctor. "But what kind of a sign would call your
interest so deep that you didn't at least see the limb, even if you were
perceiving the sign?"

#Peculiar sign,# I thought. Ornamental wrought iron gizmo with curlicues
and a little decorative circle that sort of looks like the Boy Scout
tenderfoot badge suspended on three spokes. One of the spokes were
broken away; I got involved because I was trying to guess whether it had
been shot away by some vandal who missed the central design.
Then--blooie!#

"It's really too bad, Steve. But you'll be all right in a while."

#Thanks, doctor. Doctor? Doctor--?#

"Sorry, Steve. I forget that everybody is not telepath like I am. I'm
James Thorndyke."

Much later I began to wake up again, and with better clarity of mind, I
found that I could extend my esper as far as the wall and through the
door by a few inches. It was strictly hospital all right; sere white and
stainless steel as far as my esper could reach.

In my room was a nurse, rustling in starched white. I tried to speak,
croaked once, and then paused to form my voice.

"Can--I see--How is--? Where is?" I stopped again, because the nurse was
probably as esper as I was and required a full sentence to get the
thought behind it. Only a telepath like the doctor could have followed
my jumbled ideas. But the nurse was good. She tried:

"Mr. Cornell? You're awake!"

"Look--nurse--"

"Take it easy. I'm Miss Farrow. I'll get the doctor."

"No--wait. I've been here eight days--?"

"But you were badly hurt, you know."

"But the doctor. He said that she was here, too."

"Don't worry about it, Mr. Cornell."

"But he said that she was not badly hurt."

"She wasn't."

"Then why was--is--she here so long?"

Miss Farrow laughed cheerfully. "Your Christine is in fine shape. She is
still here because she wouldn't leave until you were well out of danger.
Now stop fretting. You'll see her soon enough."

Her laugh was light but strained. It sounded off-key because it was as
off-key as a ten-yard-strip of baldfaced perjury. She left in a hurry
and I was able to esper as far as outside the door, where she leaned
back against the wood and began to cry. She was hating herself because
she had blown her lines and she knew that I knew it.

And Catherine had never been in this hospital, because if she had been
brought in with me, the nurse would have known the right name.

Not that it mattered to me now, but Miss Farrow was no esper or she'd
have dug my belongings and found Catherine's name on the license. Miss
Farrow was a telepath; I'd not called my girl by name, only by an
affectionate mental image.




II


I was fighting my body upright when Doctor Thorndyke came running.
"Easy, Steve," he said with a quiet gesture. He pushed me gently back
down in the bed with hands that were as soft as a mother's, but as firm
as the kind that tie bow knots in half-inch bars. "Easy," he repeated
soothingly.

"Catherine?" I croaked pleadingly.

Thorndyke fingered the call button in some code or other before he
answered me. "Steve," he said honestly, "you can't be kept in ignorance
forever. We hoped it would be a little longer, when you were stronger--"

"Stop beating around!" I yelled. At least it felt like I was yelling,
but maybe it was only my mind welling.

"Easy, Steve. You've had a rough time. Shock--" The door opened and a
nurse came in with a hypo all loaded, its needle buried in a fluff of
cotton. Thorndyke eyed it professionally and took it; the nurse faded
quietly from the room. "Take it easy, Steve. This will--"

"No! Not until I know--"

"Easy," he repeated. He held the needle up before my eyes. "Steve," he
said, "I don't know whether you have enough esper training to dig the
contents of this needle, but if you haven't, will you please trust me?
This contains a neurohypnotic. It won't put you under. It will leave you
as wide awake as you are now, but it will disconnect your running gear
and keep you from blowing a fuse." Then with swift deftness that amazed
me, the doctor slid the needle into my arm and let me have the full
load.

I was feeling the excitement rise in me because something was wrong, but
I could also feel the stuff going to work. Within half a minute I was in
a chilled-off frame of mind that was capable of recognizing the facts
but not caring much one way or the other.

When he saw the stuff taking hold, Thorndyke asked, "Steve, just who is
Catherine?"

The shock almost cut through the drug. My mind whirled with all the
things that Catherine was to me, and the doctor followed it every bit of
the way.

"Steve, you've been under an accident shock. There was no Catherine with
you. There was no one with you at all. Understand that and accept it. No
one. You were alone. Do you understand?"

I shook my head. I sounded to myself like an actor reading the script of
a play for the first time. I wanted to pound on the table and add the
vigor of physical violence to my hoarse voice, but all I could do was to
reply in a calm voice:

"Catherine was with me. We were--" I let it trail off because Thorndyke
knew very well what we were doing. We were eloping in the new definition
of the word. Rhine Institute and its associated studies had changed a
lot of customs; a couple intending to commit matrimony today were
inclined to take off quietly and disappear from their usual haunts until
they'd managed to get intimately acquainted with one another. Elopement
was a means of finding some personal privacy.

We should have stayed at home and faced the crude jokes that haven't
changed since Pithecanthropus first discovered that sex was funny. But
our mutual desire to find some privacy in this modern fish-bowl had put
me in the hospital and Catherine--where--?

"Steve, listen to me!"

"Yeah?"

"I know you espers. You're sensitive, maybe more so than telepaths. More
imagination--"

This was for the birds in my estimation. Among the customs that Rhine
has changed was the old argument as to whether women or men were
smarter. Now the big argument was whether espers or telepaths could get
along better with the rest of the world.

Thorndyke laughed at my objections and went on: "You're in accident
shock. You piled up your car. You begin to imagine how terrible it would
have been if your Catherine had been with you. Next you carefully build
up in your subconscious mind a whole and complete story, so well put
together that to you it seems to be fact."

But, #--how could anyone have taken a look at the scene of the accident
and not seen traces of woman? My woman.#

"We looked," he said in answer to my unspoken question. "There was not a
trace, Steve."

#Fingerprints?#

"You'd been dating her."

#Naturally!#

Thorndyke nodded quietly. "There were a lot of her prints on the remains
of your car. But no one could begin to put a date on them, or tell how
recent was the latest, due to the fire. Then we made a door to door
canvas of the neighborhood to be sure she hadn't wandered off in a daze
and shock. Not even a footprint. Nary a trace." He shook his head
unhappily. "I suppose you're going to ask about that travelling bag you
claim to have put in the trunk beside your own. There was no trace of
any travelling bag."

"Doctor," I asked pointedly, "if we weren't together, suppose you tell
me first why I had a marriage license in my pocket; second, how come I
made a date with the Reverend Towle in Midtown; and third, why did I
bother to reserve the bridal suite in the Reignoir Hotel in Westlake? Or
was I nuts a long time before this accident. Maybe," I added, "after
making reservations, I had to go out and pile myself up as an excuse for
not turning up with a bride."

"I--all I can say is that there was not a trace of woman in that
accident."

"You've been digging in my mind. Did you dig her telephone number?"

He looked at me blankly.

"And you found what, when you tried to call her?"

"I--er--"

"Her landlady told you that Miss Lewis was not in her apartment because
Miss Lewis was on her honeymoon, operating under the name of Mrs. Steve
Cornell. That about it?"

"All right. So now you know."

"Then where the hell is she, Doc?" The drug was not as all-powerful as
it had been and I was beginning to feel excitement again.

"We don't know, Steve."

"How about the guy that hauled me out of that wreck? What does he say?"

"He was there when we arrived. The car had been hauled off you by block
and tackle. By the time we got there the tackle had been burned and the
car was back down again in a crumpled mass. He is a farmer by the name
of Harrison. He had one of his older sons with him, a man about
twenty-four, named Phillip. They both swore later that there was no
woman in that car nor a trace of one."

"Oh, he did, did he?"

Dr. Thorndyke shook his head slowly and then said very gently. "Steve,
there's no predicting what a man's mind will do in a case of shock. I've
seen 'em come up with a completely false identity, all the way back to
childhood. Now, let's take your case once more. Among the other
incredible items--"

"Incredible?" I roared.

"Easy. Hear me out. After all, am I to believe your unsubstantiated
story or the evidence of a whole raft of witnesses, the police detail,
the accident squad, and the guys who hauled you out of a burning car
before it blew up? As I was saying, how can we credit much of your tale
when you raved about one man lifting the car and the other hauling you
out from underneath?"

I shrugged. "That's obviously a mistaken impression. No one could--"

"So when you admit that one hunk of your story is mistaken--"

"That doesn't prove the rest is false!"

"The police have been tracking this affair hard," said the doctor
slowly. "They've gotten nowhere. Tell me, did anyone see you leave that
apartment with Miss Lewis?"

"No," I said slowly. "No one that knew us."

Thorndyke shook his head unhappily. "That's why we have to assume that
you are in post-accident shock."

I snorted angrily. "Then explain the license, the date with the
reverend, the hotel reservation?"

Thorndyke said quietly, "Hear me out, Steve. This is not my own idea
alone, but the combined ideas of a number of people who have studied the
human mind--"

"In other words, I'm nuts?"

"No. Shock."

"Shock?"

He nodded very slowly. "Let's put it this way. Let's assume that you
wanted this marriage with Miss Lewis. You made preparations, furnished
an apartment, got a license, made a date with a preacher, reserved a
honeymoon suite, and bought flowers for the bride. You take off from
work, arrive at her door, only to find that Miss Lewis has taken off for
parts unknown. Maybe she left you a letter--"

"Letter!"

"Hear me out, Steve. You arrive at her apartment and find her gone. You
read a letter from her saying that she cannot marry you. This is a
rather deep shock to you and you can't face it. Know what happens?"

"I blow my brains out along a country road at ninety miles per hour."

"Please, this is serious."

"It sounds incredibly stupid to me."

"You're rejecting it in the same way you rejected the fact that Miss
Lewis ran away rather than marry you."

"Do go on, Doctor."

"You drive along the same road you'd planned to take, but the
frustration and shock pile up to put you in an accident-prone frame of
mind. You then pile up, not consciously, but as soon as you come upon
something like that tree limb which can be used to make an accident
authentic."

"Oh, sure."

Thorndyke eyed me soberly. "Steve," he asked me in a brittle voice, "you
won't try to convince me that any esper will let physical danger of that
sort get close enough to--"

"I've told you how it happened. My attention was on that busted sign!"

"Fine. More evidence to the fact that Miss Lewis was with you? Now
listen to me. In accident-shock you'd not remember anything that your
mind didn't want you to recall. Failure is a hard thing to take. So now
you can blame your misfortune on that accident."

"So now you tell me how you justify the fact that Catherine told
landladies, friends, bosses, and all the rest that she was going to
marry me a good long time before I was ready to be verbal about my
plans?"

"I--"

"Suppose I've succeeded in bribing everybody to perjure themselves.
Maybe we all had it in for Catherine, and did her in?"

Thorndyke shrugged. "I don't know," he said. "I really don't know,
Steve. I wish I did."

"That makes two of us," I grunted. "Hasn't anybody thought of arresting
me for kidnapping, suspicion of murder, reckless driving and cluttering
up the highway with junk?"

"Yes," he said quietly. "The police were most thorough. They had two of
their top men look into you."

"What did they find?" I asked angrily. No man likes to have his mind
turned inside out and laid out flat so that all the little wheels,
cables and levers are open to the public gaze. On the other hand, since
I was not only innocent of any crime but as baffled as the rest of them,
I'd have gone to them willingly to let them dig, to see if they could
dig past my conscious mind into the real truth.

"They found that your story was substantially an honest one."

"Then why all this balderdash about shock, rejection, and so on?"

He shook his head. "None of us are supermen," he said simply. "Your
story was honest, you weren't lying. You believe every word of it. You
saw it, you went through it. That doesn't prove your story true."

"Now see here--"

"It does prove one thing; that you, Steve Cornell, did not have any
malicious, premeditated plans against Catherine Lewis. They've checked
everything from hell to breakfast, and so far all we can do is make
long-distance guesses as to what happened."

I snorted in my disgust. "That's a telepath for you. Everything so
neatly laid out in rows of slats like a snow fence. Me--I'm going to
consult a scholar and have him really dig me deep."

Thorndyke shook his head. "They had their top men, Steve. Scholar
Redfern and Scholar Berks. Both of them Rhine Scholars, _magna cum
laude_."

I blinked as I always do when I am flabbergasted. I've known a lot of
doctors of this and that, from medicine to languages. I've even known a
scholar or two, but none of them intimately. But when a doctor of psi is
invited to take his scholarte at Rhine, that's it, brother; I pass.

Thorndyke smiled. "You weren't too bad yourself, Steve. Ran twelfth in
your class at Illinois, didn't you?"

I nodded glumly. "I forgot to cover the facts. They'd called all the
bright boys out and collected them under one special-study roof. I
majored in mechanical ingenuity not psi. Hoped to get a D. Ing. out of
it, at least, but had to stop. Partly because I'm not ingenious enough
and partly because I ran out of cash."

Doctor Thorndyke nodded. "I know how it is," he said. I realized that he
was leading me away from the main subject gently, but I couldn't see how
to lead him back without starting another verbal hassle. He had me cold.
He could dig my mind and get the best way to lead me away, while I
couldn't read his. I gave up. It felt better, too, getting my mind off
this completely baffling puzzle even for a moment. He caught my thoughts
but his face didn't twitch a bit as he picked up his narrative smoothly:

"I didn't make it either," he said unhappily. "I'm psi and good. But I'm
telepath and not esper. I weasled my way through pre-med and medical by
main force and awkwardness, so to speak." He grinned at me sheepishly.
"I'm not much different than you or any other psi. The espers all think
that perception is superior to the ability to read minds, and vice
versa. I was going to show 'em that a telepath can make Scholar of
Medicine. So I 'pathed my way through med by reading the minds of my
fellows, who were all good espers. I got so good that I could read the
mind of an esper watching me do a delicate dissecting job, and move my
hands according to his perception. I could diagnose the deep ills with
the best of them--so long as there was an esper in the place."

"So what tripped you up?"

"Telepaths make out best dealing with people. Espers do better with
things."

"Isn't medicine a field that deals with people?"

He shook his head. "Not when a headache means spinal tumor, or
indigestion, or a bad cold. 'Doctor,' says the patient, 'I've a bad ache
along my left side just below the ribs,' and after you diagnose, it
turns out to be acute appendicitis. You see, Steve, the patient doesn't
know what's wrong with him. Only the symptoms. A telepath can follow the
patient's symptoms perfectly, but it takes an esper to dig in his guts
and perceive the tumor that's pressing on the spine or the striae on his
liver."

"Yeah."

"So I flopped on a couple of tests that the rest of the class sailed
through, just because I was not fast enough to read their minds and put
my own ability to work. It made 'em suspicious and so here I am, a mere
doctor instead of a scholar."

"There are fields for you, I'm sure."

He nodded. "Two. Psychiatry and psychology, neither of which I have any
love for. And medical research, where the ability to grasp another
doctor or scholar's plan, ideas and theories is slightly more important
than the ability to dig esper into the experiments."

"Don't see that," I said with a shake of my head.

"Well, Steve, let's take Mekstrom's Disease, for instance."

"Let's take something simple. What I know about Mekstrom's Disease could
be carved on the head of a pin with a blunt butter knife."

"Let's take Mekstrom's. That's my chance to make Scholar of Medicine,
Steve, if I can come up with an answer to one of the minor questions.
I'll be in the clinical laboratory where the only cases present are
those rare cases of Mekstrom's. The other doctors, espers every one of
them, and the scholars over them, will dig the man's body right down to
the last cell, looking and combing--you know some of the better espers
can actually dig into the constituency of a cell?--but I'll be the
doctor who can collect all their information, correlate it, and maybe
come up with an answer."

"You picked a dilly," I told him.

It was a real one, all right. Otto Mekstrom had been a mechanic-tech at
White Sands Space Station during the first flight to Venus, Mars and
Moon round-trip with landings. About two weeks after the ship came home,
Otto Mekstrom's left fingertips began to grow hard. The hardening
crawled up slowly until his hand was like a rock. They studied him and
worked over him and took all sorts of samples and made all sorts of
tests until Otto's forearm was as hard as his hand. Then they amputated
at the shoulder.

But by that time, Otto Mekstrom's toes on both feet were getting solid
and his other hand was beginning to show signs of the same. On one side
of the creepline the flesh was soft and normal, but on the other it was
all you could do to poke a sharp needle into the skin. Poor Otto ended
up a basket case, just in time to have the damned stuff start all over
again at the stumps of his arms and legs. He died when hardening reached
his vitals.

Since that day, some twenty-odd years ago, there had been about thirty
cases a year turn up. All fatal, despite amputations and everything else
known to modern medical science. God alone knew how many unfortunate
human beings took to suicide without contacting the big Medical Research
Center at Marion, Indiana.

Well, if Thorndyke could uncover something, no one could claim that a
telepath had no place in medicine. I wished him luck.

I did not see Thorndyke again in that hospital. They released me the
next day and then I had nothing to do but to chew my fingernails and
wonder what had happened to Catherine.




III


I'd rather not go into the next week and a half in detail. I became
known as the bridegroom who lost his bride, and between the veiled
accusations and the half-covered snickers, life was pretty miserable. I
talked to the police a couple-three times, first as a citizen asking for
information and ending up as a complainant against party or parties
unknown. The latter got me nowhere. Apparently the police had more lines
out than the Grand Bank fishing fleet and were getting no more nibbles
than they'd get in the Dead Sea. They admitted it; the day had gone when
the police gave out news reports that an arrest was expected hourly,
meaning that they were baffled. The police, with their fine collection
of psi boys, were willing to admit when they were really baffled. I
talked to telepaths who could tell me what I'd had for breakfast on the
day I'd entered pre-school classes, and espers who could sense the color
of the clothing I wore yesterday. I've a poor color-esper, primitive so
to speak. These guys were good, but no matter how good they were,
Catherine Lewis had vanished as neatly as Ambrose Bierce.

I even read Charles Fort, although I have no belief in the supernatural,
and rather faint faith in the Hereafter. And people who enter the
Hereafter leave their remains behind for evidence.

Having to face Catherine's mother and father, who came East to see me,
made me a complete mental wreck.

It is harder than you think to face the parents of a woman you loved,
and find that all you can tell them is that somehow you fouled your
drive, cracked up, and lost their daughter. Not even dead-for-sure.
Death, I think, we all could have faced. But this uncertainty was
something that gnawed at the soul's roots and left it rotting.

To stand there and watch the tears in the eyes of a woman as she asks
you, "But can't you remember, son?" is a little too much, and I don't
care to go into details.

The upshot of it was, after about ten days of lying awake nights and
wondering where she was and why. Watching her eyes peer out of a metal
casting at me from a position sidewise of my head. Nightmares, either
the one about us turning over and over and over, or Mrs. Lewis pleading
with me only to tell her the truth. Then having the police inform me
that they were marking this case down as "unexplained." I gave up. I
finally swore that I was going to find her and return with her, or I was
going to join her in whatever strange, unknown world she had entered.

       *       *       *       *       *

The first thing I did was to go back to the hospital in the hope that
Dr. Thorndyke might be able to add something. In my unconscious
ramblings there might be something that fell into a pattern if it could
be pieced together.

But this was a failure, too. The hospital super was sorry, but Dr.
Thorndyke had left for the Medical Research Center a couple of days
before. Nor could I get in touch with him because he had a six-week
interim vacation and planned a long, slow jaunt through Yellowstone,
with neither schedule nor forwarding addresses.

I was standing there on the steps hoping to wave down a cruising
coptercab when the door opened and a woman came out. I turned to look
and she recognized me. It was Miss Farrow, my former nurse.

"Why, Mr. Cornell, what are you doing back here?"

"Mostly looking for Thorndyke. He's not here."

"I know. Isn't it wonderful, though? He'll get his chance to study for
his scholarte now."

I nodded glumly. "Yeah," I said. It probably sounded resentful, but it
is hard to show cheer over the good fortune of someone else when your
own world has come unglued.

"Still hoping," she said. It was a statement and not a question.

I nodded slowly. "I'm hoping," I said. "Someone has the answer to this
puzzle. I'll have to find it myself. Everyone else has given up."

"I wish you luck," said Miss Farrow with a smile. "You certainly have
the determination."

I grunted. "It's about all I have. What I need is training. Here I am, a
mechanical engineer, about to tackle the job of a professional detective
and tracer of missing persons. About all I know about the job is what I
have read. One gets the idea that these writers must know something of
the job, the way they write about it. But once you're faced with it
yourself, you realize that the writer has planted his own clues."

Miss Farrow nodded. "One thing," she suggested, "have you talked to the
people who got you out from under your car yet?"

"No, I haven't. The police talked to them and claimed they knew nothing.
I doubt that I can ask them anything that the police have not satisfied
themselves about."

Miss Farrow looked up at me sidewise. "You won't find anything by asking
people who have never heard of you."

"I suppose not."

A coptercab came along at that moment, and probably sensing my
intention, he gave his horn a tap. I'd have liked to talk longer with
Miss Farrow, but a cab was what I wanted, so with a wave I took it and
she went on down the steps to her own business.

I had to pause long enough to buy a new car, but a few hours afterward I
was rolling along that same highway with my esper extended as far as I
could in all directions. I was driving slowly, this time both alert and
ready.

I went past the scene of the accident slowly and shut my mind off as I
saw the black-burned patch. The block was still hanging from an overhead
branch, and the rope that had burned off was still dangling, about two
feet of it, looped through the pulleys and ending in a tapered, burned
end.

I turned left into a driveway toward the home of the Harrisons and went
along a winding dirt road, growing more and more conscious of a dead
area ahead of me.

It was not a real dead zone, because I could still penetrate some of the
region. But as far as really digging any of the details of the rambling
Harrison house, I could get more from my eyesight than from any sense of
perception. But even if they couldn't find a really dead area, the
Harrisons had done very well in finding one that made my sense of
perception ineffective. It was sort of like looking through a light fog,
and the closer I got to the house the thicker it became.

Just about the point where the dead area was first beginning to make its
effect tell, I came upon a tall, browned man of about twenty-four who
had been probing into the interior of a tractor up to the time he heard
my car. He waved, and I stopped.

"Mr. Harrison?"

"I'm Phillip. And you are Mr. Cornell."

"Call me Steve like everybody else," I said. "How'd you guess?"

"Recognized you," he said with a grin. "I'm the guy that pulled you
out."

"Thanks," I said, offering a hand.

He chuckled. "Steve, consider the hand taken and shook, because I've
enough grime to muss up a regiment."

"It won't bother me," I said.

"Thanks, but it's still a gesture, and I appreciate it, but let's be
sensible. I know you can wash, but let's shake later. What can I do for
you?"

"I'd like a first-hand account, Phil."

"Not much to tell. Dad and I were pulling stumps over about a thousand
feet from the wreck. We heard the racket. I am esper enough to dig that
distance with clarity, so we knew we'd better bring along the block and
tackle. The tractor wouldn't go through. So we came on the double, Dad
rigged the tackle and hoisted and I took a running dive, grabbed and
hauled you out before the whole thing went _Whoosh!_ We were both lucky,
Steve."

I grunted a bit but managed to nod with a smile.

"I suppose you know that I'm still trying to find my fiancée?"

"I'd heard tell," he said. He looked at me sharply. I'm a total blank as
a telepath, like all espers, but I could tell what he was thinking.

"Everybody is convinced that Catherine was not with me," I admitted.
"But I'm not. I know she was."

He shook his head slowly. "As soon as we heard the screech of brakes and
rubber we esped the place," he said quietly. "We dug you, of course. But
no one else. Even if she'd jumped as soon as that tree limb came into
view, she could not have run far enough to be out of range. As for
removing a bag, she'd have had to wait until the slam-bang was over to
get it out, and by the time your car was finished rolling, Dad and I
were on the way with help. She was not there, Steve."

#You're a goddam liar!#

Phillip Harrison did not move a muscle. He was blank telepathically. I
was esping the muscles in his stomach, under his loose clothing, for
that first tensing sign of anger, but nothing showed. He had not been
reading my mind.

I smiled thinly at Phil Harrison and shrugged.

He smiled back sympathetically, but behind it I could see that he was
wishing that I'd stop harping on a dead subject. "I sincerely wish I
could be of help," he said. In that he was sincere. But somewhere,
someone was not, and I wanted to find out who it was.

The impasse looked as though it might go on forever unless I turned away
and left. I had no desire to leave. Not that Phil could help me, but
even though this was a dead end, I was loath to leave the place because
it was the last place where I had been close to Catherine.

The silence between us must have been a bit strained at this point, but
luckily we had an interruption. I perceived motion, turned and caught
sight of a woman coming along the road toward us.

"My sister," said Phil. "Marian."

Marian Harrison was quite a girl; if I'd not been emotionally tied to
Catherine Lewis, I'd have been happy to invite myself in. Marian was
almost as tall as I am, a dark, brown-haired woman with eyes of a
startling, electricity colored blue. She was about twenty-two, young and
healthy. Her skin was tanned toast brown so that the bright blue eyes
fairly sparked out at you. Her red mouth made a pleasing blend with the
tan of her skin and her teeth gleamed white against the dark when she
smiled.

Insultingly, I made some complimentary but impolite mental observations
about her figure, but Marion did not appear to notice. She was no
telepath.

"You're Mr. Cornell," she said, "I remembered you," she said quietly.
"Please believe us, Mr. Cornell, when we extend our sympathy."

"Thanks," I said glumly. "Please understand me, Miss Harrison. I
appreciate your sympathy, but what I need is action and information and
answers. Once I get those, the sympathy won't be needed."

"Of course I understand," she replied instantly. "We are all aware that
sympathy is a poor substitute. All the world grieving with you doesn't
turn a stitch to help you out of your trouble. All we can do is to wish,
with you, that it hadn't happened."

"That's the point," I said helplessly. "I don't even know what
happened."

"That makes it even worse," she said softly. Marian had a pleasant
voice, throaty and low, that sounded intimate even when talking about
something pragmatic. "I wish we could help you, Steve."

"I wish someone could."

She nodded. "They asked me about it, too, even though I was not present
until afterward. They asked me," she said thoughtfully, "about the
mental attitude of a woman running off to get married. I told them that
I couldn't speak for your woman, but that I might be able to speak for
me, putting myself in the same circumstances."

She paused a moment, and her brother turned idly back to his tractor and
fitted a small end wrench to a bolt-head and gave it a twist. He seemed
to think that as long as Marian and I were talking, he could well afford
to get along with his work. I agreed with him. I wanted information, but
I did not expect the entire world to stop progress to help me. He spun
the bolt and started on another, lost in his job while Marian went on:

"I told them that your story was authentic--the one about the bridal
nightgown." A very slight color came under the deep tan. "I told them
that I have one, too, still in its wrapper, and that someday I'd be
planning marriage and packing a go-away bag with the gown shaken out and
then packed neatly. I told them that I'd be doing the same thing no
matter whether we were having a formal church wedding with a four-alarm
reception and all the trimmings or a quiet elopement such as you were. I
told them that it was the essentials that count, not the trimmings and
the tinsel. My questioner's remark was to the effect that either you
were telling the truth, or that you had esped a woman about to marry and
identified her actions with your own wishes."

"I know which," I said with a sour smile. "It was both."

Marian nodded. "Then they asked me if it were probable that a woman
would take this step completely unprepared and I laughed at them. I told
them that long before Rhine, women were putting their nuptial affairs in
order about the time the gentleman was beginning to view marriage with
an attitude slightly less than loathing, and that by the time he popped
the question, she'd been practicing writing her name as 'Mrs.' and
picking out the china-ware and prospective names for the children, and
that if any woman had ever been so stunned by a proposal of marriage
that she'd take off without so much as a toothbrush, no one in history
had ever heard of her."

"Then you begin to agree with me?"

She shrugged. "Please," she said in that low voice, "don't ask me my
opinion of your veracity. You believe it, but all the evidence lies
against you. There was not a shred of woman-trace anywhere along your
course, from the point along the road where you first caught sight of
the limb that threw you to the place where you piled up. Nor was there a
trace anywhere in a vast circle--almost a half mile they searched--from
the crack-up. They had doctors of psi digging for footprints, shreds of
clothing, everything. Not a trace."

"But where did she go?" I cried, and when I say 'cried' I mean just
that.

Marian shook her head very slowly. "Steve," she said in a voice so low
that I could hardly hear her over the faint shrill of bolts being
unscrewed by her brother, "so far as we know, she was never here. Why
don't you forget her--"

I looked at her. She stood there, poised and a bit tensed as though she
were trying to force some feeling of affectionate kinhood across the gap
that separated us, as though she wanted to give me both physical and
mental comfort despite the fact that we were strangers on a ten-minute
first-meeting. There was distress in her face.

"Forget her--?" I ground out. "I'd rather die!"

"Oh Steve--no!" One hand went to her throat and the other came out to
fasten around my forearm. Her grip was hard.

I stood there wondering what to do next. Marian's grip on my arm relaxed
and she stepped back.

I pulled myself together. "I'm sorry," I told her honestly. "I'm putting
you through a set of emotional hurdles by bringing my problems here. I'd
better take them away."

She nodded very slowly. "Please go. But please come back once you get
yourself squared away, no matter how. We'd all like to see you when you
aren't all tied up inside."

Phil looked up from the guts of the tractor. "Take it easy, Steve," he
said. "And remember that you do have friends here."

Blindly I turned from them and stumbled back to my car. They were a pair
of very fine people, firm, upright. Marian's grip on my arm had been no
weaker than her sympathy, and Phil's less-emotional approach to my
trouble was no less deep, actually. It was as strong as his good right
arm, loosening the head bolts of a tractor engine with a small
adjustable wrench.

I'd be back. I wanted to see them again. I wanted to go back there with
Catherine and introduce them to her. But I was definitely going to go
back.

I was quite a way toward home before I realized that I had not met the
old man. I bet myself that Father Harrison was quite the firm, active
patriarch.




IV


The days dragged slowly. I faced each morning hopefully at first, but as
the days dragged on and on, I began to feel that each morning was
opening another day of futility, to be barely borne until it was time to
flop down in weariness. I faced the night in loneliness and in anger at
my own inability to do something productive.

I pestered the police until they escorted me to the door and told me
that if I came again, they'd take me to another kind of door and loose
thereafter the key. I shrugged and left disconsolately, because by that
time I had been able to esp, page by page, the entire file that dealt
with the case of "Missing Person: Lewis, Catherine," stamped "Inactive,
but not Closed."

I hated the words.

But as the days dragged out, one after another, with no respite and no
hope, my raw nervous system began to heal. It was probably a case of
numbness; you maul your thumb with a hammer and it will hurt just so
long before it stops.

I was numb for a long time. I remember night after night, lying awake
and staring into the darkness at the wall I knew was beside me, and I
hated my esper because I wanted to project my mind out across some
unknown space to reach for Catherine's mind. If we'd both been telepaths
we could cross the universe to touch each other with that affectionate
tenderness that mated telepaths always claim they have.

Instead I found myself more aware of a clouded-veil perception of Marian
Harrison as she took my arm and looked into my face on that day when I
admitted that I found little worth living for.

I knew what that meant--nothing. It was a case of my subconscious mind
pointing out that the available present was more desirable than the
unavailable not-present. At first I resented my apparent inconstancy in
forming an esper projection of Marian Harrison when I was trying to
project my blank telepathic inadequacy to Catherine. But as the weeks
faded into the past, the shock and the frustration began to pale and I
found Marian's projective image less and less an unwanted intrusion and
more and more pleasant.

I had two deeply depressed spells in those six weeks. At the end of the
fourth week I received a small carton containing some of my personal
junk that had been in Catherine's apartment. A man can't date his girl
for weeks without dropping a few things like a cigarette lighter, a tie
clip, one odd cuff-link, some papers, a few letters, some books, and
stuff both valuable and worthless that had turned up as gifts for one
reason or another. It was a shock to get this box and its arrival
bounced me deep into a doldrum-period of three or four days.

Then at the end of the sixth week I received a card from Dr. Thorndyke.
It contained a lithograph in stereo of some scene in Yellowstone other
than Old Faithful blowing its stack.

On the message side was a cryptic note:

     _Steve: I just drove along that road in the right side of the
     picture. It reminded me of yours, so I'm writing because I want to
     know how you are making out. I'll be at the Med-Center in a couple
     of weeks, you can write me there.

     Jim Thorndyke._

I turned the postcard over and eyed it critically. Then I got it. Along
the roadside was a tall ornamental standard of wrought iron. The same
design as the road signs along that fatal highway of mine.

I sat there with a magnifying glass on the roadsign; its stereo image
standing up alongside the road in full color and solidity. It took me
back to that moment when Catherine had wriggled against my side,
thrilling me with her warmth and eagerness.

That put me down a few days, too.

       *       *       *       *       *

Another month passed. I'd come out of my shell quite a bit in the
meantime. I now felt that I could walk in a bar and have a drink without
wondering whether all the other people in the place were pointing at me.
I'd cut myself off from all my previous friends, and I'd made no new
friends in the weeks gone by. But I was getting more and more lonely and
consequently more and more inclined to speak to people and want friends.

The accident had paled from its original horror; the vital scene
returned only infrequently. Catherine was assuming the position of a
lost love rather than a sweetheart expected to return soon. I remembered
the warmth of her arms and the eagerness of her kiss in a nostalgic way
and my mind, especially when in a doze, would play me tricks. I would
recall Catherine, but when she came into my arms, I'd be holding Marian,
brown and tawny, with her electric blue eyes and her vibrant nature.

But I did nothing about it. I knew that once I had asked Marian Harrison
for a date I would be emotionally involved. And then if--no,
when--Catherine turned up I would be torn between desires.

I would wake up and call myself all sorts of a fool. I had seen Marian
for a total of perhaps fifteen minutes--in the company of her brother.

But eventually dreaming loses its sting just as futile waiting and
searching does, and I awoke one morning in a long and involved debate
between my id and my conscience. I decided at that moment that I would
take that highway out and pay a visit to the Harrison farm. I was
salving my slightly rusty conscience by telling myself that it was
because I had never paid my respects to Father Harrison, but not too
deep inside I knew that if Father were missing and Daughter were present
I'd enjoy my visit to the farm with more relish.

But my id took a licking because the doorbell rang about nine o'clock
that morning and when I dug the doorstep I came up with two gentlemen
wearing gold badges in leather folders in their jacket pockets.

I opened the door because I couldn't have played absent to a team
consisting of one esper and one telepath. They both knew I was home.

"Mr. Cornell, we'll waste no time. We want to know how well you know
Doctor James Thorndyke."

I didn't blink at the bluntness of it. It is standard technique when an
esper-telepath team go investigating. The telepath knew all about me,
including the fact that I'd dug their wallets and identification cards,
badges and the serial numbers of the nasty little automatics they
carried. The idea was to drive the important question hard and first; it
being impossible to not-think the several quick answers that pop through
your mind. What I knew about Thorndyke was sketchy enough but they got
it all because I didn't have any reason for covering up. I let them know
that, too.

Finally, #That's about all,# I thought. #Now--why?#

The telepath half of the team answered. "Normally we wouldn't answer,
Mr. Cornell, unless you said it aloud. But we don't mind letting you
know which of us is the telepath this time. To answer, you are the last
person to have received any message from Thorndyke."

"I--what?"

"That postcard. It was the last contact Thorndyke made with anyone. He
has disappeared."

"But--"

"Thorndyke was due to arrive at The Medical Research Center in Marion,
Indiana, three weeks ago. We've been tracking him ever since he failed
to turn up. We've been able to retrace his meanderings very well up to a
certain point in Yellowstone. There the trail stops. He had a telephoned
reservation to a small hotel; there he dropped out of sight. Now, Mr.
Cornell, may I see that postcard?"

"Certainly." I got it for them. The esper took it over to the window and
eyed it in the light, and as he did that I went over to stand beside him
and together we espered that postcard until I thought the edges would
start to curl. But if there were any codes, concealed writings or any
other form of hidden meaning or message in or on that card, I didn't dig
any.

I gave up. I'm no trained investigator. But I knew that Thorndyke was
fairly well acquainted with the depth of my perceptive sense, and he
would not have concealed anything too deep for me.

Then the esper shook his head. He handed me the card. "Not a trace."

The telepath nodded. He looked at me and smiled sort of thin and
strained. "We're naturally interested in you, Mr. Cornell. This seems to
be the second disappearance. And you know nothing about either."

"I know," I said slowly. The puzzle began to go around and around in my
head again, all the way back to that gleaming road and the crack-up.

"We'll probably be back, Mr. Cornell. You don't mind?"

"Look," I told them rather firmly, "if this puzzle can be unwound, I'll
be one of the happiest men on the planet. If I can do anything to help,
just say the word."

They left after that and so did I. I was still going to pay my visit to
the Harrison farm. Another wild goose chase, but somewhere along this
cockeyed row there was an angle. Honest people who are healthy and
fairly happy with good prospects ahead of them do not just drop out of
sight without a trace.

       *       *       *       *       *

A couple of hours later I was making a good pace along the highway
again. It was getting familiar to me.

I could not avoid letting my perceptive sense rest on the sign as I
drove past. Not long enough to put me in danger, but long enough to
discover to my surprise that someone had taken the trouble to repair the
broken spoke. Someone must have been a perfectionist. The break was so
slight that it seemed like calling in a mechanic because the ashtray in
the car is full.

Then I noticed other changes that time had caused.

The burned scar was fading in a growth of tall weeds. The limb of the
tree that hung out over the scene, from which block and tackle had hung,
was beginning to lose its smoke-blackened appearance. The block was gone
from the limb.

_Give us a year_, I thought, _and the only remaining scar will be the
one on my mind, and even that will be fading_.

I turned into the drive, wound around the homestead road, and pulled up
in front of the big, rambling house.

It looked bleak. The front lawn was a bit shaggy and there were some
wisps of paper on the front porch. The venetian blinds were down and
slatted shut behind closed windows. Since it was summer by now, the
closed windows and the tight door, neither of which had flyscreens
installed, quickly gave the fact away. The Harrisons were gone.

Another disappearance?

I turned quickly and drove to the nearest town and went to the post
office.

"I'm looking for the Harrison family," I told the man behind the wicket.

"Why, they moved several weeks ago."

"Moved?" I asked with a blank-sounding voice.

The clerk nodded. Then he leaned forward and said in a confidential
whisper, "Heard a rumor that the girl got a touch of that spacemen's
disease."

"Mekstrom's?" I blurted.

The clerk looked at me as if I'd shouted a dirty word. "She was a fine
girl," he said softly. "It's a shame."

I nodded and he went into the back files. I tried to dig alone behind
him, but the files were in a small dead area in the rear of the
building. I swore under my breath although I'd expected to find files in
dead areas. Just as Rhine Institute was opened, the Government combed
the countryside for dead or cloudy areas for their secret and
confidential files. There had been one mad claim-staking rush with the
Government about six feet ahead of the rest of the general public,
business and the underworld.

He came back with a sorrowful look. "They left a concealed address," he
said.

I felt like flashing a twenty at him like a private eye did in the old
tough-books, but I knew it wouldn't work. Rhine also made it impossible
for a public official to take a bribe. So instead, I tried to look
distressed.

"This is extremely important. I'd say it was a matter of life and
death."

"I'm sorry. A concealed forwarding address is still concealed. If you
must get in touch with them, you might drop them a letter to be
forwarded. Then if they care to answer, they'll reply to your home."

"Later," I told him. "I'll probably be back to mail it direct from
here."

He waved at the writing desk. I nodded and left.

I drove back to the ex-Harrison Farm slowly, thinking it over.
Wondering. People did not just go around catching Mekstrom's Disease,
from what little I knew of it. And somehow the idea of Marian Harrison
withering away or becoming a basket case, or maybe taking the painless
way out was a thought that my mind kept avoiding except for occasional
flashes of horror.

I drove in toward the farmhouse again and parked in front of the
verandah. I was not sure of why I was there except that I wanted to
wander through it to see what I could find before I went back to the
post-office to write that card or letter.

The back of the house was locked with an old-fashioned slide bolt that
was turned with what they used to call an "E" key. I shrugged, oiled my
conscience and found a bit of bent wire. Probing a lock like that would
have been easy for a total blank; with esper I lifted the simple keepers
and slid back the bolt almost as swiftly as if I had used a proper key.

This was no case of disappearance. In every one of the fourteen rooms
were the unmistakable signs of a deliberate removal. Discarded stuff was
mixed with the odds and ends of packing case materials, a scattered
collection of temporary nails, a half-finished but never used box filled
with old clothing.

I pawed through this but found nothing, even though I separated it from
the rest to help my esper dig it without interference.

I roamed the house slowly letting my perception wander from point to
point. I tried to time-dig the place but that was futile. I didn't have
enough perception.

I caught only one response. It was in one of the upper bedrooms. But
then as I stopped in the room where Marian had slept, I began again to
doubt my senses. It could have been esper, but it was more likely that
I'd caught the dying traces of perfume.

Then I suddenly realized that the entire premises were clear to me!

An esper map of the world looked sort of like a mottled sky, with bright
places and cloudy patches strewn in disorder across it. A mottled sky,
except that the psi-pattern usually does not change. But this house had
been in a murky area, if not dead. Now it was clear.

I left the house and went to the big combination barn and garage. It was
as unsatisfying as the house had been. Phillip Harrison, or someone, had
had a workshop out there. I found the bench and a small table where
bolt-holes, oil marks, and other traces said that there had been one of
those big combination woodworking machines there, the kind that combines
circular saw, drill, lathe, planer, router, dado, and does everything.
There had been some metal-working stuff there, too, but nothing as
elaborate as the woodshop. Mostly things like hacksaws and an electric
drill, and a circular scar where a blowtorch had been sitting.

I don't know why I kept on standing there esping the abandoned set-up.
Maybe it was because my esper dug the fact that there was something
there that I should know about, but which was so minute or remote that
the impression did not come through. I stood there puzzled at my own
reluctance to leave until something satisfied that almost imperceptible
impression.

Idly I leaned down and picked up a bit of metal from the floor and
fumbled it in my hand nervously. I looked around the place with my eyes
and saw nothing. I gave the whole garage a thorough scanning with my
esper and got zero for my trouble.

Finally I snarled at myself for being an imbecile, and left.

Everyone has done what I did, time and time again. I do not recall
anything of my walk back to the car, lost in a whirl of thoughts, ideas,
plans and questions. I would probably have driven all the way back to my
apartment with my mind in that whirligig, driving by habit and training,
but I was shaken out of it because I could not start my car by poking
that bit of metal in the lock. It did not fit.

I laughed, a bit ashamed of my preoccupation, and flung the bit of metal
into the grass, poked my key in the lock--

And then I was out pawing the grass for that piece of metal.

For the small piece of metal I had found on the floor of the abandoned
workshop was the spoke of that road sign that had been missing when
Catherine and I cracked up!

I drove out along the highway and stopped near one of the standards. I
esped the sign, compared my impression against my eyesight. I made sure.

That bit of metal, a half inch long and a bit under a quarter inch in
diameter, with both ends faintly broken-ragged, was identical in size
and shape to the unbroken spokes in the sign!

Then I noticed something else. The trefoil ornament in the middle did
not look the same as I recalled them. I took Thorndyke's card out of my
pocket and looked at the stereo. I compared the picture against the real
thing before me and I knew that I was right.

The trefoil gizmo was a take-off on the fleur-de-lis or the Boy Scout
Tenderfoot badge, or the design they use to signify North on a compass.
But the lower flare of the leaves was wider than any of the more
familiar emblems; almost as wide as the top. It took a comparison to
tell the difference between one of them right-side-up and another one
upside-down. One assumes for this design that the larger foils are
supposed to be up. If that were so, then the ones along that road out
there in or near Yellowstone were right-side-up, while the ones along my
familiar highway were upside-down.

I goaded myself. #Memory, have these things been turned or were they
always upside-down?#

The last thing I did as I turned off the highway was to stop and let my
esper dig that design once more. I covered the design itself, let my
perception roam along the spokes, and then around the circlet that
supported the spokes that held the trefoil emblem.

Oh, it was not obvious. It was designed in, so to speak. If I were asked
even today for my professional opinion I would have to admit that the
way the circlet snapped into the rest of the ornamental scrollwork was a
matter of good assembly design, and not a design deliberately created so
that the emblem could be turned upside down.

In fact, if it had not been for that tiny, broken spoke I found on the
floor of the Harrison garage, never in a million years would I have
considered these road signs significant.

       *       *       *       *       *

At the post office I wrote a letter to Phillip Harrison:

     _Dear Phil:_

     _I was by your old place today and was sorry to find that you had
     moved. I'd like to get in touch with you again. If I may ask,
     please send me your forwarding address. I'll keep it concealed if
     you like, or I'll reply through the post office, concealed
     forward._

     _As an item of interest, did you know that your house has lost its
     deadness? A medium-equipped esper can dig it with ease. Have you
     ever heard of the psi-pattern changing before?_

     _Ah, and another item, that road sign with the busted spoke has
     been replaced. You must be a bum shot, not to hit that curlicue in
     the middle. I found the spoke you hit on the floor of your garage,
     if you'd like it for a souvenir of one close miss._

     _Please write and let me know how things are going. Rumor has it
     that Marian contracted Mekstrom's and if you will pardon my
     mentioning a delicate subject, I am doing so because I really want
     to help if I am able. After all, no matter how lightly you hold it,
     I still owe you my life. This is a debt I do not intend to forget._

     _Sincerely,_

     _Steve Cornell._




V


I did not go to the police.

They were sick of my face and already considering me a candidate for the
paranoid ward. All I would have to do is go roaring into the station to
tell them that I had uncovered some deep plot where the underground was
using ornamental road signs to conceal their own network of roads and
directions, and that the disappearance of Catherine Lewis, Dr. Thorndyke
and the removal of the Harrisons were all tied together.

Instead, I closed my apartment and told everyone that I was going to
take a long, rambling tourist jaunt to settle my nerves; that I thought
getting away from the scene might finish the job that time and rest had
started.

Then I started to drive. I drove for several days, not attempting to
pace off miles, but covering a lot of aimless-direction territory. I was
just as likely to spend four hours going North on one highway, and then
take the next four coming back South on a parallel highway, and
sometimes I even came back to the original starting place. After a week
I had come no farther West than across that sliver of West Virginia into
Eastern Ohio. And in Eastern Ohio I saw some more of the now familiar
and suspicious road signs.

The emblem was right side up, and the signs looked as though they had
not been up long.

I followed that road for seventy-five miles, and as I went the signs
kept getting newer and newer until I finally came to a truck loaded with
pipe, hardware, and ornamental ironwork. Leading the truck was one of
those iron mole things.

I watched the automatic gear hoist one of the old pipe and white and
black enamel roadsigns up by its roots, and place it on a truck full of
discards. I watched the mole drive a corkscrew blade into the ground
with a roaring of engine and bucking of the truck. It paused, pulled
upward to bring out the screw and its load of dirt, stones and gravel.
The crew placed one of the new signs in the cradle and I watched the
machine set the sign upright, pour the concrete, tamp down the earth,
and then move along down the road.

There was little point in asking questions of the crew, so I just took
off and drove to Columbus as hard as I could make it.

       *       *       *       *       *

Shined, cleaned, polished, and very conservatively dressed, I presented
myself to the State Commissioner of Roads and Highways. I toyed briefly
with the idea of representing myself as a minor official from some
distant state like Alaska or the Virgin Islands, inquiring about these
signs for official reasons. But then I knew that if I bumped into a hot
telepath I'd be in the soup. On the other hand, mere curiosity on the
part of a citizen, well oiled with compliments, would get me at the very
least a polite answer.

The Commissioner's fifth-under-secretary bucked me down the hall;
another office bucked me upstairs. A third buck-around brought me to the
Department of Highways Marking and Road Maps.

A sub-secretary finally admitted that he might be able to help me. His
name was Houghton. But whether he was telepath or esper did not matter
because the Commission building was constructed right in the middle of a
dead area.

I still played it straight. I told him I was a citizen of New York,
interested in the new road signs, Ohio was to be commended, et cetera.

"I'm glad you feel that way," he said beaming.

"I presume these signs cost quite a bit more than the stark, black and
white enamel jobs?"

"On the contrary," he said with pride. "They might, but mass-production
methods brought the cost down. You see, the enamel jobs, while we buy
several thousand of the plates for any highway, must be set up, stamped
out, enamelled, and so on. The new signs are all made in one plant as
they are needed; I don't suppose you know, but the highway number and
any other information is put on the plate from loose, snap-in letters.
That means we can buy so many thousand of this or that letter or number,
and the necessary base plates and put them together as needed. They
admitted that they were still running at a loss, but if they could get
enough states interested, they'd eventually come out even, and maybe
they could reduce the cost. Why, they even have a contingent-clause in
the contract stating that if the cost were lowered, they would make a
rebate to cover it. That's so the first users will not bide their time
instead of buying now."

He went on and on and on like any bureaucrat. I was glad we were in a
dead area because he'd have thrown me out of his office for what I was
thinking.

Eventually Mr. Houghton ran down and I left.

I toyed around with the idea of barging in on the main office of the
company but I figured that might be too much like poking my head into a
hornet's nest.

I pocketed the card he gave me from the company, and I studied the
ink-fresh road map, which he had proudly supplied. It pointed out in a
replica panel of the fancy signs, that the State of Ohio was beautifying
their highways with these new signs at no increased cost to the
taxpayer, and that the dates in green on the various highways here and
there gave the dates when the new signs would be installed. The bottom
of the panel gave the Road Commissioner's name in boldface with
Houghton's name below in slightly smaller print.

I smiled. Usually I get mad at signs that proclaim that such and such a
tunnel is being created by Mayor So-and-so, as if the good mayor were
out there with a shovel and hoe digging the tunnel. But this sort of
thing would have been a worthy cause if it hadn't been for the sinister
side.

I selected a highway that had been completed toward Cincinnati and made
my way there with no waste of time.

       *       *       *       *       *

The road was new and it was another beaut. The signs led me on, mile
after mile and sign after sign.

I did not know what I was following, and I was not sure I knew what I
was looking for. But I was on the trail of something and a bit of
activity, both mental and physical, after weeks of blank-wall
frustration made my spirits rise and my mental equipment sharper. The
radio in the car was yangling with hillbilly songs, the only thing you
can pick up in Ohio, but I didn't care. I was looking for something
significant.

I found it late in the afternoon about half-way between Dayton and
Cincinnati. One of the spokes was missing.

Fifty yards ahead was a crossroad.

I hauled in with a whine of rubber and brakes, and sat there trying to
reason out my next move by logic. Do I turn with the missing spoke, or
do I turn with the one that is not missing?

Memory came to my aid. The "ten o'clock" spoke had been missing back
there near the Harrison farm. The Harrisons had lived on the left side
of the highway. One follows the missing spoke. Here the "two o'clock"
spoke was missing, so I turned to the right along the crossroad until I
came to another sign that was complete.

Then, wondering, I U-turned and drove back across the main highway and
drove for about five miles watching the signs as I went. The ones on my
right had that trefoil emblem upside down. The ones on my left were
right side up. The difference was so small that only someone who knew
the significance would distinguish one from the other. So far as I could
reason out, it meant that what I sought was in the other direction. When
the emblem was upside down I was going away from, and when right side
up, I was going toward.

Away from or toward what?

I U-turned again and started following the signs.

Twenty miles beyond the main highway where I'd seen the sign that
announced the turn, I came upon another missing spoke. This indicated a
turn to the left, and so I slowed down until I came upon a homestead
road leading off toward a farmhouse.

I turned, determined to make like a man lost and hoping that I'd not
bump into a telepath.

A few hundred yards in from the main road I came upon a girl who was
walking briskly toward me. I stopped. She looked at me with a quizzical
smile and asked me if she could be of any help.

Brashly, I nodded. "I'm looking for some old friends of mine," I said.
"Haven't seen them for years. Named Harrison."

She smiled up at me. "I don't know of any Harrison around here." Her
voice had the Ohio twang.

"No?"

"Just where do they live?"

I eyed her carefully, hoping my glance did not look like a wolf eyeing a
lamb. "Well, they gave me some crude directions. Said I was to turn at
the main highway onto this road and come about twenty miles and stop on
the left side when I came upon one of those new road signs where someone
had shot one of the spokes out."

"Spokes? Left side--" She mumbled the words and was apparently mulling
the idea around in her mind. She was not more than about seventeen,
sun-tanned and animal-alive from living in the open. I wondered about
her. As far as I was concerned, she was part and parcel of this whole
mysterious affair. No matter what she said or did, it was an obvious
fact that the hidden road sign directions pointed to this farm. And
since no one at seventeen can be kept in complete ignorance of the
business of the parents, she must be aware of some of the ramifications.

After some thought she said, "No, I don't know of any Harrisons."

I grunted. I was really making the least of this, now that I'd arrived.

"Your folks at home?" I asked.

"Yes," she replied.

"I think I'll drop in and ask them, too."

She shrugged. "Go ahead," she said with the noncommittal attitude of
youth. "You didn't happen to notice whether the mailbox flag was up, did
you?"

I hadn't, but I espied back quickly and said, "No, it isn't."

"Then the mailman hasn't been to deliver," she said. "Mind if I ride
back to the house with you, mister?"

"Hop in."

She smiled brightly and got in quickly. I took off down the road toward
the house at an easy pace. She seemed interested in the car, and finally
said, "I've never been in a car like this before. New?"

"Few weeks," I responded.

"Fast?"

"If you want to make it go fast. She'll take this rocky road at fifty,
if anyone wants to be so foolish."

"Let's see."

I laughed. "Nobody but an idiot would tackle a road like this at fifty."

"I like to go fast. My brother takes it at sixty."

That, so far as I was concerned, was youthful exaggeration. I was busy
telling her all the perils of fast driving when a rabbit came barrelling
out of the bushes along one side and streaked across in front of me.

I twitched the wheel. The car went out of the narrow road and up on the
shoulder, tilting quite a bit. Beyond the rabbit I swung back into the
road, but not before the youngster had grabbed my arm to keep from being
tossed all over the front seat.

Her grip was like a hydraulic vise. My arm went numb and my fingers went
limp on the wheel. I struggled with my left hand to spin the wheel to
keep on the narrow, winding road and my foot hit the brake to bring the
car down, but fast.

Taking a deep breath as we stopped, I shook my right hand by holding it
in my left at the wrist. I was a mass of tingling pins and needles
because she had grabbed me just above the elbow. It felt as though it
would have taken only a trifle more to pinch my arm off and leave me
with a bloody stump.

"Sorry, mister," she said breathlessly, her eyes wide open. Her face was
white around the corners of the mouth and at the edges of her nose. The
whiteness of the flesh under the deep tan gave her a completely
frightened look, far more than the shake-up could have produced.

I reached over and took her hand. "That's a mighty powerful grip you--"

The flesh of her hand was hard and solid. Not the meaty solidity of good
tone, fine training and excellent health. It was the solidity of a--all
I could think of at the time was a green cucumber. I squeezed a bit and
the flesh gave way only a trifle. I rubbed my thumb over her palm and
found it solid-hard instead of soft and yielding.

I wondered.

I had never seen a case of Mekstrom's Disease--before.

I looked down at the hand and said, "Young lady, do you realize that you
have an advanced case of Mekstrom's Disease?"

She eyed me coldly. "Now," she said in a hard voice. "I know you'll come
in."

Something in my make-up objects violently to being ordered around by a
slip of a girl. I balance off at about one-sixty. I guessed her at about
two-thirds of that, say one-ten or thereabouts--

"One-eight," she said levelly.

#A telepath!#

"Yes," she replied calmly. "And I don't mind letting you know it, so
you'll not try anything stupid."

#I'm getting the heck out of here!#

"No, you're not. You are coming in with me."

"Like heck!" I exploded.

"Don't be silly. You'll come in. Or shall I lay one along your jaw and
carry you?"

I had to try something, anything, to get free. Yet--

"Now you're being un-bright," she told me insolently. "You should know
that you can't plan any surprise move with a telepath. And if you try a
frontal attack I'll belt you so cold they'll have to put you in the oven
for a week."

I just let her ramble for a few seconds because when she was rattling
this way she couldn't put her entire mental attention on my thoughts. So
while she was yaking it off, I had an idea that felt as though it might
work.

She shut up like a clam when she realized that her mouthing had given me
a chance to think, and I went into high gear with my perception:

#Not bad--for a kid. Growing up fast. Been playing hookey from momma,
leaving off your panties like the big girls do. I can tell by the
elastic cord marks you had 'em on not long ago.#

Seventeeners have a lot more modesty than they like to admit. She was
stunned by my cold-blooded catalog of her body just long enough for me
to make a quick lunge across her lap to the door handle on her side.

I flipped it over and gave her a shove at the same time. She went bottom
over appetite in a sprawl that would have jarred the teeth loose in a
normal body and might have cracked a few bones. But she landed on the
back of her neck, rolled and came to her feet like a cat.

I didn't wait to close the door. I just tromped on the go-pedal and the
car leaped forward with a jerk that slammed the door for me. I roared
forward and left her just as she was making another grab.

How I hoped to get out of there I did not know. All I wanted was
momentary freedom to think. I turned this way and that to follow the
road until I came to the house. I left the road, circled the house with
the turbine screaming like a banshee and the car taking the corners on
the outside wheels. I skidded into a turn like a racing driver and
ironed my wheels out flat on the takeaway, rounded another corner and
turned back into the road again going the other way.

She was standing there waiting for me as I pelted past at a good sixty,
and she reached out one girder-strong arm, latched onto the frame of the
open window on my side, and swung onto the half-inch trim along the
bottom of the car-body like a switchman hooking a freight car.

She reached for the steering wheel with her free hand.

I knew what was to happen next. She'd casually haul and I'd go off the
road into a tree or pile up in a ditch, and while the smoke was clearing
out of my mind, she'd be untangling me from the wreck and carting me
over her shoulder, without a scratch to show for her adventure.

I yanked the wheel--whip! whap!--cutting an arc. I slammed past a tree,
missing it by half an inch. I wiped her off the side of the car like a
mailbag is clipped from the fast express by the catch-hook.

I heard a cry of "Whoof!" as her body hit the trunk of the tree. But as
I regained the road and went racing on to safety, I saw in the rear view
mirror that she had bounced off the tree, sprawled a bit, caught her
balance, and was standing in the middle of the road, shaking her small
but very dangerous fist at my tail license plate.

I didn't stop driving at one-ten until I was above Dayton again. Then I
paused along the road to take stock.

Stock? What the hell did I know, really?

I'd uncovered and confirmed the fact that there was some secret
organization that had a program that included their own highway system,
concealed within the confines of the United States. I was almost certain
by this time that they had been the prime movers in the disappearance of
Catherine and Dr. Thorndyke. They--

I suddenly re-lived the big crack-up.

Willingly now, no longer rejecting the memory, I followed my
recollection as Catherine and I went along that highway at a happy pace.
With care I recalled every detail of Catherine, watching the road
through my mind and eyes, how she'd mentioned the case of the missing
spoke, and how I'd projected back to perceive that which I had not been
conscious of.

Reminding myself that it was past, I went through it again,
deliberately. The fallen limb that blocked the road, my own horror as
the wheels hit it. The struggle to regain control of the careening car.

As a man watching a motion picture, I watched the sky and the earth turn
over and over, and I heard my voice mouthing wordless shouts of fear.
Catherine's cry of pain and fright came, and I listened as my mind
reconstructed it this time without wincing. Then the final crash, the
horrid wave of pain and the sear of the flash-fire. I went through my
own horror and self condemnation, and my concern over Catherine. I
didn't shut if off. I waded through it.

Now I remembered something else.

Something that any normal, sensible mind would reject as an
hallucination. Beyond any shadow of a doubt there had been no time for a
man to rig a block and tackle on a tree above a burning automobile in
time to get the trapped victims out alive. And even more certain it was
that no normal man of fifty would have had enough strength to lift a car
by its front bumper while his son made a rush into the flames.

That tackle had been rigged and burned afterward. But who would reject a
block and tackle in favor of an impossibly strong man? No, with the
tackle in sight, the recollection of a man lifting that overturned
automobile like a weight lifter pressing up a bar bell would be buried
in any mind as a rank hallucination. Then one more item came driving
home hard. So hard that I almost jumped when the idea crossed my mind.

Both Catherine and Dr. Thorndyke had been telepaths.

A telepath close to any member of his underground outfit would divine
their purpose, come to know their organization, and begin to grasp the
fundamentals of their program. Such a person would be dangerous.

On the other hand, an esper such as myself could be turned aside with
bland remarks and a convincing attitude. I knew that I had no way of
telling lie from truth and that made my problem a lot more difficult.

From the facts that I did have, something smelled of overripe seafood.
Government and charities were pouring scads of dough into a joint called
the Medical Research Center. To hear the scholars of medicine tell it,
Mekstrom's Disease was about the last human frailty that hadn't been
licked to a standstill. They boasted that if a victim of practically
anything had enough life left in him to crawl to a telephone and use it,
his life could be saved. They grafted well. I'd heard tales of things
like fingers, and I know they were experimenting on hands, arms and legs
with some success. But when it came to Mekstrom's they were stopped
cold. Therefore the Medical Research Center received a walloping batch
of money for that alone; all the money that used to go to the various
heart, lung, spine and cancer funds. It added up well.

But the Medical Research Center seemed unaware that some group had
solved their basic problem.

From the books I've read I am well aware of one of the fundamental
principles of running an underground: _Keep it underground!_ The Commie
menace in these United States might have won out in the middle of the
century if they'd been able to stay a secret organization. So the
Highways in Hiding could stay underground and be an efficient
organization only until someone smoked them out.

That one was going to be me.

But I needed an aide-de-camp. Especially and specifically I needed a
trained telepath, one who would listen to my tale and not instantly howl
for the nut-hatch attendants. The F.B.I. were all trained investigators
and they used esper-telepath teams all the time. One dug the joint while
the other dug the inhabitant, which covered the situation to a
faretheewell.

It would take time to come up with a possible helper. So I spent the
next hour driving toward Chicago, and by the time I'd crossed the
Ohio-Indiana line and hit Richmond, I had a plan laid out. I placed a
call to New York and within a few minutes I was talking to Nurse Farrow.

I'll not go into detail because there was a lot of mish-mash that is not
particularly interesting and a lot more that covered my tracks since I'd
parted company with her on the steps of the hospital. I did not, of
course, mention my real purpose over the telephone and Miss Farrow could
not read my mind from New York.

The upshot of the deal was that I felt that I needed a nurse for a
while, not that I was ill, but that I felt a bit woozy now and then
because I hadn't learned to slow down. I worked too fast and too long
and my condition was not up to it yet. This Miss Farrow allowed as being
quite possible. I repeated my offer to pay her at the going prices for
registered nurses with a one-month guarantee, paid in advance. That
softened her quite a bit. Then I added that I'd videograph her a check
large enough to cover the works plus a round trip ticket. She should
come out and have a look, and if she weren't satisfied, she could return
without digging into her own pocket. All she'd lose was one day, and it
might be a bit of a vacation if she enjoyed flying in a jetliner at
sixty thousand feet.

The accumulation of offers finally sold her and she agreed to
arrange a leave of absence. She'd meet me in the morning of the
day-after-tomorrow, at Central Airport in Chicago.

I videographed the check and then took off again, confident that I'd be
able to sell her on the idea of being the telepath half of my amateur
investigation team.

Then because I needed some direct information, I turned West and crossed
the line into Indiana, heading toward Marion. So far I had a lot of
well-placed suspicions, but until I was certain, I could do no more than
postulate ideas. I had to know definitely how to identify Mekstrom's
Disease, or at least the infected flesh. I have a fairly good recall;
all I needed now was to have someone point to a Case and say flatly that
this was a case of Mekstrom's Disease. Then I'd know whether what I'd
seen in Ohio was actually one hundred percent Mekstrom.




VI


I walked into the front office with a lot of self-assurance. The Medical
Center was a big, rambling place with a lot of spread-out one- and
two-story buildings that looked so much like "Hospital" that no one in
the world would have mistaken them for anything else. The main building
was by the road, the rest spread out behind as far as I could see;
beyond my esper range even though the whole business was set in one of
the clearest psi areas that I'd even been in.

I was only mildly worried about telepaths. In the first place, the only
thing I had to hide was my conviction about a secret organization and
how part of it functioned. In the second place, the chances were good
that few, if any, telepaths were working there, if the case of Dr.
Thorndyke carried any weight. That there were some telepaths, I did not
doubt, but these would not be among the high-powered help.

So I sailed in and faced the receptionist, who was a good-looking
chemical-type blonde with a pale skin, lovely complexion and figure to
match. She greeted me with a glacial calm and asked my business.

Brazenly I lied. "I'm a freelance writer and I'm looking for material."

"Have you an assignment?" she asked without a trace of interest in the
answer.

"Not this time. I'm strictly freelance. I like it better this way
because I can write whatever I like."

Her glacial air melted a bit at the inference that my writing had not
been in vain. "Where have you been published?" she asked.

I made a fast stab in the dark, aiming in a direction that looked safe.
"Last article was one on the latest archeological findings in Assyria.
Got my source material direct from the Oriental Institute in Chicago."

"Too bad I missed it," she said, looking regretful. I had to grin, I'd
carefully avoided giving the name of the publication and the supposed
date. She went on, "I suppose you would not be happy with the usual
press release?"

"Handouts contain material, all right, but they're so confounded trite
and impersonal. People prefer to read anecdotes about the people rather
than a listing of facts and figures."

She nodded at that. "Just a moment," she said. Then she addressed her
telephone in a voice that I couldn't hear. When she finished, she smiled
in a warmish-type manner as if to indicate that she'd gone all out in my
behalf and that I'd be a heel to forget it. I nodded back and tried to
match the tooth-paste-ad smile. Then the door opened and a man came in
briskly.

He was a tall man, as straight as a ramrod, with a firm jaw and a
close-clipped moustache. He had an air like a thin-man's Captain Bligh.
When he spoke, his voice was as clipped and precise as his moustache; in
fact it was so precise that it seemed almost mechanical.

"I am Dr. Lyon Sprague," he clipped. "What may I do for you?"

"I'm Steve Cornell," I said. "I'm here after source material for a
magazine article about Mekstrom's Disease. I'd prefer not to take my
material from a handout."

"Do you hope to get more?" he demanded.

"I usually do. I've seen your handouts; I could get as much by taking
last year's medical encyclopedia. Far too dry, too uninteresting, too
impersonal."

"Just exactly what do you have in mind?"

I eyed him with speculation. Here was not a man who would take kindly to
imaginative conjecture. So Dr. Lyon Sprague was not the man I'd like to
talk to. With an inward smile, I said, "I have a rather new idea about
Mekstrom's that I'd like to discuss with the right party."

He looked down at me, although our eyes were on the same level. "I doubt
that any layman could possibly come up with an idea that has not been
most thoroughly discussed here among the research staff."

"In cold words you feel that no untrained lunk has a right to have an
idea."

He froze. "I did not say that."

"You implied, at least, that suggestions from outsiders were not
welcome. I begin to understand why the Medical Center has failed to get
anywhere with Mekstrom's in the past twenty years."

"What do you mean?" he snapped.

"Merely that it is the duty of all scientists to listen to every
suggestion and to discard it only after it has been shown wrong."

"Such as--?" he said coldly, with a curl of his eyebrows.

"Well, just for instance, suppose some way were found to keep a victim
alive during the vital period, so that he would end up a complete
Mekstrom Human."

"The idea is utterly fantastic. We have no time for such idle
speculation. There is too much foggy thinking in the world already. Why,
only last week we had a Velikovsky Adherent tell us that Mekstrom's had
been predicted in the Bible. There are still people reporting flying
saucers, you know. We have no time for foolish notions or utter
nonsense."

"May I quote you?"

"Of course not," he snapped stiffly. "I'm merely pointing out that
non-medical persons cannot have the grasp--"

The door opened again and a second man entered. The new arrival had
pleasant blue eyes, a van dyke beard, and a good-natured air of
self-confidence and competence. "May I cut in?" he said to Dr. Sprague.

"Certainly. Mr. Cornell, this is Scholar Phelps, Director of the Center.
Scholar Phelps, this is Mr. Steve Cornell, a gentleman of the press," he
added in a tone of voice that made the identification a sort of nasty
name. "Mr. Cornell has an odd theory about Mekstrom's Disease that he
intends to publish unless we can convince him that it is not possible."

"Odd theory?" asked Scholar Phelps with some interest. "Well, if Mr.
Cornell can come up with something new, I'll be most happy to hear him
out."

Dr. Lyon Sprague decamped with alacrity. Scholar Phelps smiled after
him, then turned to me and said, "Dr. Sprague is a diligent worker,
businesslike and well-informed, but he lacks the imagination and the
sense of humor that makes a man brilliant in research. Unfortunately,
Dr. Sprague cannot abide anything that is not laid out as neat as an
interlocking tile floor. Now, Mr. Cornell, how about this theory of
yours?"

"First," I replied, "I'd like to know how come you turn up in the nick
of time."

He laughed good-naturedly. "We always send Dr. Sprague out to interview
visitors. If the visitor can be turned away easily, all is well and
quiet. Dr. Sprague can do the job with ease. But if the visitor, like
yourself, Mr. Cornell, proposes something that distresses the good Dr.
Sprague and will not be loftily dismissed, Dr. Sprague's blood pressure
goes up. We all keep a bit of esper on his nervous system and when the
fuse begins to blow, we come out and effect a double rescue."

I laughed with him. Apparently the Medical Center staff enjoyed needling
Dr. Sprague. "Scholar Phelps, before I get into my theory, I'd like to
know more about Mekstrom's Disease. I may not be able to use it in my
article, but any background material works well with writers of fact
articles."

"You're quite right. What would you like to know?"

"I've heard, too many times, that no one knows anything at all about
Mekstrom's. This is unbelievable, considering that you folks have been
working on it for some twenty years."

He nodded. "We have some, but it's precious little."

"It seems to me that you could analyze the flesh--"

He smiled. "We have. The state of analytical chemistry is well advanced.
We could, I think, take a dry scraping out of the cauldron used by
MacBeth's witches, and determine whether Shakespeare had reported the
formula correctly. Now, young man, if you think that something is added
to the human flesh to make it Mekstrom's Flesh, you are wrong. Standard
analysis shows that the flesh is composed of exactly the same chemicals
that normal flesh contains, in the same proportion. Nothing is added,
as, for instance, in the case of calcification."

"Then what is the difference?"

"The difference lies in the structure. By X-ray crystallographic method,
we have determined that Mekstrom's Flesh is a micro-crystalline
formation, interlocked tightly." Scholar Phelps looked at me
thoughtfully. "Do you know much about crystallography?"

As a mechanical engineer I did, but as a writer of magazine articles I
felt I should profess some ignorance, so I merely said that I knew a
little about the subject.

"Well, Mr. Cornell, you may know that in the field of solid geometry
there are only five possible regular polyhedrons. Like the laws of
topology that state that no more than four colors need be used to print
a map on a flat surface, or that no more than seven colors are required
to print separate patches on a toroid, the laws of solid geometry prove
that no more than five regular polyhedrons are possible. Now in
crystallography there are only thirty-two possible classes of crystal
lattice construction. Of these only thirty have ever been discovered in
nature. Yet we know how the other two would appear if they did emerge in
natural formation."

I knew it all right but I made scribblings in my notebooks as if the
idea were of interest. Scholar Phelps waited patiently until I'd made
the notation.

"Now, Mr. Cornell, here comes the shock. Mekstrom's Flesh is one of the
other two classes."

This was news to me and I blinked.

Then his face faded into a solemn expression. "Unfortunately," he said
in a low voice, "knowing how a crystal should form does not help us much
in forming one to that class. We have no real control over the
arrangement of atoms in a crystal lattice. We can prevent the crystal
formation, we can control the size of the crystal as it forms. But we
cannot change the crystal into some other class."

"I suppose it's sort of like baking a cake. Once the ingredients are
mixed, the cake can be big or small or shaped to fit the pan, or you can
spoil it complete. But if you mix devil's food, it either comes out
devil's food or nothing."

"An amusing analogy and rather correct. However I prefer the one used
years ago by Dr. Willy Ley, who observed that analysis is fine, but you
can't learn how a locomotive is built by melting it down and analyzing
the mess."

Then he went on again. "To get back to Mekstrom's Disease and what we
know about it. We know that the crawl goes at about a sixty-fourth of an
inch per hour. If, for instance, you turned up here with a trace on your
right middle finger, the entire first joint would be Mekstrom's Flesh in
approximately three days. Within two weeks your entire middle finger
would be solid. Without anesthesia we could take a saw and cut off a bit
for our research."

"No feeling?"

"None whatever. The joints knit together, the arteries become as hard as
steel tubing and the heart cannot function properly--not that the heart
cares about minor conditions such as the arteries in the extremities,
but as the Mekstrom infection crawls up the arm toward the shoulder the
larger arteries become solid and then the heart cannot drive the blood
through them in its accustomed fashion. It gets like an advanced case of
arteriosclerosis. Eventually the infection reaches and immobilizes the
shoulder; this takes about ninety days. By this time, the other
extremities have also become infected and the crawl is coming up all
four limbs."

He looked at me very solemnly at that. "The rest is not pretty. Death
comes shortly after that. I can almost say that he is blessed who
catches Mekstrom's in the left hand for them the infection reaches the
heart before it reaches other parts. Those whose initial infection is in
the toes are particularly cursed, because the infection reaches the
lower parts of the body. I believe you can imagine the result,
elimination is prevented because of the stoppage of peristalsis. Death
comes of autointoxication, which is slow and painful."

I shuddered at the idea. The thought of death has always bothered me.
The idea of looking at a hand and knowing that I was going to die by the
calendar seemed particularly horrible.

Taking the bit between my teeth, I said, "Scholar Phelps, I've been
wondering whether you and your Center have ever considered treating
Mekstrom's by helping it?"

"Helping it?" he asked.

"Sure. Consider what a man might be if he were Mekstrom's all the way
through."

He nodded. "You would have a physical superman," he said. "Steel-strong
muscles driving steel-hard flesh covered by a near impenetrable skin.
Perhaps such a man would be free of all minor pains and ills. Imagine a
normal bacterium trying to bore into flesh as hard as concrete. Mekstrom
Flesh tends to be acid-resistant as well as tough physically. It is not
beyond the imagination to believe that your Mekstrom Superman might live
three times our frail four-score and ten. But--"

Here he paused.

"Not to pull down your house of cards, this idea is not a new one. Some
years ago we invited a brilliant young doctor here to study for his
scholarate. The unfortunate fellow arrived with the first traces of
Mekstrom's in his right middle toe. We placed about a hundred of our
most brilliant researchers under his guidance, and he decided to take
this particular angle of study. He failed; for all his efforts, he did
not stay his death by a single hour. From that time to the present we
have maintained one group on this part of the problem."

It occurred to me at that moment that if I turned up with a trace of
Mekstrom's I'd be seeking out the Highways in Hiding rather than the
Medical Center. That fast thought brought a second: Suppose that Dr.
Thorndyke learned that he had a trace, or rather, the Highways found it
out. What better way to augment their medical staff than to approach the
victim with a proposition: You help us, work with us, and we will save
your life.

That, of course, led to the next idea: That if the Highways in Hiding
had any honest motive, they'd not be hidden in the first place and
they'd have taken their cure to the Medical Center in the second. Well,
I had a bit of something listed against them, so I decided to let my
bombshell drop.

"Scholar Phelps," I said quietly, "one of the reasons I am here is that
I have fairly good evidence that the cure for Mekstrom's Disease does
exist, and that it produces people of ultrahard bodies and superhuman
strength."

He smiled at me with the same tolerant air that father uses on the
offspring who comes up with one of the standard juvenile plans for
perpetual motion.

"What do you consider good evidence?"

"Suppose I claimed to have seen it myself."

"Then I would say that you had misinterpreted your evidence," he replied
calmly. "The flying saucer enthusiasts still insist that the things they
see are piloted by little green men from Venus, even though we have been
there and found Venus to be absolutely uninhabited by anything higher
than slugs, grubs, and little globby animals like Tellurian leeches."

"But--"

"This, too, is an old story," he told me with a whimsical smile. "It
goes with the standard routine about a secret organization that is
intending to take over the Earth. The outline has been popular ever
since Charles Fort. Now--er--just tell me what you saw."

I concocted a tale that was about thirty-three percent true and the rest
partly distorted. It covered my hitting a girl in Ohio with my car, hard
enough to clobber her. But when I stopped to help her, she got up and
ran away unhurt. She hadn't left a trace of blood although the front
fender of the car was badly smashed.

He nodded solemnly. "Such things happen," he said. "The human body is
really quite durable; now and then comes the lucky happenstance when the
fearful accident does no more than raise a slight bruise. I've read the
story of the man whose parachute did not open and who lived to return it
to the factory in person, according to the old joke. But now, Mr.
Cornell, have you ever considered the utter impossibility of running any
sort of secret organization in this world of today. Even before Rhine it
was difficult. You'll be adding to your tale next--some sort of secret
sign, maybe a form of fraternity grip, or perhaps even a world-wide
system of local clubs and hangouts, all aimed at some dire purpose."

I squirmed nervously for a bit. Scholar Phelps was too close to the
truth to make me like it, because he was scoffing. He went right on
making me nervous.

"Now before we get too deep, I only want to ask about the probable
motives of such an organization. You grant them superhuman strength,
perhaps extreme longevity. If they wanted to take over the Earth,
couldn't they do it by a show of force? Or are they mild-mannered
supermen, only quietly interested in overrunning the human race and
waiting out the inevitable decline of normal homo sapiens? You're not
endowing them with extraterrestrial origin, are you?"

I shook my head unhappily.

"Good. That shows some logic, Mr. Cornell. After all, we know now that
while we could live on Mars or Venus with a lot of home-sent aid, we'd
be most uncomfortable there. We could not live a minute on any planet of
our solar system without artificial help."

"I might point out that our hypothetical superman might be able to stand
a lot of rough treatment," I blurted.

"Oh, this I'll grant if your tale held any water at all. But let's
forget this fruitless conjecture and take a look at the utter
impossibility of running such an organization. Even planting all of
their secret hangouts in dead areas and never going into urban centers,
they'd still find some telepath or esper on their trail. Perhaps a team.
Let's go back a step and consider, even without psi training, how long
such an outfit could function. It would run until the first specimen had
an automobile accident on, say Times Square; or until one of them
walked--or ran--out of the fire following a jetliner crash."

He then spared me with a cold eye. "Write it as fiction, Mr. Cornell.
But leave my name out of it. I thought you were after facts."

"I am. But the better fact articles always use a bit of speculation to
liven it up."

"Well," he grunted, "one such fanciful suggestion is the possibility of
such an underground outfit being able to develop a 'cure' while we
cannot. We, who have had the best of brains and money for twenty years."

I nodded, and while I did not agree with Phelps, I knew that to insist
was to insult him to his face, and get myself tossed out.

"You do seem to have quite a set-up here," I said, off-hand.

At this point Phelps offered to show me around the place, and I
accepted. Medical Center was far larger than I had believed at first; it
spread beyond my esper range into the hills beyond the main plant. The
buildings were arranged in a haphazard-looking pattern out in the back
section; I say "looking" because only a psi-trained person can dig a
pattern. The wide-open psi area did not extend for miles. Behind the
main buildings it closed down into the usual mottled pattern and the
medical buildings had been placed in the open areas. Dwellings and
dormitories were in the dark places. A nice set-up.

I did not meet any of the patients, but Phelps let me stand in the
corridor outside a couple of rooms and use my esper on the flesh. It was
both distressing and instructive.

He explained, "The usual thing after someone visits this way, is that
the visitor goes out itching. In medical circles this is a form of what
we call 'Sophomore's Syndrome.' Ever heard of it?"

I nodded. "That's during the first years at pre-med. Knowing all too
little of medicine, every disease they study produces the same symptoms
that the student finds in himself. Until tomorrow, when they study the
next. Then the symptoms in the student change."

"Right. So in order to prevent 'Sophomore's Syndrome' among visitors we
usually let them study the real thing. Also," he added seriously, "we'd
like to have as many people as possible recognize the real thing as
early as possible. Even though we can't do anything for them at the
present time, someday we will."

He stopped before a closed door. "In here is a girl of eighteen, doomed
to die in a month." His voice trailed off as he tapped on the door of
the room.

I froze. A few beads of cold sweat ran down my spine, and I fought
myself into a state of nervous calmness. I put the observation away,
buried it as deep as I could, tried to think around it, and so far as I
knew, succeeded.

The tap of Scholar Phelps' finger against the door panel was the
rap-rap-rap sound characteristic of hard-tanned leather tapping wood.

Scholar Phelps was a Mekstrom!

       *       *       *       *       *

I paid only surface attention to the rest of my visit. I thanked my
personal gods that esper training had also given me the ability to
dissemble. It was impossible to not think of something but it is
possible to keep the mind so busy with surface thoughts that the
underlying idea does not come through the interference.

Eventually I managed to leave the Medical Center without exciting
anyone, and when I left I took off like a skyrocket for Chicago.




VII


Nurse Gloria Farrow waved at me from the ramp of the jetliner, and I ran
forward to collect her baggage. She eyed me curiously but said no more
than the usual greetings and indication of which bag was hers.

I knew that she was reading my mind like a psychologist all the time,
and I let her know that I wanted her to. I let my mind merely ramble on
with the usual pile of irrelevancies that the mind uses to fill in blank
spaces. It came up with a couple of notions here and there but nothing
definite. Miss Farrow followed me to my car without saying a word, and
let me install her luggage in the trunk.

Then, for the first time, she spoke: "Steve Cornell, you're as healthy
as I am."

"I admit it."

"Then what is this all about? You don't need a nurse!"

"I need a competent witness, Miss Farrow."

"For what?" She looked puzzled. "Suppose you stay right here and start
explaining."

"You'll listen to the bitter end?"

"I've two hours before the next plane goes back. You'll have that time
to convince me--or else. Okay?"

"That's a deal." I fumbled around for a beginning, and then I decided to
start right at the beginning, whether it sounded cockeyed or not.

Giving information to a telepath is the easiest thing in the world.
While I started at the beginning, I fumbled and finally ended up by
going back and forth in a haphazard manner, but Miss Farrow managed to
insert the trivia in the right chronological order so that when I
finished, she nodded with interest.

I posed the question: #Am I nuts?#

"No, Steve," she replied solemnly. "I don't think so. You've managed to
accept data which is obviously mingled truth and falsehood, and you've
managed to question the validity of all of it."

I grunted. "How about the crazy man who questions his own sanity, using
this personal question as proof of his sanity since real nuts _know_
they're sane?"

"No nut can think that deep into complication. What I mean is that they
cannot even question their own sanity in the first premise of postulated
argument. But forget that, what I wanted to know is where you intend to
go from here."

I shook my head unhappily. "When I called you I had it all laid out like
a roadmap. I was going to show you proof and use you as an impartial
observer to convince someone else. Then we'd go to the Medical Center
and hand it to them on a platter. Since then I've had a shock that I
can't get over, or plan beyond. Scholar Phelps is a Mekstrom. That means
that the guy knows what gives with Mekstrom's Disease and yet he is
running an outfit that professes to be helpless in the face of this
disease. For all we know Phelps may be the head of the Highways in
Hiding, an organization strictly for profit of some sort at the expense
of the public welfare."

"You're certain that Phelps is a Mekstrom?"

"Not absolutely positive. I had to close my mind because there might be
a telepath on tap. But I can tell you that nobody with normal flesh-type
fingers ever made that solid rap."

"A fingernail?"

I shook my head at her. "That's a click. With an ear at all you'd note
the difference."

"I'll accept it for the moment. But lacking your original plan, what are
you going to do now?"

"I'm not sure beyond showing you the facts. Maybe I should call up that
F.B.I. team that called on me after Thorndyke's disappearance and put it
in their laps."

"Good idea. But why would Scholar Phelps be lying? And beyond your basic
suspicions, what can you prove?"

"Very little. I admit that my evidence is extremely thin. I saw Phillip
Harrison turning head bolts on a tractor engine with a small end wrench.
It should require a crossbar socket and a lot of muscle. Next is the
girl in Ohio who should be a bloody mess from the way she was treated.
Instead she got up and tried to chase me. Then answer me a puzzler: Did
the Harrisons move because Marian caught Mekstrom's, or did they move
because they felt that I was too close to discovering their secret? The
Highway was relocated after that, you'll recall."

"It sounds frightfully complicated, Steve."

"You bet it does," I grunted. "So next I meet a guy who is supposed to
know all the answers; a man dedicated to the public welfare, medicine,
and the ideal of Service. A man sworn to the Hippocratic Oath. Or," I
went on bitterly, "is it the Hypocritic Oath?"

"Steve, please--"

"Please, Hell!" I stormed. "Why is he quietly sitting there in Mekstrom
hide while he is overtly grieving over the painful death of his fellow
man?"

"I wouldn't know."

"Well, I'm tired of being pushed around," I growled.

"Pushed around?" she asked quietly.

With a trace of scorn, I said, "Miss Farrow, I can see two possible
answers. Either I am being pushed around for some deliberate reason, or
I'm too smart, too cagey and too dangerous for them to handle directly.
It takes only about eight weeks for me to reluctantly abandon the second
in favor of the first."

"But what makes you think you are being pushed?" she wanted to know.

"You can't tell me that I am so important that they couldn't erase me as
easily as they did Catherine and Dr. Thorndyke. And now that his name
comes up, let's ask why any doctor who once met a casual patient would
go to the bother of sending a postcard with a message on it that is
certain to cause me unhappiness. He's also the guy who nudged me by
calling my attention to my so-called 'shock hallucination' about Father
Harrison lifting my car while Phillip Harrison raced into the fire to
make the rescue. Add it up," I told her sharply. "Next he is invited to
Medical Center to study Mekstrom's. Only instead of landing there, he
sends me a postcard with one of the Highways in the picture, after which
he disappears."

Miss Farrow nodded thoughtfully. "It is all tied up with your Highways
and your Mekstrom People."

"That isn't all," I said. "How come the Harrisons moved so abruptly?"

"You're posing questions that I can't answer," complained Miss Farrow.
"And I'm not one hundred percent convinced that you are right."

"You are here, and if you take a look at what I'll show you, you'll be
convinced. We'll put it this way, to start: Something cockeyed is going
on. Now, one more thing I can add, and this is the part that confuses
me: Everything that has been done seems to point to me. So far as I can
see they are operating just as though they want me to start a big hassle
that will end up by getting the Highways out of their Hiding."

"Why on earth would they be doing that?" she wanted to know.

"I don't have the foggiest notion. But I do have that feeling and there
is evidence pointing that way. They've let me in on things that normally
they'd be able to conceal from a highly trained telepath. So I intend to
go along with them, because somewhere at the bottom of it all we'll find
the answer."

She nodded agreement.

Now I started up the car, saying, "I'm going to find us one of the
Highways in Hiding, and we'll follow it to one of the way stations. Then
you'll see for yourself that there is something definitely fishy going
on."

"This I'd like to see," she replied quietly. Almost too quietly. I took
a dig at her as I turned the car out through a tight corner of the lot
onto the road. She was sitting there with a noncommittal expression on
her face and I wondered why. She replied to my thought: "Steve, you must
face one thing. Anything you firmly believe will necessarily pass across
your mind as fact. So forgive me if I hold a few small doubts until I
have a chance to survey some of the evidence at first hand."

"Sure," I told her. "The first bit won't be hard."

I drove eagerly across Illinois into Iowa watching for road signs. I
knew that once I convinced someone else, it would be easier to convince
a third, and a fourth, and a fiftieth until the entire world was out on
the warpath. We drove all day, stopping for chow now and then, behaving
like a couple out on a vacation tour. We stopped in a small town along
about midnight and found a hotel without having come upon any of the
hidden highways.

We met at breakfast, talked our ideas over mildly, and took off again.
We crossed into Nebraska about noon and continued to meander until late
in the afternoon when we came upon our first giveaway road sign.

"There," I told her triumphantly.

She nodded. "I see the sign, Steve. That much I knew. Now all you have
to do is to show me the trial-blazes up in that emblem."

"Unless they've changed their method," I told her, "this one leads West,
slightly south of." I stopped the car not many yards from the sign and
went over it with my sense of perception. #You'll note the ease with
which the emblem could be turned upside down,# I interjected. #Note the
similar width of the top and bottom trefoil, so that only a trained and
interested observer can tell the difference.#

I drove along until we saw one on the other side of the road and we
stopped again, giving the sign a thorough going over. #Note that the
signs leading away from the direction are upside down,# I went on. I
didn't say a word, I was using every ounce of energy in running my
perception over the sign and commenting on its various odds and ends.

#Now,# I finished, #we'll drive along this Highway in Hiding until we
come to some intersection or hideout. Then you'll be convinced.#

She was silent.

We took off along that road rather fast and we followed it for miles,
passing sign after sign with its emblem turned up along the right side
of the road and turned upside-down when the sign was on the left.

Eventually we came to a crossing highway, and at that I pointed
triumphantly. "Note the missing spoke!" I said with considerable
enthusiasm. "Now, Miss Farrow, we shall first turn against it for a few
miles and then we shall U-turn and come back along the cross highway
with it."

"I'm beginning to be convinced, Steve."

We turned North against the sign and went forty or fifty miles, just to
be sure. The signs were all against us. Eventually I turned into a gas
station and filled the carte up to the scuppers. As we turned back
South, I asked her, "Any more comment?"

She shook her head. "Not yet."

I nodded. "If you want, we'll take a jaunt along our original course."

"By all means."

"In other words you are more than willing to be convinced?"

"Yes," she said simply. She went silent then and I wondered what she was
thinking about, but she didn't bother to tell me.

Eventually we came back to the crossroad, and with a feeling of having
been successful, I continued South with a confidence that I had not felt
before. We stopped for dinner in a small town, ate hastily but well, and
then had a very mild debate.

"Shall we have a drink and relax for a moment?"

"I'd like it," she replied honestly. "But somehow I doubt that I could
relax."

"I know. But it does seem like a good idea to take it easy for a half
hour. It might even be better if we stopped over and took off again in
the morning."

"Steve," she told me, "the only way I could relax or go to sleep would
be to take on a roaring load so that I'd pass out cold. I'd rather not
because I'd get up tomorrow with a most colossal hangover. Frankly, I'm
excited and I'd prefer to follow this thing to a finish."

"It's a deal," I said. "We'll go until we have to stop."

It was about eight o'clock when we hit the road again.

       *       *       *       *       *

By nine-forty-five we'd covered something better than two hundred miles,
followed another intersection turn according to the missing spoke, and
were heading well toward the upper right-hand corner of Colorado on the
road map.

At ten o'clock plus a few minutes we came upon the roadsign that pointed
the way to a ranch-type house set prettily on the top of a small knoll
several hundred yards back from the main road. I stopped briefly a few
hundred feet from the lead-in road and asked Miss Farrow:

"What's your telepath range? You've never told me."

She replied instantly, "Intense concentration directed at me is about a
half mile. Superficial thinking that might include me or my personality
as a by-thought about five hundred yards. To pick up a thought that has
nothing to do with me or my interests, not much more than a couple of
hundred feet. Things that are definitely none of my business close down
to forty or fifty feet."

That was about the average for a person with a bit of psi training
either in telepathy or in esper; it matched mine fairly well, excepting
that part about things that were none of my business. She meant
_thoughts_ and not _things_. I had always had a hard time
differentiating between things that were none of my damned business,
although I do find it more difficult to dig the contents of a letter
between two unknown parties at a given distance than it is to dig a
letter written or addressed to a person I know. _Things_ are, by and
large, a lot less personal than thoughts, if I'm saying anything new.

"Well," I told her, "this is it. We're going to go in close enough for
you to take a 'pathic look-around. Keep your mind sensitive. If you dig
any danger, yell out. I'm going to extend my esper as far as I can and
if I suddenly take off like a startled spacecraft, it's because I have
uncovered something disagreeable. But keep your mind on them and not me,
because I'm relying on you to keep posted on their mental angle."

Miss Farrow nodded. "It's hard to remember that other people haven't the
ability to make contact mentally. It's like a normal man talking to a
blind man and referring constantly to visible things because he doesn't
understand. I'll try to remember."

"I'm going to back in," I said. "Then if trouble turns up, I'll have an
advantage. As soon as they feel our minds coming in at them, they'll
know that we're not in there for their health. So here we go!"

"I'm a good actor," she said. "No matter what I say, I'm with you all
the way!"

I yanked the car forward, and angled back. I hit the road easily and
started backing along the driveway at a rather fast speed with my eyes
half-closed to give my esper sense the full benefit of my concentration
along the road. When I was not concentrating on how I was going to turn
the wheel at the next curve I thought, #I hope these folks know the best
way to get to Colorado Springs from here. Dammit, we're lost!#

Miss Farrow squeezed my arm gently, letting me know that she was
thinking the same general thoughts.

Suddenly she said, "It's a dead area, Steve."

It was a dead area, all right. My perception came to a barrier that made
it fade from full perception to not being able to perceive anything in a
matter of yards. It always gives me an eerie feeling when I approach a
dead area and find that I can see a building clearly and not be able to
cast my perception beyond a few feet.

I kept on backing up into the fringe of that dead area until I was deep
within the edge and it took all my concentration to perceive the road a
few feet ahead of my rear wheels so that I could steer. I was inching
now, coming back like a blind man feeling his way. We were within about
forty feet of the ranch house when Miss Farrow yelped:

"They're surrounding us, Steve!"

My hands whipped into action and my heavy right foot came down on the
gas-pedal. The car shuddered, howled like a wounded banshee, and then
leaped forward with a roar.

A man sprang out of the bushes and stood in front of the car like a
statue with his hand held up. Miss Farrow screamed something
unintelligible and clutched at my arm frantically. I threw her hand off
with a snarl, kept my foot rammed down hard and hit the man dead center.
The car bucked and I heard metal crumple angrily. We lurched, bounced
viciously twice as my wheels passed over his floundering body, and then
we were racing like complete idiots along a road that should not have
been covered at more than twenty. The main road came into sight and I
sliced the car around with a screech of the rear tires, controlled the
deliberate skid with some fancy wheel-work and some fast digging of the
surrounding dangers.

Then we were tearing along the broad and beautifully clear concrete with
the speedometer needle running into the one-fifteen region.

"Steve," said Miss Farrow breathlessly, "That man you hit--"

In a hard voice I said, "He was getting to his feet when I drove out of
range."

"I know," she said in a whimper. "I was in his mind. He was not hurt!
God! Steve--what are we up against?" Her voice rose to a wail.

"I don't know, exactly," I said. "But I know what we're going to do."

"But Steve--what can we do?"

"Alone or together, very little. But we can bring one person more out
along these Highways and then convince a fourth and a fifth and a
fiftieth and a thousandth. By then we'll be shoved back off the stage
while the big wheels grind painfully slow but exceedingly meticulous."

"That'll take time."

"Certainly. But we've got a start. Look how long it took getting a start
in the first place."

"But what is their purpose?" she asked.

"That I can't say. I can't say a lot of things, like how, and why and
wherefore. But I know that now we have a front tooth in this affair
we're not going to let go." I thought for a moment. "I could use
Thorndyke; he'd be the next guy to convince if we could find him. Or
maybe Catherine, if we could find her. The next best thing is to get
hold of that F.B.I. Team that called on me. There's a pair of
cold-blooded characters that seem willing to sift through a million tons
of ash to find one valuable cinder. They'll listen. I--"

Miss Farrow looked at her watch; I dug it as she made the gesture.
#Eleven o'clock.#

"Going to call?" she asked.

"No," I said. "It's too late. It's one in New York now and the F.B.I.
Team wouldn't be ready for a fast job at this hour."

"So?"

"I have no intention of placing a 'When you are ready' call to a number
identified with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Not when a full
eight hours must elapse between the call and a reply. Too much can
happen to us in the meantime. But if I call in the morning, we can
probably take care of ourselves well enough until they arrive if we stay
in some place that is positively teeming with citizens. Sensible?"

"Sounds reasonable, Steve."

I let the matter drop at that; I put the go-pedal down to the floor and
fractured a lot of speed laws until we came to Denver.

We made Denver just before midnight and drove around until we located a
hotel that filled our needs. It was large, which would prevent overt
operations on the part of the 'enemy' and it was a dead area, which
would prevent one of them from reading our minds while we slept, and so
enable them to lay counterplans against us.

The bellhop gave us a knowing leer as we registered separately, but I
was content to let him think what he wanted. Better that he get the
wrong idea about us than the right one. He fiddled around in Miss
Farrow's room on the ninth, bucking for a big tip--not for good service,
but for leaving us alone, which he did by demonstrating how big a
nuisance he could be if not properly rewarded. But finally he got tired
of his drawer-opening and lamp-testing and towel-stacking, and escorted
me up to the twelfth. I led him out with a five spot clutched in his
fist and the leer even stronger.

If he expected me to race downstairs as soon as he was out of ear-shot,
he was mistaken, for I hit the sack like the proverbial ton of crushed
mortar. It had been literally weeks since I'd had a pleasant, restful
sleep that was not broken by fitful dreams and worry-insomnia. Now that
we had something solid to work on, I could look forward to some concrete
action instead of merely feeling pushed around.




VIII


I'd put in for an eight o'clock call, but my sleep had been so sound and
perfect that I was all slept out by seven-thirty. I was anxious to get
going so I dressed and shaved in a hurry and cancelled the eight o'clock
call. Then I asked the operator to connect me with 913.

A gruff, angry male voice snarled out of the earpiece at me. I began to
apologize profusely but the other guy slammed the phone down on the hook
hard enough to make my ear ring.

I jiggled my hook angrily and when the operator answered I told her that
she'd miscued. She listened to my complaint and then replied in a
pettish tone, "But I did ring 913, sir. I'll try again."

I wanted to tell her to just try, that there was no 'again' about it,
but I didn't. I tried to dig through the murk to her switchboard but I
couldn't dig a foot through this area. I waited impatiently until she
re-made the connections at her switchboard and I heard the burring of
the phone as the other end rang. Then the same mad-bull-rage voice
delivered a number of pointed comments about people who ring up honest
citizens in the middle of the night; and he hung up again in the middle
of my apology. I got irked again and demanded that the operator connect
me with the registration clerk. To him I told my troubles.

"One moment, sir," he said. A half minute later he returned with,
"Sorry, sir. There is no Farrow registered. Could I have mis-heard you?"

"No, goddammit," I snarled. "It's Farrow. F as in Frank; A as in Arthur;
Double R as in Robert Robert; O as in Oliver; and W as in Washington. I
saw her register, I went with her and the bellhop to her room, Number
913, and saw her installed. Then the same 'hop took me up to my room in
1224 on the Twelfth."

There was another moment of silence. Then he said, "You're Mr. Cornell.
Registered in Room 1224 last night approximately four minutes after
midnight."

"I know all about me. I was there and did it myself. And if I registered
at four after midnight, Miss Farrow must have registered about two after
midnight because the ink was still wet on her card when I wrote my name.
We came in together, we were travelling together. Now, what gives?"

"I wouldn't know, sir. We have no guest named Farrow."

"See here," I snapped, "did you ever have a guest named Farrow?"

"Not in the records I have available at this desk. Perhaps in the past
there may have been--"

"Forget the past. What about the character in 913?"

The registration clerk returned and informed me coldly, "Room 913 has
been occupied by a Mr. Horace Westfield for over three months, Mr.
Cornell. There is no mistake." His voice sounded professionally
sympathetic, and I knew that he would forget my troubles as soon as his
telephone was put back on its hook.

"Forget it," I snapped and hung up angrily. Then I went towards the
elevators, walking in a sort of dream-like daze. There was a cold lump
of something concrete hard beginning to form in the pit of my stomach.
Wetness ran down my spine and a drop of sweat dropped from my armpit and
hit my body a few inches above my belt like a pellet of icy hail. My
face felt cold but when I wiped it with the palm of a shaking hand I
found it beaded with an oily sweat. Everything seemed unreally
horrifying.

"Nine," I told the elevator operator in a voice that sounded far away
and hoarse.

I wondered whether this might not be a very vivid dream, and maybe if I
went all the way back to my room, took a short nap, and got up to start
all over again, I would awaken to honest reality.

The elevator stopped at Nine and I walked the corridor that was familiar
from last night. I rapped on the door of Room 913.

The door opened and a big stubble-faced gorilla gazed out and snarled at
me: "Are you the persistent character?"

"Look," I said patiently, "last night a woman friend of mine registered
at this hotel and I accompanied her to this door. Number 913. Now--"

A long apelike arm came out and caught me by the coat lapels. He hauled
and I went in fast. His breath was sour and his eyes were bloodshot and
he was angry all the way through. His other hand caught me by the seat
of the pants and he danced me into the room like a jumping jack.

"Friend," he ground out, "Take a look. There ain't no woman in this
room, see?"

He whirled, carrying me off my feet. He took a lunging step forward and
hurled me onto the bed, where I carried the springs deep down, to bounce
up and off and forward to come up flat against the far wall. I landed
sort of spread-eagle flat and seemed to hang there before I slid down
the wall to the floor with a meaty-sounding Whump! Then before I could
collect my wits or myself, he came over the bed in one long leap and had
me hauled upright by the coat lapels again. The other hand was cocked
back level with his shoulder it looked the size of a twenty-five pound
sack of flour and was probably as hard as set cement.

_Steve_, I told myself, _this time you're in for it!_

"All right," I said as apologetically as I knew how, "so I've made a bad
mistake. I apologize. I'll also admit that you could wipe up the hotel
with me. But do you have to prove it?"

Mr. Horace Westfield's mental processes were not slow, cumbersome, and
crude. He was as fast and hard on his mental feet as he was on his
physical feet. He made some remarks about my intelligence, my
upbringing, my parentage and its legal status, and my unwillingness to
face a superior enemy. During this catalog of my virtueless existence,
he gandy-walked me to the door and opened it. He concluded his lecture
by suggesting that in the future I accept anything that any registration
clerk said as God-Stated Truth, and if I then held any doubts I should
take them to the police. Then he hurled me out of the room by just sort
of shoving me away. I sailed across the hall on my toes, backward, and
slapped my frame flat again, and once more I hung against the wall until
the kinetic energy had spent itself. Then I landed on wobbly ankles as
the door to Room 913 came closed with a violent slam.

I cursed the habit of building hotels in dead areas, although I admitted
that I'd steer clear of any hotel in a clear area myself. But I didn't
need a clear area nor a sense of perception to inform me that Room 913
was absolutely and totally devoid of any remote sign of female
habitation. In fact, I gathered the impression that for all of his brute
strength and virile masculinity, Mr. Horace Westfield hadn't entertained
a woman in that room since he'd been there.

There was one other certainty: It was impossible for any agency short of
sheer fairyland magic to have produced overnight a room that displayed
its long-term occupancy by a not-too-immaculate character. That
distinctive sour smell takes a long time to permeate the furnishings of
any decent hotel; I wondered why a joint as well kept as this one would
put up with a bird as careless of his person as Mr. Horace Westfield.

So I came to the reluctant conclusion that Room 913 was not occupied by
Nurse Farrow, but I was not yet convinced that she was totally missing
from the premises.

Instead of taking the elevator, I took to the stairs and tried the
eighth. My perception was not too good for much in this murk, but I was
mentally sensitive to Nurse Farrow and if I could get close enough to
her, I might be able to perceive some trace of her even through the
deadness. I put my forehead against the door of Room 813 and drew a
blank. I could dig no farther than the inside of the door. If Farrow
were in 813, I couldn't dig a trace of her. So I went to 713 and tried
there.

I was determined to try every -13th room on every floor, but as I was
standing with my forehead against the door to Room 413, someone came up
behind me quietly and asked in a rough voice: "Just what do you think
you're doing, Mister?"

His dress indicated housedick, but of course I couldn't dig the license
in his wallet any more than he could read my mental, #None of your
business, flatfoot!# I said, "I'm looking for a friend."

"You'd better come with me," he said flatly. "There's been complaints."

"Yeah?" I growled. "Maybe I made one of them myself."

"Want to start something?" he snapped.

I shrugged and he smiled. It was a stony smile, humorless as a crevasse
in a rock-face. He kept that professional-type smile on his face until
we reached the manager's office. The manager was out, but one of the
assistant managers was in his desk. The little sign on the desk said
"Henry Walton. Assistant Manager."

Mr. Walton said, coldly, "What seems to be the trouble, Mr. Cornell?"

I decided to play it just as though I were back at the beginning again.
"Last night," I explained very carefully, "I checked into this hotel. I
was accompanied by a woman companion. A registered nurse. Miss Gloria
Farrow. She registered first, and we were taken by one of your bellboys
to Rooms 913 and 1224 respectively. I went with Miss Farrow to 913 and
saw her enter. Then the bellhop escorted me to 1224 and left me for the
night. This morning I can find no trace of Miss Farrow anywhere in this
fleabag."

He bristled at the derogatory title but he covered it quickly. "Please
be assured that no one connected with this hotel has any intention of
confusing you, Mr. Cornell."

"I'm tired of playing games," I snapped. "I'll accept your statement so
far as the management goes, but someone is guilty of fouling up your
registration lists."

"That's rather harsh," he replied coldly. "Falsifying or tampering with
hotel registration lists is illegal. What you've just said amounts to
libel or slander, you know."

"Not if it's true."

I half expected Henry Walton to backwater fast, but instead, he merely
eyed me with the same expression of distaste that he might have used
upon finding half of a fuzzy caterpillar in his green salad. As cold as
a cake of carbon dioxide snow, he said, "Can you prove this, Mr.
Cornell?"

"Your night crew--"

"You've given us a bit of trouble this morning," he informed me. "So
I've taken the liberty of calling in the night crew for you." He pressed
a button and a bunch came in and lined up as if for formal inspection.
"Boys," said Walton quietly, "suppose you tell us what you know about
Mr. Cornell's arrival here last night."

They nodded their heads in unison.

"Wait a minute," I snapped. "I want a reliable witness to listen to
this. In fact, if I could, I'd like to have their stories made under
oath."

"You'd like to register a formal charge? Perhaps of kidnapping, or maybe
illegal restraint?"

"Just get me an impartial witness," I told him sourly.

"Very well." He picked up his telephone and spoke into it. We waited a
few minutes, and finally a very prim young woman came in. She was
followed by a uniformed policeman. She was carrying one of those
sub-miniature silent typewriters which she set up on its little stand
with a few efficient motions.

"Miss Mason is our certified public stenographer," he said. "Officer,
I'll want your signature on her copy when we're finished. This is a
simple routine matter, but it must be legal to the satisfaction of Mr.
Cornell. Now, boys, go ahead and explain. Give your name and position
first for Miss Mason's record."

It was then that I noticed that the night crew had arranged themselves
in chronological order. The elderly gent spoke first. He'd been the
night doorman but now he was stripped of his admiral's gold braid and he
looked just like any other sleepy man of middle age.

"George Comstock," he announced. "Doorman. As soon as I saw the car
angling out of traffic, I pressed the call-button for a bell boy. Peter
Wright came out and was standing in readiness by the time Mr. Cornell's
car came to a stop by the curb. Johnny Olson was out next, and after
Peter had taken Mr. Cornell's bag, Johnny got into Mr. Cornell's car and
took off for the hotel garage--"

Walton interrupted. "Let each man tell what he did himself. No
prompting, please."

"Well, then, you've heard my part in it. Johnny Olson took off in Mr.
Cornell's car and Peter Wright took off with Mr. Cornell's bag, and Mr.
Cornell followed Peter."

The next man in line, at a nod from the assistant manager, stepped
forward about a half a pace and said, "I'm Johnny Olson. I followed
Peter Wright out of the door and after Peter had collected Mr. Cornell's
bag, I got in Mr. Cornell's car and took it to the hotel garage."

The third was Peter Wright, the bellhop. "I carried his bag to the desk
and waited until he registered. Then we went up to Room 1224. I opened
the door, lit the lights, opened the window, and stuff. Mr. Cornell
tipped me five bucks and I left him there. Alone."

"I'm Thomas Boothe, the elevator operator. I took Mr. Cornell and Peter
Wright to the Twelfth. Peter said I should wait because he wouldn't be
long, and so I waited on the Twelfth until Peter got back. That's all."

"I'm Doris Caspary, the night telephone operator. Mr. Cornell called me
about fifteen minutes after twelve and asked me to put him down for a
call at eight o'clock this morning. Then he called at about seven thirty
and said that he was already awake and not to bother."

Henry Walton said, "That's about it, Mr. Cornell."

"But--"

The policeman looked puzzled. "What is the meaning of all this? If I'm
to witness any statements like these, I'll have to know what for."

Walton looked at me. I couldn't afford not to answer. Wearily I said,
"Last night I came in here with a woman companion and we registered in
separate rooms. She went into 913 and I waited until she was installed
and then went to my own room on the Twelfth. This morning there is no
trace of her."

I went on to tell him a few more details, but the more I told him the
more he lifted his eyebrows.

"Done any drinking?" he asked me curtly.

"No."

"Certain?"

"Absolutely."

Walton looked at his crew. They burst into a chorus of, "Well, he _was_
steady on his feet," and "He didn't _seem_ under the influence," and a
lot of other statements, all generally indicating that for all they knew
I could have been gassed to the ears, but one of those rare guys who
don't show it.

The policeman smiled thinly. "Just why was this registered nurse
travelling with you?"

I gave them the excuse-type statement; the one about the accident and
that I felt that I was still a bit on the rocky side and so forth. About
all I did for that was to convince the policeman that I was not a stable
character. His attitude seemed to indicate that any man travelling with
a nurse must either be physically sick or maybe mentally out of tune.

Then with a sudden thought, I whirled on Johnny Olson. "Will you get my
car?" I asked him. He nodded after a nod from Walton. I said, "There's
plenty of evidence in my car. In the meantime, let's face one thing,
officer. I've been accused of spinning a yarn. I'd hardly be demanding
witnesses if I weren't telling the truth. I was standing beside Miss
Farrow when she signed the register, complete with the R.N. title. It's
too bad that hotels have taken to using card files instead of the old
registration book. Cards are so easy to misplace--"

Walton cut in angrily. "If that's an accusation, I'm inclined to see
that you make it in a court of law."

The policeman looked calm. "I'd take it easy, Mr. Cornell. Your story is
not corroborated. But the employees of the hotel bear one another out.
And from the record, it would appear that you were under the eyes of at
least two of them from the moment your car slowed down in front of the
main entrance up to the time that you were escorted to your room."

"I object to being accused of complicity in a kidnapping," put in the
assistant manager.

"I object to being accused of mental incompetence," I snapped. "Why do
we stand around accusing people back and forth when there's evidence if
you'll only uncover it."

We stood there glaring at one another. The air grew tense. The only ones
in the place who did not have chips on their shoulders were the
policeman and the certified stenographer, who was clicking her silent
keys in lightning manner, taking down every comment as it was uttered.

Eventually Olson returned, to put an end to the thick silence. "Y'car's
outside," he told me angrily.

"Fine," I said. "Now we'll go outside and take a look. You'll find
plenty of traces of Miss Farrow's having been there. Officer--are you
telepath or perceptive?"

"Perceptive," he said. "But not in here."

"How far out does this damned dead area extend?" I asked Walton.

"About half way across the sidewalk."

"Okay. So let's all go."

We traipsed out to the curb. Miss Mason brought her little silent along,
slipping the stand high up so that she could type from an erect
position. We lined up along the curb and I looked into my car with a
triumphant feeling.

And then that cold chill congealed my spine again. My car was clean and
shining. It had been washed and buffed and polished until it looked as
new as the day I picked it out on the salesroom floor.

Walton looked blank, and I whipped a thought at him: #Damned telepath!#

He nodded perceptibly and said smoothly, "I'm rather sorry we couldn't
find any fingerprints. Because now, you see," and here he turned to the
policeman and went on, "Mr. Cornell will now accuse us of having washed
his car to destroy the evidence. However, you'll find that as a general
policy of the hotel, the car-washing is performed as a standard service.
In fact, if any guest parks his car in our garage and his car is not
rendered spick and span, someone is going to get fired for negligence."

So that was that. I took a fast look around, because I knew that I had
to get out of there fast. If I remained to carry on any more argument,
I'd be tapped for being a nuisance and jugged.

I had no doubt at all that the whole hotel staff were all involved in
Nurse Farrow's disappearance. But they'd done their job in such a way
that if the question were pushed hard, I would end up answering formal
charges, the topmost of which might be murder and concealment of the
body.

I could do nothing by sitting in jail. This was the time to get out
first and worry about Farrow later.

So I opened the car door and slipped in. I fiddled with the so-called
glove compartment and opened it; the maps were all neatly stacked and
all the flub had been cleaned out. I fumbled inside and dropped a couple
of road maps to the floor, and while I was down picking them up I turned
the ignition key which Olson had left plugged in the lock.

I took off with a jerk and howl of tires.

There was the sudden shrill of a police whistle but it was stopped after
one brief blast. As I turned the corner, I caught a fast backwards dig
at them. They were filing back into the hotel. I did not believe that
the policeman was part of the conspiracy, but I was willing to bet that
Walton was going to slip the policeman a box of fine cigars as a reward
for having helped them to get rid of a very embarrassing screwball.




IX


I put a lot of miles between me and my recent adventure before I stopped
to take stock. The answer to the mess was still obscure, but the
elimination of Nurse Farrow fell into the pattern very neatly.

Alone, I was no problem. So long as my actions were restricted to
meandering up and down the highways and byways, peering into nooks and
crannies and crying, "Catherine," in a plaintive voice, no one cared.
But when I teamed up with a telepath, they moved in with the efficiency
of a well-run machine and extracted the disturbing element. In fact,
their machinations had been so smooth that I was beginning to believe
that my 'Discoveries' were really an assortment of unimportant facts
shown to me deliberately for some reason of their own.

The only snag in the latter theory was the fact of our accident.
Assuming that I had to get involved in the mess, there were easier ways
to introduce me than by planning a bad crack-up that could have been
fatal, even granting the close proximity of the Harrison tribe to come
to the rescue. The accident had to be an accident in the dictionary
definition of the word itself. Under the circumstances, a planned
accident could only be accepted under an entirely different set of
conditions. For instance, let's assume that Catherine was a Mekstrom and
I was about to disclose the fact. Then she or they could plan such an
accident, knowing that she could walk out of the wreck with her hair
barely mussed, leaving me dead for sure.

But Catherine was not a Mekstrom. I'd been close enough to that satin
skin to know that the body beneath it was soft and yielding.

Yet the facts as they stood did not throw out my theory. It merely had
to be revised. Catherine was no Mekstrom, but if the Harrisons had
detected the faintest traces of an incipient Mekstrom infection, they
could very well have taken her in. I fumed at the idea. I could almost
visualize them pointing out her infection and then informing her bluntly
that she could either swear in with them and be cured or she could die
alone and miserably.

This could easily explain her disappearance. Naturally, being what they
were, they cared nothing for me or any other non-Mekstrom. I was no
menace. Not until I teamed up with a telepath, and they knew what to do
about that.

Completely angry, I decided that it was time that I made a noise like an
erupting volcano. With plans forming, I took off again towards
Yellowstone, pausing only long enough at Fort Collins to buy some
armament.

Colorado is still a part of the United States where a man can go into a
store and buy a gun over the counter just like any other tool. I picked
out a Bonanza .375 because it is small enough to fit the hip pocket,
light because of the new alloys so it wouldn't unballast me, and mostly
because it packs enough wallop to stop a charging hippo. I did not know
whether it would drill all the way through a Mekstrom hide, but the
impact would at least set any target back on the seat of his pants.

Then I drove into Wyoming and made my way to Yellowstone, and one day I
was driving along the same road that had been pictured in Dr.
Thorndyke's postcard. I drove along it boldly, loaded for bear, and
watching the Highway signs that led me nicely toward my goal.

Eventually I came to the inevitable missing spoke. It pointed to a
ranch-type establishment that lay sprawled out in a billow of dead area.
I eyed it warily and kept on driving because my plans did not include
marching up to the front door like a rug peddler.

Instead, I went on to the next town, some twenty miles away, which I
reached about dark. I stopped for a leisurely dinner, saw a moving
picture at the drive-in, killed a few at the bar, and started back to
the way station about midnight.

The name, dug from the mailbox, was Macklin.

Again I did not turn in. I parked the car down the highway by about
three miles, figuring that only a psi of doctor's degree would be able
to dig anything at that distance. I counted on there being no such
mental giant in this out of the way place.

I made my way back toward the ranch house across the fields and among
the rolling rock. I extended my perception as far as I could; I made
myself sensitive to danger and covered the ground foot by foot, digging
for traps, alarm lines, photocell trips, and parties who might be lying
in wait for me.

I encountered no sign of any trip or trap all the way to the fringe of
the dead zone.

The possibility that they knew of my presence and were comfortably
awaiting me deep within the zone occurred to me, and so I was very
cautious as I cased the layout and decided to make my entry at the point
where the irregular boundary of the dead area was closest to the house
itself.

I entered and became completely psi-blind. Starlight cast just enough
light so that I could see to walk without falling into a chuck hole or
stumbling over something, but beyond a few yards everything lost shape
and became a murky blob. The night was dead silent except for an
occasional hiss of wind through the brush.

Esperwise I was not covering much more than my eyes could see. I stepped
deeper into the zone and lost another yard of perception. I kept probing
at the murk, sort of like poking a finger at a hanging blanket. It moved
if I dug hard enough in any direction, but as soon as I released the
pressure, the murk moved right back where it was before.

I crouched and took a few more steps into the zone, got to a place where
I could begin to see the outlines of the house itself.

Dark, silent, it looked uninhabited. I wished that there had been a
college course in housebreaking, prowling and second-story operations. I
went at it very slowly. I took my sweet time crossing the boards of the
back verandah, even though the short hair on the back of my neck was
beginning to prickle from nervousness. I was also scared. At any given
moment, they had the legal right to open a window, poke out a
field-piece, and blow me into bloody ribbons where I stood.

The zone was really a dead one. My esper range was no more than about
six inches from my forehead; a motion picture of Steve Cornell sounding
out the border of a window with his forehead would have looked funny, it
was not funny at the time. But I found that the sash was not locked and
that the flyscreen could be unshipped from the outside.

I entered a dining room. Inside, it was blacker than pitch.

I crossed the dining room by sheer feel and instinct and managed to get
to the hallway without making any racket. At this point I stopped and
asked myself what the heck I thought I was trying to do. I had to admit
that I had no plan in definite form. I was just prowling the joint to
see what information I might be able to pick up.

Down the hall I found a library. I'd been told that you tell what kind
of people folks are by inspecting their library, and so I conned the
book titles by running my head along a row of books.

The books in the library indicated to me that this was a family of some
size with rather broad tastes. There was everything from science fiction
to Shakespeare, everything from philosophy to adventure. A short row of
kid's books. A bible. Encyclopedia Brittanica (Published in Chicago), in
fifty-four volumes, but there were no places that were worn that might
give me an idea as to any special interest.

The living room was also blank of any evidence of anything out or the
ordinary. I turned away and stood in the hallway, blocked by indecision.
I was a fool, I kept telling myself, because I did not have any
experience in casing a joint, and what I knew had been studied out of
old-time detective tales. Even if the inhabitants of the place were to
let me go at it in broad daylight, I'm not too sure that I'd do a good
job of finding something of interest except for sheer luck.

But on the other hand, I'd gotten nowhere by dodging and ducking. I was
in no mood to run quivering in fear. I was more inclined to emit a
bellow just to see what would happen next.

So instead of sneaking quietly away, I found the stairs and started to
go up very slowly.

It occurred to me at about the third step that I must be right. Anybody
with any sense wouldn't keep anything dangerous in their downstairs
library. It would be too much like a safe-cracker storing his nitro in
the liquor cabinet or the murderer who hangs his weapon over the
mantelpiece.

Yet everybody kept some sort of records, or had things in their homes
that were not shown to visiting firemen. And if it weren't on the second
floor, then it might be in the cellar. If I weren't caught first, I'd
prowl the whole damned place, inch by inch--avoiding if possible those
rooms in which people slept.

The fifth step squeaked ever so faintly, but it sounded like someone
pulling a spike out of a packing case made of green wood. I froze, half
aching for some perceptive range so that I could dig any sign of danger,
and half remembering that if it weren't for the dead area, I'd not be
this far. I'd have been frightened to try it in a clear zone.

Eventually I went on up, and as my head came above the level of the
floor, everything became psi-clear once more.

Here was as neat a bit of home planning as I have ever seen. Just below
the level of the second floor, their dead area faded out, so that the
top floor was clean, bright, and clear as day. I paused, startled at it,
and spent a few moments digging outside. The dead area billowed above
the rooftop out of my range; from what little I could survey of the dark
psi area, it must have been shaped sort of like an angel-food cake,
except that the central hole did not go all the way down. Only to the
first-floor level. It was a wonderful set-up for a home; privacy was
granted on the first floor and from the road and all the surrounding
territory, but on the second floor there was plenty of pleasant
esperclear space for the close-knit family and friends. Their dead area
was shaped in the ideal form for any ideal home.

Then I stopped complimenting the architect and went on about my
business, because there, directly in front of my nose, I could dig the
familiar impression of a medical office.

I went the rest of the way up the stairs and into the medical office.
There was no mistake. The usual cabinets full of instruments, a
laboratory examination table, shelves of little bottles, and along one
wall was a library of medical books. All it needed was a sign on the
door: 'S. P. Macklin, MSch' to make it standard.

At the end of the library was a set of looseleaf notebooks, and I pulled
the more recent of them out and held it up to my face. I did not dare
snap on a light, so I had to go it esper.

Even in the clear area, this told me very little. Esper is not like
eyesight, any more than you can hear printed words or perhaps carry on a
conversation by watching the wiggly green line on an oscilloscope. I
wished it was. Instead, esper gives you a grasp of materials and shapes
and things in position with regard to other things. It is sort of like
seeing something simultaneously from all sides, if you can imagine such
a sensation. So instead of being able to esper-read the journal, I had
to take it letter by letter by digging the shape of the ink on the page
with respect to the paper and the other letters, and since the guy's
handwriting was atrocious, I could get no more than if the thing were
written in Latin. If it had been typewritten, or with a stylized hand,
it would have been far less difficult; or if it had been any of my
damned business I could have dug it easily. But as it was----

"Looking for something, Mr. Cornell?" asked a cool voice that dripped
with acid sarcasm. At the same instant, the lights went on.

I whirled, clutched at my hip pocket, and dropped to my knees at the
same time. The sights of my .375 centered in the middle of a
silk-covered midriff.

She stood there indolently, disdainful of the cannon that was aimed at
her. She was not armed; I'd have caught the esper warning of danger if
she'd come at me with a weapon of some sort, even though I was
preoccupied with the bookful of evidence.

I stood up and faced her and let my esper run lightly over her body. She
was another Mekstrom, which did not surprise me a bit.

"I seem to have found what I was looking for," I said.

Her laugh was scornful but not loud. "You're welcome, Mr. Cornell."

#Telepath?#

"Yes, and a good one."

#Who else is awake?#

"Just me, so far," she replied quietly. "But I'll be glad to call out--"

#Keep it quiet, Sister Macklin.#

"Stop thinking like an idiot, Mr. Cornell. Quiet or not, you'll not
leave this house until I permit you to go."

I let my esper roam quickly through the house. An elderly couple slept
in the front bedroom. A man slept alone in the room beside them; a pair
of young boys slept in an over-and-under bunk in the room across the
hall. The next room must have been hers, the bed was tumbled but empty.
The room next to the medical office contained a man trussed in traction
splints, white bandages, and literally festooned with those little
hanging bottles that contain everything from blood plasma to food and
water, right on down to lubrication for the joints. I tried to dig his
face under the swath of bandage but I couldn't make out much more than
the fact that it was a face and that the face was half Mekstrom Flesh.

"He is a Mekstrom Patient," said Miss Macklin quietly. "At this stage,
he is unconscious."

I sort of sneered at her. "Good friend of yours, no doubt."

"Not particularly," she said. "Let's say that he is a poor victim that
would die if we hadn't found his infection early." The tone and
expression of her voice made me seethe; she sounded as though she felt
herself to be a real benefactor to the human race, and that she and her
outfit would do the same for any other poor guy that caught
Mekstrom's--providing they learned about this unfortunate occurrence in
time.

"We would, Mr. Cornell."

"Bah-loney," I grunted.

"Why dispute my word?" she asked in the same tone of innocent honesty.

I eyed her angrily and I felt my hand tighten on the revolver. "I've a
reason to become suspicious," I told her in a voice that I hoped was as
mild-mannered as her own. "Because three people have disappeared in the
past half-year without a trace, but under circumstances that put me in
the middle. All of them, somehow, seem to be involved with your hidden
road sign system and Mekstrom's Disease."

"That's unfortunate," she said quietly.

I had to grab myself to keep from yelling, "Unfortunate?" and managed to
muffle it down to a mere voice-volume sound. "People dying of Mekstrom's
because you're keeping this cure a secret and I'm batted from pillar to
post because--" I gave up on that because I really did not know why.

"It's unfortunate that you had to become involved," she said firmly.
"Because you--"

"It's unfortunate for everybody," I snapped, "because I'm going to bust
you all wide open!"

"I'm afraid not. You see, in order to do that you'll have to get out of
here and that I will not permit."

I grunted. "Miss Macklin, you Mekstroms have hard bodies, but do you
think your hide will stop a slug from this?"

"You'll never know. You see, Mr. Cornell, you do not have the cold,
brittle, determined guts that you'd need to pull that trigger."

"No?"

"Pull it," she said. "Or do you agree, now that you're of age, that you
can't bluff a telepath."

I eyed her sourly because she was right. She held that strength that
lies in weakness; I could not pull that trigger and fire a .375 inch
slug into that slender, silk-covered midriff. And opposite that, Miss
Macklin also had a strength that was strength itself. She could hold me
aloft with one hand kicking and squirming while she was twisting my arms
and legs off with her other hand.

She held all the big cards of her sex, too. I couldn't slug her with my
fist, even though I knew that I'd only break my hand without even
bruising her. I was in an awkward situation and I knew it. If she'd been
a normal woman I could have shrugged my way past her and left, but she
was determined not to let me leave without a lot of physical violence.
Violence committed on a woman gets the man in dutch no matter how
justified he is.

Yet in my own weakness there was a strength; there was another way out
and I took it. Abruptly and without forethought.




X


Shifting my aim slightly, I pulled the trigger. The .375 Bonanza went
off with a sound like an atom bomb in a telephone booth, and the slug
whiffed between her arm and her body and drilled a crater in the plaster
behind her.

The roar stunned her stiff. The color drained from her face and she
swayed uncertainly. I found time enough to observe that while her body
was as hard as chromium, her nervous system was still human and
sensitive enough to make her faint from a sudden shock. She caught
herself, and stood there stiff and white with one delicate (but
steel-hard) hand up against her throat.

Then I dug the household. They were piling out of the hay like a bunch
of trained firemen answering a still alarm. They arrived in all stages
of nightdress in the following order:

The man, about twenty-two or three, who skidded into the room on dead
gallop and put on brakes with a screech as he caught sight of the .375
with its thin wisp of blue vapor still trailing out of the muzzle.

The twins, aged about fourteen, who might have turned to run if they'd
not been frightened stiff at the sight of the cannon in my fist.

Father and then Mother Macklin, who came in briskly but without panic.

Mr. Macklin said, crisply, "May I have an explanation, Mr. Cornell?"

"I'm a cornered rat," I said thickly. "And so I'm scared. I want out of
here in one piece. I'm so scared that if I'm intercepted, I may get
panicky, and if I do someone is likely to get hurt. Understand?"

"Perfectly," said Mr. Macklin calmly.

"Are you going to let him get away with this?" snapped the eldest son.

"Fred, a nervous man with a revolver is very dangerous. Especially one
who lacks the rudimentary training in the simpler forms of burglary."

I couldn't help but admire the older gentleman's bland self-confidence.
"Young man," he said to me, "You've made a bad mistake."

"No I haven't," I snapped. "I've been on the trail of something concrete
for a long time, and now that I've found it I'm not going to let it go
easily." I waved the .375 and they all cringed but Mr. Macklin.

He said, "Please put that weapon down, Mr. Cornell. Let's not add
attempted murder to your other crimes."

"Don't force me to it, then. Get out of my way and let me go."

He smiled. "I don't have to be telepath to tell you that you won't pull
that trigger until you're sorely driven," he replied calmly. He was so
right that it made me mad. He added, "also, you've got four shells left
since you carry the firearm on an empty chamber. Not used to guns, are
you, Mr. Cornell?"

Well, I wasn't used to wearing a gun. Now that he mentioned it, I
remembered that it was impossible to fire the shell under the hammer by
any means except by pulling the trigger.

What he was telling me meant that even if I made a careful but bloody
sweep of it with my four shells, there would be two of them left, and
even the twins were more than capable of taking me apart inch by inch
once my revolver was empty.

"Seems to be an impasse, Mr. Cornell," he said with an amused smile.

"You bland-mannered bunch of--"

"Ah now, please," he said abruptly. "My wife is not accustomed to such
language, nor is my daughter, although my son and the twins probably
know enough definitions to make them angry. This is an impasse, Mr.
Cornell, and it behooves all of us to be extremely polite to one
another. For one wrong move and you'll fire; this will mean complete
chaos for all of us. One wrong word from you and someone of us will take
offense, which will be equally fatal. Now, let's all stand quietly and
talk this over."

"What's to talk over?" I demanded.

"A truce. Or call it an armistice."

"Do go on."

He looked at his family, and I followed his gaze. Miss Macklin was
leaning against the wall with a look of concentrated interest. Her elder
brother Fred was standing alert and ready but not quite poised for a
leap. Mrs. Macklin had a motherly-looking smile on her face which for
some unknown reason she was aiming at me in a disarming manner. The
twins were standing close together, both of them puzzled-looking. I
wondered whether they were esper or telepath (twins are always the same
when they're identical, and opposite when fraternal). The thing that
really bothered me was their attitude They all seemed to look at me as
though I were a poor misguided individual who had unwittingly tromped on
their toes after having fallen in among bad company. They reminded me of
the Harrisons, who looked and sounded so sympathetic when I'd gone out
there seeking Catherine.

A fine bunch to trust! First they swipe my girl and erase all traces of
her; then when I go looking they offer me help and sympathy for my
distress. The right hand giveth and the left hand taketh away, yeah!

I hated them all, yet I am not a hero-type. I wanted the whole Highways
in Hiding rolled up like an old discarded corridor carpet, with every
Mekstrom on Earth rolled up in it. But even if I'd been filled to the
scuppers with self-abnegation in favor of my fellow man, I could not
have pulled the trigger and started the shambles. For instead of blowing
the whole thing wide open because of a batch of bodies, the survivors
would have enough savvy to clean up the mess before our bodies got cold,
and the old Highways crowd would be doing business at the same old
stand. Without, I might add, without the minor nuisance that people call
Steve Cornell.

What I really wanted was to find Catherine.

And then it came to me that what I really wanted second of all was to
possess a body of Mekstrom Flesh, to be a physical superman.

"Suppose," said Miss Macklin unexpectedly, "that it is impossible?"

"Impossible?" I roared. "What have you got that I haven't got?"

"Mekstrom's Disease," replied Miss Macklin quietly.

"Fine," I sneered. "So how do I go out and get it?"

"You'll get it naturally--or not at all," she said.

"Now see here--" I started off, but Mr. Macklin stopped me with an
upraised hand.

"Mr. Cornell," he said, "we are in the very awkward position of trying
to convince a man that his preconceived notion is incorrect. We can
produce no direct evidence to support our statement. All we can do is to
tell you that so far as we know, and as much as we know about Mekstrom's
Disease, no one has ever contracted the infection artificially."

"And how can I believe you?"

"That's our awkward position. We cannot show you anything that will
support our statement. We can profess the attitudes of honesty, truth,
honor, good-will, altruism, and every other word that means the same
thing. We can talk until doomsday and nothing will be said."

"So where is all this getting us?" I asked.

"I hope it is beginning to cause your mind to doubt the preconceived
notion," he said. "Ask yourself why any outfit such as ours would
deliberately show you evidence."

"I have it and it does not make sense."

He smiled. "Precisely. It does not."

Fred Macklin interrupted, "Look, Dad, why are we bothering with all this
guff?"

"Because I have hopes that Mr. Cornell can be made to see our point, to
join, as it were, our side."

"Fat chance," I snapped.

"Please, I'm your elder and not at all inclined to waste my time. You
came here seeking information and you shall have it. You will not
believe it, but it will, I hope, fill in some blank spots after you have
had a chance to compare, sort, and use your own logic on the problem. As
a mechanical engineer, you are familiar with the line of reasoning that
we non-engineering people call Occam's Razor?"

"The law of least reaction," I said automatically.

"The what?" asked Mrs. Macklin.

Miss Macklin said, "I'll read it from Mr. Cornell's mind, mother. The
law of least reaction can be demonstrated by the following: If a bucket
of mixed wood-shavings and gasoline are heated, there is a calculable
probability that the gasoline will catch fire first because the gasoline
is easier--least reaction--to set on fire."

"Right," I said. "But how does this apply to me?"

Mr. Macklin took up the podium again: "For one thing, your assumption
regarding Catherine is correct. At the time of the accident she was
found to have Mekstrom's Disease in its earliest form. The Harrisons did
take her in to save her life. Now, dropping that side of the long story,
we must follow your troubles. The accident, to a certain group of
persons, was a fortunate one. It placed under their medical care a
man--you--in whose mind could be planted a certain mild curiosity about
a peculiar road sign and other evidences. The upshot of this was that
you took off on a tour of investigation."

That sounded logical, but there were a lot of questions that had open,
ragged ends flying loose.

Mr. Macklin went on: "Let's diverge for the moment. Mr. Cornell, what is
your reaction to Mekstrom's Disease at this point?"

That was easy. It was a curse to the human race, excepting that some
outfit knew how to cure it. Once cured, it made a physical superman of
the so-called victim. What stuck in my craw was the number of
unfortunate people who caught it and died painfully--or by their own
hand in horror--without the sign of aid or assistance.

He nodded when I'd gone about half-way through my conclusions and before
I got mentally violent about them.

"Mr. Cornell, you've expressed your own doom at certain hands. You feel
that the human race could benefit by exploitation of Mekstrom's
Disease."

"It could, if everybody helped out and worked together."

"Everybody?" he asked with a sly look. I yearned again for the ability
of a telepath, and I knew that the reason why I was running around loose
was because I was only an esper and therefore incapable of learning the
truth directly. I stood there like a totem pole and tried to think.

Eventually it occurred to me. Just as there are people who cannot stand
dictatorships, there are others who cannot abide democracy; in any
aggregation like the human race there will be the warped souls who feel
superior to the rest of humanity. They welcome dictatorships providing
they can be among the dictators and if they are not included, they fight
until the other dictatorship is deposed so that they can take over.

"True," said Mr. Macklin, "And yet, if they declared their intentions,
how long would they last?"

"Not very long. Not until they had enough power to make it stick," I
said.

"And above all, not until they have the power to grant this blessing to
those whose minds agree with theirs. So now, Mr. Cornell, I'll make a
statement that you can accept as a mere collection of words, to be used
in your arguments with yourself: We'll assume two groups, one working to
set up a hierarchy of Mekstroms in which the rest of the human race will
become hewers of wood and drawers of water. Contrasting that group is
another group who feels that no man or even a congress of men are
capable of picking and choosing the individual who is to be granted the
body of the physical superman. We cannot hope to watch the watchers, Mr.
Cornell, and we will not have on our conscience the weight of having to
select A over B as being more desirable. Enough of this! You'll have to
argue it out by yourself later."

"Later?" grunted Fred Macklin. "You're not going to--"

"I certainly am," said his father firmly. "Mr. Cornell may yet be the
agency whereby we succeed in winning out." He spoke to me again.
"Neither group dares to come into the open, Mr. Cornell. We cannot
accuse the other group of anything nefarious, any more than they dare to
accuse us. Their mode of attack is to coerce you into exposing us for a
group of undercover operators who are making supermen."

"Look," I asked him, "why not admit it? You've got nothing sinister in
mind."

"Think of all the millions of people who have not had schooling beyond
the preparatory grades," he said. "People of latent psi ability instead
of trained practice, or those poor souls who have no psi ability worth
mentioning. Do you know the history of the Rhine Institute, Mr.
Cornell?"

"Only vaguely."

"In the early days of Rhine's work at Duke University, there were many
scoffers. The scoffers and detractors, naturally enough, were those
people who had the least amount of psi ability. Admitting that at the
time all psi ability was latent, they still had less of it. But after
Rhine's death, his associates managed to prove his theories and
eventually worked out a system of training that would develop the psi
ability. Then, Mr. Cornell, those who are blessed with a high ability in
telepathy or perception--the common term of esper is a misnomer, you
know, because there's nothing extra-sensory about perception--found
themselves being suspected and hated by those who had not this delicate
sense. It took forty of fifty years before common public acceptance got
around to looking at telepathy and perception in the same light as they
saw a musician with a trained ear or an artist with a trained eye. Psi
is a talent that everybody has to some degree, and today this is
accepted with very little angry jealousy.

"But now," he went on thoughtfully, "consider what would happen if we
made a public announcement that we could cure Mekstrom's Disease by
making a physical superman out of the poor victim. Our main enemy would
then stand up righteously and howl that we are concealing the secret; he
would be believed. We would be tracked down and persecuted, eventually
wiped out, while he sat behind his position and went on picking and
choosing victims whose attitude parallel his own."

"And who is the character?" I demanded. I knew. But I wanted him to say
it aloud.

He shook his head. "I'll not say it," he said. "Because I will not
accuse him aloud, any more than he dares to tell you flatly that we are
an underground organization that must be rooted out. He knows about our
highways and our way stations and our cure, because he uses the same
cure. He can hide behind his position so long as he makes no direct
accusation. You know the law, Mr. Cornell."

Yes, I knew the law. So long as the accuser came into court with a
completely clean mind, he was safe. But Scholar Phelps could hardly make
the accusation, nor could he supply the tiniest smidgin of direct
evidence to me. For in my accusation I'd implicate him as an
accessory-accuser and then he would be called upon to supply not only
evidence but a clear, clean, and open mind. In shorter words, the old
stunt of pointing loudly to someone else as a dodge for covering up your
own crime was a lost art in this present-day world of telepathic
competence. The law, of course, insisted that no man could be convicted
for what he was thinking, but only upon direct evidence of action. But a
crooked-thinking witness found himself in deep trouble anyway, even
though crooked thinking was in itself no crime.

"Now for one more time," said Mr. Macklin. "Consider a medical person
who cannot qualify because he is a telepath and not a perceptive. His
very soul was devoted to being a scholar of medicine like his father and
his grandfather, but his telepath ability does not allow him to be the
full scholar. A doctor he can be. But he can never achieve the final
training, again the ultimate degree. Such a man overcompensates and
becomes the frustrate; a ripe disciple for the superman theory."

"Dr. Thorndyke!" I blurted.

His face was as blank, as noncommittal as a bronze bust; I could neither
detect affirmation nor negation in it. He was playing it flat; I'd never
get any evidence from him, either.

"So now, Mr. Cornell, I have given you food for thought. I've made no
direct statements; nothing that you could point to. I've defended myself
as any man will do, but only by protestations of innocence. Therefore I
suggest that you take your artillery and vacate the premises."

I remembered the Bonanza .375 that was hanging in my hand. Shamefacedly
I slipped it back in my hip pocket. "But look, sir--"

"Please leave, Mr. Cornell. Any more I cannot say without laying us wide
open for trouble. I am sorry for you, it is no joy being a pawn. But I
hope that your pawn-ship will work for our side, and I hope that you
will come through it safely. Now, please leave us quietly."

I shrugged. I left. And as I was leaving, Miss Macklin touched my arm
and said in a soft voice: "I hope you find your Catherine, Steve. And I
hope that someday you'll be able to join her."

I nodded dumbly. It was not until I was all the way back to my car that
I remembered that her last statement was something similar to wishing me
a case of measles so that I'd be afterward immune from them.




XI


As the miles separated me from the Macklins, my mind kept whirling
around in a tight circle. I had a lot of the bits, but none of them
seemed to lock together very tight. And unhappily, too many of the bits
that fit together were hunks that I did not like.

I knew the futility of being non-telepath. Had Mr. Macklin given me the
truth or was I being sold another shoddy bill of goods? Or had he spun
me a yarn just to get me out of his house without a riot? Of course,
there had been a riot, and he'd been expecting it. If nothing else, it
proved that I was a valuable bit of material, for some undisclosed
reason.

I had to grin. I didn't know the reason, but whatever reason they had,
it must gripe the devil out of them to be unable to erase me.

Then the grin faded. No one had told me about Catherine. They'd neatly
avoided the subject. Well, since I'd taken off on this still hunt to
find Catherine, I'd continue looking, even though every corner I looked
into turned out to be the hiding place for another bunch of mad spooks.

My mind took another tack: Admitting that neither side could rub me out
without losing, why in heck didn't they just collect me and put me in a
cage? Dammit, if I had an organization as well oiled as either of them,
I could collect the President right out of the New White House and put
him in a cage along with the King of England, the Shah of Persia, and
the Dali Lama to make a fourth for bridge.

This was one of those questions that cannot be answered by the
application of logic, reasoning, or by applying either experience or
knowledge. I did not know, nor understand. And the only way I would ever
find out was to locate someone who was willing to tell.

Then it occurred to me that--aside from my one experience in
housebreaking--that I'd been playing according to the rules. I'm pretty
much a law-abiding citizen. Yet it did seem to me that I learned more
during those times when the rules, if not broken, at least were bent
rather sharply. So I decided to try my hand at busting a couple of
rather high-level rules.

There was a way to track down Catherine.

So I gassed up the buggy, turned the nose East, and took off like a man
with a purpose in mind. En route, I laid out my course. Along that
course there turned out to be seven Way Stations, according to the
Highway signs. Three of them were along U.S. 12 on the way from
Yellowstone to Chicago. One of them was between Chicago and Hammond,
Indiana. There was another to the south of Sandusky, Ohio, one was
somewhere south of Erie, Pa., and the last was in the vicinity of
Newark. There were a lot of the Highways themselves, leading into and
out of my main route--as well as along it.

But I ignored them all, and nobody gave me a rough time.

Eventually I walked into my apartment. It was musty, dusty, and
lonesome. Some of Catherine's things were still on the table where I'd
dropped them; they looked up at me mutely until I covered them with the
walloping pile of mail that had arrived in my long absence. I got a
bottle of beer and began to go through the mail, wastebasketing the
advertisements, piling the magazines neatly, and filing some offers of
jobs (Which reminded me that I was still an engineer and that my funds
wouldn't last indefinitely) and went on through the mail until I came to
a letter--The Letter.

     _Dear Mr. Cornell:_

     _We're glad to hear from you. We moved, not because Marian caught
     Mekstrom's, but because the dead area shifted and left us sort of
     living in a fish-bowl, psi-wise._

     _Everybody is hale and hearty here and we all wish you the best._

     _Please do not think for a moment that you owe us anything. We'd
     rather be free of your so-called debt. We regret that Catherine was
     not with you, maybe the accident might not have happened. But we do
     all think that we stand as an association with a very unhappy
     period in your life, and that it will be better for you if you try
     to forget that we exist. This is a hard thing to say, Steve, but
     really, all we can do for you is to remind you of your troubles._

     _Therefore with love from all of us, we'd like to make this a
     sincerely sympathetic and final--_

     _Farewell, Philip Harrison._

I grunted unhappily. It was a nice-sounding letter, but it did not ring
true, somehow. I sat there digging it for hidden meanings, but none
came. I didn't care. In fact, I didn't really expect any more than this.
If they'd not written me at all, I'd still have done what I did. I sat
down and wrote Phillip Harrison another letter:

     _Dear Philip:_

     _I received your letter today, as I returned from an extended trip
     through the west. I'm glad to hear that Marian is not suffering
     from Mekstrom's Disease. I am told that it is fatal to
     the--uninitiated._

     _However, I hope to see you soon._

     _Regards, Steve Cornell._

_That_, I thought, _should do it!_

Then to help me and my esper, I located a tiny silk handkerchief of
Catherine's, one she'd left after one of her visits. I slipped it into
the envelope and slapped a stamp and a notation on the envelope that
this letter was to be forwarded to Phillip Harrison. I dropped it in the
box about eleven that night, but I didn't bother trying to follow it
until the morning.

Ultimately it was picked up and taken to the local post office, and from
there it went to the clearing station at Pennsylvania Station at 34th
St., where I hung around the mail-baggage section until I attracted the
attention of a policeman.

"Looking for something, Mr. Cornell?"

"Not particularly," I told the telepath cop. "Why?"

"You've been digging every mailbag that comes out of there."

"Am I?" I asked ingeniously.

"Can it Buster, or we'll let you dig your way out of a jail."

"You can't arrest a man for thinking."

"I'll be happy to make it loitering," he said sharply.

"I've a train ticket."

"Use it, then."

"Sure. At train time I'll use it."

"Which train?" he asked me sourly. "You've missed three already."

"I'm waiting for a special train, officer."

"Then please go and wait in the bar, Mr. Cornell."

"Okay. I'm sorry I caused you any trouble, but I've a bit of a personal
problem. It isn't illegal."

"Anything that involves taking a perceptive dig at the U.S. Mail is
illegal," said the policeman. "Personal or not, it's out. So either you
stop digging or else."

I left. There was no sense in arguing with the cop. I'd just end up
short. So I went to the bar and I found out why he'd recommended it. It
was in a faintly-dead area, hazy enough to prevent me from taking a
squint at the baggage section. I had a couple of fast ones, but I
couldn't stand the suspense of not knowing when my letter might take off
without me.

Since I'd also pushed my loitering-luck I gave up. The only thing I
could hope for was that the sealed forwarding address had been made out
at that little town near the Harrisons and hadn't been moved. So I went
and took a train that carried no mail.

It made my life hard. I had to wander around that tank town for hours,
keeping a blanket-watch on the post office for either the income or the
outgo of my precious hunk of mail. I caught some hard eyes from the
local yokels but eventually I discovered that my luck was with me.

A fast train whiffled through the town and they baggage-hooked a mailbag
off the car at about a hundred and fifty per. I found out that the next
stop of that train was Albany. I'd have been out of luck if I'd hoped to
ride with the bag.

Then came another period of haunting that dinky post office (I've
mentioned before that it was in a dead area, so I couldn't watch the
insides, only the exits) until at long last I perceived my favorite bit
of mail emerging in another bag. It was carted to the railroad station
and hung up on another pick-up hook. I bought a ticket back to New York
and sat on a bench near the hook, probing into the bag as hard as my
sense of perception could dig.

I cursed the whole world. The bag was merely labelled "Forwarding Mail"
in letters that could be seen at ninety feet. My own letter, of course,
I could read very well, to every dotted 'i' and crossed 't' and the
stitching in Catherine's little kerchief. But I could not make out the
address printed on the form that was pasted across the front of the
letter itself.

As I sat there trying to probe that sealed address, a fast train came
along and scooped the bag off the hook.

I caught the next train. I swore and I squirmed and I groaned because
that train stopped at every wide spot in the road, paused to take on
milk, swap cars, and generally tried to see how long it could take to
make a run of some forty miles. This was Fate. Naturally, any train that
stopped at my rattle burg would also stop at every other point along the
road where some pioneer had stopped to toss a beer bottle off of his
covered wagon.

At long last I returned to Pennsylvania Station just in time to perceive
my letter being loaded on a conveyor for LaGuardia.

Then the same damned policeman collared me.

"This is it," he said.

"Now see here, officer. I--"

"Will you come quietly, Mr. Cornell? Or shall I put the big arm on you?"

"For what?"

"You've been violating the 'Disclosure' section of the Federal
Communications Act, and I know it."

"Now look, officer, I said this was not illegal."

"I'm not an idiot, Cornell!" I noted uncomfortably that he had dropped
the formal address. "You have been trailing a specific piece of mail
with the express purpose of finding out where it is going. Since its
destination is a sealed forwarding address, your attempt to determine
this destination is a violation of the act." He eyed me coldly as if to
dare me to deny it. "Now," he finished, "Shall I read you chapter and
verse?"

He had me cold. The 'Disclosure' Act was an old ruling that any
transmission must not be used for the benefit of any handler. When Rhine
came along, 'Disclosure' Act was extended to everything.

"Look officer, it's my girl," hoping that would make a difference.

"I know that," he told me flatly. "Which is why I'm not running you in.
I'm just telling you to lay off. Your girl went away and left you a
sealed forwarding address. Maybe she doesn't want to see you again."

"She's sick," I said.

"Maybe her family thinks you made her sick. Now stop it and go away. And
if I ever find you trying to dig the mail again, you'll dig iron bars.
Now scat!"

He urged me towards the outside of the station like a sheep-dog hazing
his flock. I took a cab to LaGuardia, even though it was not as fast as
the subway. I was glad to be out of his presence.

I connected with my letter again at LaGuardia. It was being loaded
aboard a DC-16 headed for Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, Hawaii, and
Manila. I didn't know how far it was going so I bought a ticket for the
route with my travel card and I got aboard just ahead of the closing
door.

My bit of mail was in the compartment below me, and in the hour travel
time to Chicago, I found out that Chicago was the destination for the
mailbag, although the superscript on the letter was still hazy.

I followed the bag off the plane at Chicago and stopped long enough to
cancel the rest of my ticket. There was no use wasting the money for the
unused fare from Chicago to Manila. I rode into the city in a
combination bus-truck less than six feet from my little
point-of-interest. During the ride I managed to dig the superscript.

It forwarded the letter to Ladysmith, Wisconsin, and from there to a
rural route that I couldn't understand although I got the number.

Then I went back to Midway Airport and found to my disgust that the
Chicago Airport did not have a bar. I dug into this oddity for a moment
until I found out that the Chicago Airport was built on Public School
Property and that according to law, they couldn't sell anything harder
than soda pop within three hundred feet of public school property, no
matter who rented it. So I dawdled in the bar across Cicero Avenue until
plane time, and took an old propeller-driven Convair to Eau Claire on a
daisy-clipping ride that stopped at every wide spot on the course. From
Eau Claire the mail bag took off in the antediluvian Convair but I took
off by train because the bag was scheduled to be dropped by guided
glider into Ladysmith.

At Ladysmith I rented a car, checked the rural routes, and took off
about the same time as my significant hunk of mail.

Nine miles from Ladysmith is a flagstop called Bruce, and not far from
Bruce there is a body of water slightly larger than a duck pond called
Caley Lake.

A backroad, decorated with ornamental metal signs, led me from Bruce,
Wisconsin, to Caley Lake, where the road signs showed a missing spoke.

I turned in, feeling like Ferdinand Magellan must have felt when he
finally made his passage through the Strait to discover the open sea
that lay beyond the New World. I had done a fine job of tailing and I
wanted someone to pin a leather medal on me. The side road wound in and
out for a few hundred yards, and then I saw Phillip Harrison.

He was poking a long tool into the guts of an automatic pump, built to
lift water from a deep well into a water tower about forty feet tall. He
did not notice my arrival until I stopped my rented car beside him and
said:

"Being a mechanical engineer and an esper, Phil, I can tell you that you
have a--"

"A worn gasket seal," he said. "It doesn't take an esper engineer to
figure it out. How the heck did you find us?"

"Out in your mailbox there is a letter," I told him. "I came with it."

He eyed me humorously. "How much postage did you cost? Or did you come
second class mail?"

I was not sure that I cared for the inference, but Phillip was kidding
me by the half-smile on his face. I asked, "Phil, please tell me--what
is going on?"

His half-smile faded. He shook his head unhappily as he said, "Why can't
you leave well-enough alone?"

My feelings welled up and I blew my scalp. "Let well enough alone?" I
roared. "I'm pushed from pillar to post by everybody. You steal my girl.
I'm in hokus with the cops, and then you tell me that I'm to stay--"

"Up the proverbial estuary lacking the customary means of locomotion,"
he finished with a smile.

I couldn't see the humor in it. "Yeah," I drawled humorlessly.

"You realize that you're probably as big a liability with us as you were
trying to find us?"

I grunted. "I could always blow my brains out."

"That's no solution and you know it."

"Then give me an alternative."

Phillip shrugged. "Now that you're here, you're here. It's obvious that
you know too much, Steve. You should have left well enough alone."

"I didn't know well enough. Besides, I couldn't have been pushed better
if someone had slipped me--" I stopped, stunned at the idea and then I
went on in a falter, "--a post-hypnotic suggestion."

"Steve, you'd better come in and meet Marian. Maybe that's what
happened."

"Marian?" I said hollowly.

"She's a high-grade telepath. Master of psi, no less."

My mind went red as I remembered how I'd catalogued her physical charms
on our first meeting in an effort to find out whether she were esper or
telepath. Marian had fine control; her mind must have positively seethed
at my invasion of her privacy. I did not want to meet Marian face to
face right now, but there wasn't a thing I could do about it.

Phillip left his pump and waved for me to follow. He took off in his
jeep and I trailed him to the farmhouse. We went through a dim area that
was almost the ideal shape for a home. The ring was not complete, but
the open part faced the fields behind the house so that good privacy was
ensured for all practical purposes.

On the steps of the verandah stood Marian.

Sight of her was enough to make me forget my self-accusation of a few
moments ago. She stood tall and lissome, the picture of slender, robust
health.

"Come in, Steve," she said, holding out her hand. I took it. Her grip
was firm and hard, but it was gentle. I knew that she could have pulped
my hand if she squeezed hard.

"I'm very happy to see that rumor is wrong and that you're
not--suffering--from Mekstrom's Disease," I told her.

"So now you know, Steve. Too bad."

"Why?"

"Because it adds a load to all of us. Even you." She looked at me
thoughtfully for a moment, then said, "Well, come on in and relax,
Steve. We'll talk it out."

We all went inside.

On a divan in the living room, covered by a light blanket, resting in a
very light snooze, was a woman. Her face was turned away from me, but
the hair and the line of the figure and the--

#Catherine!#

She turned and sat up at once, alive and shocked awake. She rubbed the
sleep from her eyes with swift knuckles and then looked over her hands
at me.

"Steve!" she cried, and all the world and the soul of her was in the
throb of her voice.




XII


Catherine took one unsteady step towards me and then came forward with a
rush. She hurled herself into my arms, pressed herself against me, held
me tight.

It was like being attacked by a bulldozer.

Phillip stayed my back against her headlong rush or I would have been
thrown back out through the door, across the verandah, and into the
middle of the yard. The strength of her crushed my chest and wrenched my
spine. Her lips crushed mine. I began to black out from the physical
hunger of a woman who did not know the extent of her new-found body. All
that Catherine remembered was that once she held me to the end of her
strength and yearned for more. To hold me that way now meant--death.

Her body was the same slenderness, but the warm softness was gone. It
was a flesh-warm waist of flexible steel. I was being held by a statue
of bronze, animated by some monster servo-mechanism. This was no woman.

Phillip and Marian pried her away from me before she broke my back.
Phillip led her away, whispering softly in her ear. Marian carried me to
the divan and let me down on my face gently. Her hands were gentle as
she pressed the air back into my lungs and soothed away the awful wrench
in my spine. Gradually I came alive again, but there was pain left that
made me gasp at every breath.

Then the physical hurt went away, leaving only the mental pain; the
horror of knowing that the girl that I loved could never hold me in her
arms. I shuddered. All that I wanted out of this life was marriage with
Catherine, and now that I had found her again, I had to face the fact
that the first embrace would kill me.

I cursed my fate just as any invalid has cursed the malady that makes
him a responsibility and a burden to his partner instead of a joy and
helpmeet. Like the helpless, I didn't want it; I hadn't asked for it;
nor had I earned it. Yet all I could do was to rail against the
unfairness of the unwarranted punishment.

Without knowing that I was asking, I cried out, "But why?" in a
plaintive voice.

In a gentle tone, Marian replied: "Steve, you cannot blame yourself.
Catherine was lost to you before you met her at her apartment that
evening. What she thought to be a callous on her small toe was really
the initial infection of Mekstrom's Disease. We're all psi-sensitive to
Mekstrom's Disease, Steve. So when you cracked up and Dad and Phil went
on the dead run to help, they caught a perception of it. Naturally we
had to help her."

I must have looked bitter.

"Look, Steve," said Phillip slowly. "You wouldn't have wanted us not to
help? After all, would you want Catherine to stay with you? So that you
could watch her die at the rate of a sixty-fourth of an inch each hour?"

"Hell," I snarled, "Someone might have let me know."

Phillip shook his head. "We couldn't Steve. You've got to understand our
viewpoint."

"To heck with your viewpoint!" I roared angrily. "Has anybody ever
stopped to consider mine?" I did not give a hoot that they could wind me
around a doorknob and tuck my feet in the keyhole. Sure, I was grateful
for their aid to Catherine. But why didn't someone stop to think of the
poor benighted case who was in the accident ward? The bird that had been
traipsing all over hell's footstool trying to get a line on his lost
sweetheart. I'd been through the grinder; questioned by the F.B.I.,
suspected by the police; and I'd been the guy who'd been asked by a
grieving, elderly couple, "But can't you remember, son?" Them and their
stinking point of view!

"Easy, Steve," warned Phillip Harrison.

"Easy nothing! What possible justification have you for putting me
through my jumps?"

"Look, Steve. We're in a precarious position. We're fighting a battle
against an unscrupulous enemy, an undercover battle, Steve. If we could
get something on Phelps, we'd expose him and his Medical Center like
that. Conversely, if we slip a millimeter, Phelps will clip us so hard
that the sky will ring. He--damn him--has the Government on his side. We
can't afford to look suspicious."

"Couldn't you have taken me in too?"

He shook his head sadly. "No," he said. "There was a bad accident, you
know. The authorities have every right to insist that each and every
automobile on the highway be occupied by a minimum of one driver. They
also believe that for every accident there must be a victim, even though
the damage is no more than a bad case of fright."

I could hardly argue with that. Changing the subject, I asked, "but what
about the others who just drop out of sight?"

"We see to it that plausible letters of explanation are written."

"So who wrote me?" I demanded hotly.

He looked at me pointedly. "If we'd known about Catherine before, she'd
have--disappeared--leaving you a trite letter. But no one could think of
a letter to explain her disappearance from an accident, Steve."

"Oh fine."

"Well, you'd still prefer to find her alive, wouldn't you?"

"Couldn't someone tell me?"

"And have you radiating the fact like a broadcasting station?"

"Why couldn't I have joined her--you--?"

He shook his head in the same way that a man shakes it when he is trying
to explain _why_ two plus two are four and not maybe five or three and a
half. "Steve," he said, "You haven't got Mekstroms' Disease."

"How do I get it?" I demanded hotly.

"Nobody knows," he said unhappily. "If we did, we'd be providing the
rest of the human race with indestructible bodies as fast as we could
spread it and take care of them."

"But couldn't I have been told _something_?" I pleaded. I must have
sounded like a hurt kitten.

Marian put her hand on my arm. "Steve," she said, "You'd have been
smoothed over, maybe brought in to work for us in some dead area. But
then you turned up acting dangerously for all of us."

"Who--me?"

"By the time you came out for your visit, you were dangerous to us."

"What do you mean?"

"Let me find out. Relax, will you Steve? I'd like to read you deep.
Catherine, you come in with me."

"What are we looking for?"

"Traces of post-hypnotic suggestion. It'll be hard to find because there
will be only traces of a plan, all put in so that it looks like natural,
logical reasoning."

Catherine looked doubtful. "When would they have the chance?" she asked.

"Thorndyke. In the hospital."

Catherine nodded and I relaxed. At the beginning I was very reluctant. I
didn't mind Catherine digging into the dark and dusty corners of my
mind, but Marian Harrison bothered me.

"Think of the accident, Steve," she said.

Then I managed to lull my reluctant mind by remembering that she was
trying to help me. I relaxed mentally and physically and regressed back
to the day of the accident. I found it hard even then to go through the
love-play and sweet seriousness that went on between Catherine and me,
knowing that Marian Harrison was a sort of mental spectator. But I
fought down my reticence and went on with it.

I practically re-lived the accident. It was easier now that I'd found
Catherine again. It was like a cleansing bath. I began to enjoy it. So I
went on with my life and adventures right up to the present. Having come
to the end, I stopped.

Marian looked at Catherine. "Did you get it?"

Silence. More silence. Then, "It seems dim. Almost incredulous--that it
could be--" with a trail-off into thought again.

Phillip snorted. "Make with the chin-music, you two. The rest of us
aren't telepaths, you know."

"Sorry," said Marian. "It's sort of complicated and hard to figure, you
know. What seems to be the case is sort of like this," she went on in an
uncertain tone, "We can't find any

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