"It's got to be airborne," said Heller, pointing at the sheet. "It should be able to float in the stratosphere. It has to be able to live on those noxious gases and pollution particles and convert them to oxygen and perpetuate itself. Blown around by the winds of the world, it should be able to depollute the atmospheric envelope of the planet. I don't have the cellology formulas to synthesize it. Say, if you're so interested, maybe I ought to get up and explain it further."
"Oh, no, dear. It's the middle of the night. You just lie back there and get your sleep. Don't mind stupid old me puttering about."
He yawned again and lay back. He turned over and went to sleep.
The Countess Krak went out, closed the door, went to the boudoir and closed the door. She put the sheet in Crobe's hand.
"You will now feel a compulsion to develop the spore you are holding the requirements of. You will now develop the formula for synthesizing it."
She pushed a table in front of him. She laid a tablet on it. She pushed a pen into his fingers.
Mutterings from the helmet. Then, "I don't remember." The letters on the screen read:
CONFUSION
The Countess juggled the mike for a moment. Then she spoke into it again. "You are a young student again. You are sitting for your final examination. The test question is how to synthesize the exact spore required by the details on that sheet. If you do not write them down, you will fail the exam and never be permitted to cut up people again."
Cunning Countess Krak! She had appealed to his basic instincts. She had put him at a time when he did know.
Hastily, Doctor Crobe began to write. He filled up half the tablet. The Countess, watching the paper upside down, saw that he was giving the strains that must be interbred.
She slipped out of the room and went to Heller's desk. She found a book on Earth spores. She took it back.
"You will now look up in this book what you have written and see if they are there."
He did, with much thumbing. I knew what his trouble was. She had put him in a time before he knew any English. But the book had pictures and he was using those.
"They are all in the book," he said.
"You will now put down how to mix the cultures to put them in," said the Countess.
Crobe promptly did.
"You will now write everything else one has to know to accomplish this."
Crobe did. He was finished.
The Countess then said to him, "Will this pass the examination?"
"Indisputably," said Crobe.
"Good," said the Countess. "You are finished with that. Now, pay attention. You remember the man you saw in your laboratory in Spiteos. Blond hair, blue eyes. Mancian. If you ever see this man you will become terrified. You will then run and run to be safe from him. You know that if you touch him, tentacles will spring out of your ears and strangle you. One contact with an electric knife or a fingertip upon that man will cause you to cease to breathe. Have you got that?"
"Yes," said the hypnotized Crobe.
"You will now forget everything that has happened here. You will walk out into the office. You will stand by the door to the hall. You will stand there and wait."
She put all the papers in the pocket of her dressing gown. She clicked off the switch.
Crobe got up. He looked at her in a dazed fashion. The letters said:
FEAR
He went out of the room and into the main office and stood by the hall door.
The Countess went into the "thinking room." She touched Heller's shoulder. "Dear," she said, "why not get up and have a cup of coffee with me?"
Heller sat up, wide awake. He looked at her oddly. But he got up and slid into a white terry-cloth robe.
She held open the door and they went into the main office.
There was Crobe.
He saw Heller.
Crobe screamed!
He turned around, threw open the door and ran with all his might!
Heller turned to the Countess. "That was Doctor Crobe," he said. "What's he doing yelling and screaming and running?"
"The spearmint Bavarian Mocha is a new kind," said the Countess Krak.
"What was Crobe doing here?" said Heller. "Why did he run away?"
"Oh, Crobe? Well, he just brought these formulas to give you. He saw no need to stay. He had another appointment."
Heller looked at the open door to the hall. He took the papers from the Countess and glanced over them.
"Dear," he said, "you look like you've been up to something."
"Me? Jettero," she said.
Doctor Crobe had gone by the guards so fast they had not been able to grab him.
He raced into a stairwell and instead of going down, went up!
The chief guard was on the radio as he ran. "What the blast happened?"
"He saw an enemy!" I cried. "After him, after him! Don't let him escape!"
"He's going down the stairs!" cried the guard.
"He's going UP the stairs!" I disputed. "UP, UP, man!"
Crobe burst out into a hall two floors above. An elevator was open. He dived in.
"He's in elevator number five!" I cried. "He's going down. No, he's going UP!"
The guards were invisible to me. But Crobe wasn't. His elevator stopped. The door opened. He raced out and got to the stairwell again. He was going UP once more. Good Gods, was he trying to get back to Voltar using the Empire State Building as a launching pad?
"Go up to the fiftieth floor, quick!" I told the guards. "And then start running down the stairs!"
They did.
But Crobe darted back into a hall, grabbed an elevator and went up again!
I sent the guards up again in an elevator. They got to the top floor. Another elevator door opened.
Crobe rushed out. And right into their waiting clutches!
"We got him," said the chief guard.
They had him all right. Crobe was looking wildly about. "They're after me, they're after me," he was saying in Voltarian.
The elevator operator, a girl, said, "I'll phone for the building police!"
I told the guard with the radio, "Tell her something, quick."
"It's all right, miss," the chief guard said. "He's just a nut that thinks he's from outer space."
"Oh, one of those," the operator said.
Crobe's screen letters were reading:
TRIPLE TERROR
He was struggling. His eye suddenly focused outside the building and he thought, apparently, he was falling, for he abruptly slumped. The letters shifted to:
OUT COLD
"What do we do?" the chief guard asked me.
THAT was the question. If they brought him back to the base in Turkey, Faht Bey would scream and rant and try to get me to pay for the wasted air passage and maybe even shoot Crobe. A destructive person like the doctor was far too valuable to be shot. In the Apparatus we value a planet-wrecker. Crobe must be saved!
Suddenly, inspiration came to me. There was only one other person I knew who was as potentially destructive as Crobe: Madison!
Only Madison would know how to use this lethal weapon in the war to destroy Heller.
I told the guards to collect Crobe's bag and get him to 42 Mess Street.
That (bleep), (bleep), (bleep) Krak had ruined my first plan but there was still hope.
It was early. There were only the remains of the night watch when they carried Crobe into 42 Mess. The reporter on duty offhandedly told them to wait in Mad's office. They went in and began to fan Crobe with press releases. He revived, possibly from the stink. One of the guards got some hot coffee from a machine, found a bottle of whiskey in Mad's desk and put some of it in the coffee. This further revived Crobe.
There was a roar outside. The Excalibur. J. Walter Madison had arrived.