“Jean Sanders is not a freak,” Roberts said coldly. “She’s an ordinary, intelligent human being who happens to have been born with a certain rudimentary degree of extrasensory perception which makes her Psi-High according to the Jim Crow laws you railroaded through Congress a few years ago. She’s had intensive Hoffman Center training to help her develop her psi-potential, in spite of your efforts to get that training program killed. She is also a loyal citizen, and when it comes to tracking down and trapping a telepathic alien, she’s about the most valuable asset we’ve got at the present moment. If not the only one. I just wish there were more Psi-Highs around with the training she’s had.”
Benjamin Towne glanced at his aide in triumph. “So! You openly admit that you’ve been using Psi-Highs in an investigation as critical as this!”
“Of course I have to, to some extent! How do you think—”
“Then you’re admitting criminal negligence right there, as far as I’m concerned,” Towne cut him off.
Roberts sighed in disgust “Mr. Towne, you don’t have any idea what you’re saying.”
“I beg to differ,” Towne said with heat. “I happen to believe that there are a group of individuals wandering around loose who will have the rest of this country in chains in a hundred years if they’re allowed to develop and use their freak powers the way they want to. Psi-Highs are a vicious menace, nothing more or less. We can’t help it that we have them; the fools in the government two hundred years ago must have been blind when they first started turning up, but nobody realized then that the psi-factor was a straight Mendelian dominant inheritable trait, and by the time we found that out it was too late to have them all sterilized. Of course, they couldn’t use their extrasensory powers without special training, so even then drastic measures didn’t seem necessary.” He picked up his cane and leaned forward toward Roberts. “Didn’t seem necessary, that is. But now the good Dr. Reuben Abrams and his meddling crowd at the Hoffman Center are busy training them, teaching some of them to use their psi-faculties, providing them with a treacherous power that has no place in civilized society. Well, I’m going to get that stopped, don’t worry. And meanwhile, I don’t want them working in Security! Is that clear enough?”
Roberts sighed tiredly, and leaned back in his chair. “You’re a little confused, Mr. Secretary. This is not a Rotary Club luncheon. It’s not a Federal Isolationist rally, and it’s not a meeting of the Cabinet. It’s just me you’re talking to. And so far, to my knowledge, you haven’t succeeded in robbing Psi-High citizens of all their rights. You’ve passed laws forcing them to take psychiatric tests and submit to Federal registration, just like drug addicts. They have to report to your Medical Affairs Department underlings every month like paroled convicts. You’ve passed laws to prevent them from marrying, you’ve blocked their education and hamstrung their training and development, you’ve done your level best to poison the minds of the general psi-negative public against them, but you haven’t as yet been able to strip them of their citizenship.”
“Not as yet,” said Ben Towne.
“And you can’t, as yet, dictate to me how I am to run the activities of the Federal Security Commission.”
“Not as yet.”
Roberts’ eyes blazed. “All right. Now you listen carefully, Mr. Secretary, tape recording or no tape recording. We’ve got an enemy in our midst, an alien we’ve never even seen. That alien could be the most malignant threat we’ve ever faced in all history. We can thank a psi-positive citizen out in Des Moines, Iowa, that we ever discovered the alien was here at all. That citizen had the good sense and the loyalty to report to us when he had accidental extrasensory contact with a psi-presence stronger than any he had ever encountered before, and thought that this was very strange. Normal psi-negative individuals can’t recognize this alien for what he is, can’t identify him, can’t even get near him. We know that because we’ve tried. So far we have not used Psi-High agents against him, but we’re going to have to, whether you happen to like it or not. Psi-negatives are whipped, the alien can run circles around them. Our only hope of catching him is to fight fire with fire, and in this case the only fire we have is the best-trained psi-positive agents we can get our hands on. Like Jean Sanders here. Or Ted Marino in Chicago. So that’s the way it is You can try to stop me if you want to, but you’re going to have to reorganize Federal Security to do it.”
Benjamin Towne lurched to his feet, his face white. “I may do that, Roberts.” He reached for his cane. “I may just do that.”
“Then you’ll have to throw the Liberal Administration out of office just. They’re supporting me, and they’re outvoting the Isolationists two to one. The President is also supporting me.
Towne gave him a shrewd look. “Well, you’d better start watching the telecasts and newstapes,” he said bluntly. “There are already rumors going around about some kind of a mysterious alien fugitive—oh, I know it’s been classified top secret, but you know how secrets leak out.” He grinned maliciously. “People get nervous about rumors like that, especially when the Administration denies them so sharply. You’d just better catch that alien pretty fast, that’s my advice.” The secretary nodded to his aide and limped to the door. Then he glanced back over his shoulder. “And if you’re really smart, you’ll keep your Psi-High freaks out of it, or you’re going to wish you’d never heard of them before.”
The door slammed behind him. Jean Sanders stood up, white-faced and trembling. “What a vicious man,” she murmured. “What did he mean, Bob? About wishing you’d never heard of us?”
Robert Roberts shook his head slowly. “I’m not sure I know,” he said.
Paul Faircloth finished reading the teletape briefing just as the little jet helicopter slipped down toward the hangar slot in South Chicago. He tossed the spools into the erasure can and flipped the switch to activate the distortion field inside the can. Then he stretched his legs, so tense he could hardly move them, and stared out at the city rising up below. For the twentieth time he wondered if he was going to come out of this alien mess alive or not, and for the twentieth time he wished it were all over.
It wasn’t all over, of course. Down there somewhere in that city, in a room high in a residential skyscraper, an utterly imponderable and dangerous alien creature from another world was once more located and pinpointed in a specific area at a specific time. It was Paul Faircloth’s job, now, to see that he did not again break through the dragnet.
Jean’s parting hug was still warm in his memory, and he remembered the worry in her big gray eyes as she had kissed him and said, “Be careful, Paul. I wish I could go, too. I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened—” Only words, spoken aloud, but she had said so much, much more without words. Those unspoken things were only vague shadows in Paul Faircloth’s mind, but even so he could sense the meaning of those shadows.
A man was waiting for him down below on the landing ramp. The hangar vault Was dark and deserted, probably Security’s work, too, he thought. He scanned the agent’s ID card, even though the face was familiar enough. “Marino? I’m Paul Faircloth. Where do we stand?”
“No change since you left Washington,” Marino said. “He’s still there.” The agent was a small, wiry man with catlike movements and exceedingly bright eyes under his jet black eyebrows. “We’d better be on our way over while I brief you.”
Faircloth nodded, and stepped into the little tube-car waiting at the end of the platform. It was a tight fit for two men, and Paul stiffened by reflex as it lurched and dipped down the chute into a narrow tunnel, hanging from the overhead cable and speeding ahead on its electronic guide beam. “You said it was the Condor Building where he was spotted?”