"Third customer was Fa the Rigelian composite. Took off a limb—real, of course, not artificial—and kept fiddling with it while I shot questions at him. I could hardly keep my mind on what I was saying—expected bun to take his head off next! He did that too, just as he started back to his cell."
"Telepaths can surely be exasperating," the Old Lieutenant agreed. "I always had great trouble in keeping in mind what a boring business a vocal interview must be to them—very much as if a man, quite capable of speech, should insist on using a pencil and paper to conduct a conversation with you, with perhaps the -further proviso ,that you print your remarks stylishly. Your fourth suspect, Jim?"
"Hrohrakak the Polarian centipedal. He reared up in a great question-mark bend when I addressed him—looked very much like a giant cobra covered with thick black fur. Kept chattering to himself too, very low—interpreter said he was saying over and over again, 'Oh, All-father, when will this burden be lifted from me?' Halfway through, he readies out a little black limb to Donovan to give him what looks like a pretty pink billiard ball." "Oh, naughty, naughty," the Old Leiutenant observed, shaking his head while he smiled. "So these are your four suspects, Jim? The four rather gaudy racehorses of whom you must back one?"
"They are. Each of them had opportunity. Each of them has a criminal reputation and might well have been hired to do the murder—either by extremists in the Arcturian war party or by some other alien organization hostile to Earth—such as the League of the Beasts with its pseudoreligious mumbo-jumbo."
"I don't agree with you about the League, but don't forget our own bloody-minded extremists," the Old Lieutenant reminded him. "There are devils among us too, Jim."
"True, Sean. But whoever paid for this crime, any one of the four might have been his agent. For to complete the problem and tie it up in a Gordian knot a yard thick, each one of my suspects has recently and untraceably received a large sum of money—enough so that, in each case, it might well have paid for murder."
Leaning forward the Old Lieutenant said, "So? Tell me about that, Jim."
"Well, you know the saying that the price of a being's fife anywhere in the Galaxy is one thousand of whatever happens to be the going unit of big money. And as you know, it's not too bad a rule of thumb. In this case, the unit is gold martians, which are neither gold nor backed by Mar's bitter little bureaucracy, but—"
"I know! You've only minutes left, Jim. What were fee exact amounts?" .
Hlilav the Antarean multibrach had received 1024 gold martians, Hrohrakak the Polarian centipedal 1000 gold martians, Fa the Rigelian composite 1728 gold martians. Tlik-'Aa the Martian coleopteroid 666 gold martians."
"Ah—" the Old Lieutenant said very soft. "The number Of the beast."
"Come again, Sean?"
" Here is wisdom,'" quoted the Old Lieutenant, still speaking very softly. "'Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man'; Revelation, Jim, the last book in the Bible."
"I know that," the Young Captain burst out excitedly. "I also know the next words, if only because they're a favourite with numerology crackpots—of whom I see quite a few at the station. The next words are: 'and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.' Almighty, that's TlikTcha's—that's the number of his gold martians! And we've always known that the League of Beasts got some of its mumbo-jumbo from Earth, so. why not from it’s Bible? Sean, you clever old devil, I'm going to play your hunch." The Young Captain sprang up. 'I’m going back to the station and have the four of them in and accuse Tlik-Tcha to his face."
The Old Lieutenant lifted a hand. "One moment, Jim," he said sharply. "You're to go back to the station, to be sure, and have the four of them in, yes—but you're to accuse Fa the Rigelian."
The Young Captain almost sat down again, involuntarily. "But that doesn't make sense, Sean," he protested. "Fa's number is 1728. That doesn't fit your clue. It's not the number of the beast."
"Beasts have all sorts of numbers, Jim," the Old Lieutenant said. "The one you want is 1728."
“But your reason, Sean? Give me your reason."
"No. There's no time and you mightn't believe' me if I did. You asked for my advice and I've given it to you. Accuse Fa the Rigelian."
"But—" that's all, Jim."
Minutes later, the Young Captain was still feeling the slow burn of his exasperation, though he was back at the station and the moment of decision weighed sickeningly upon him. What a foot he'd been, he told himself savagely, to waste his time on such an old dodderer! The serve of the man, giving out with advice—orders, practically!-—that he refused to justify, behaving with the whimsicality, the stubbornness—yes, the insolence!—that only the retired man can afford.
He scanned the four alien faces confronting him across the station desk—Tlik-Tcha’s like a section of ebon bowling ball down to the three deeply recessed perceptors, Hrohrakak's a large black-floor mop faintly quivering, Fa's pale and humanoid, but oversize, like an emperor's death mask, Hlilav's a cluster of serially blinking eyes and greenish jowls. He wished he could toss them all in a bag and reach in—wearing an armour-plated glove—and pick one.
The room stank of disinfectants and unwashed alienity —the familiar reek of the old-time police station greatly diversified. The Young Captain felt the sweat trickling down his flushed forehead. He opened wide the louver behind him and the hum of the satellite's central concourse poured in. It didn't help the atmosphere, but for a moment he felt less .constricted.
Then he scanned the four faces once more and the deadline desperation was back upon him. Pick a number, he thought, any number from one to two thousand. Grab a face. Trust to luck. Sean's a stubborn old fool, but the boys always said he had the damnedest luck. . .
His finger stabbed out. "In the nexus of these assembled minds," he said loudly, "I publish the truth I share with yours, Fa—"
, That was all he had time to get out. At his first movement, the Rigelian sprang up, whipped off his head and buried it straight toward the centre of the open louver.
But if the Young Captain had been unready for thought, he was more than keyed up for action. He snagged the head as it shot past, though he fell off his chair in doing it. The teeth snapped once, futilely. Then a tiny voice from the head spoke the words he'd been praying for;
"Let the truth that our minds share be published forth, But first, please, take me back to my breath source . . ."
Next day, the Old Lieutenant and the Young Captain talked it all over.
"So you didn't nab Fa's accomplices in the concourse?" the Old Lieutenant asked.
"No, Sean, they got clean away—as they very likely would have, with Fa's head, if they'd managed to lay their hands on it, Fa wouldn't rat on them."
"But otherwise our fancy-boy killer confessed in full? Told the whole story, named his employers, and provided the .necessary evidence to nail them and himself once and for all?"
"He did indeed. When one of those telepath characters does talk, it's a positive pleasure to hear him. He makes it artistic, like an oration from Shakespeare. But now, sir, I want to ask the question you said you didn't have time to answer yesterday—though 111 admit I'm asking it with a little different meaning than when I asked it first. You gave me a. big shock then and 111 admit that I'd Sever have gone along and followed your advice blind the way I did, except that I had nothing else to go on, and I was impressed with that Bible quotation you had so pat