Out Like a Light by Randall Garrett (1960)
Posted on February 3rd, 2008
Boyd pushed open the door. He was stripped to the waist, a state of dress which showed the largest expanse of chest Malone had ever seen, and he was carrying the small scissors which he used to trim his Henry VIII beard. He stabbed the scissors toward Malone, who shuffled back hurriedly.
“Listen,” Boyd said, “did you call the office after you left this afternoon?”
“No,” Malone admitted. “Why? What happened?”
“There was a call for you,” Boyd said. “Long Distance, just before I left at five. I came on back to the hotel and waited until I heard you come in. Thought you might want to know about it.”
“I do, I guess,” Malone said. “Who from?” Looking at Boyd, a[Pg 102] modern-day Henry VIII, the association was too obvious to be missed. Malone thought of Good Queen Bess, and wondered why she was calling him again.
And—more surprising—why she’d called him at FBI headquarters, when she must have known that he wasn’t there.
“Dr. O’Connor,” Boyd said.
“Oh,” Malone said, somewhat relieved. “At Yucca Flats.”
Boyd nodded. “Right,” he said. “You’re to call Operator Nine.”
“Thanks.” Malone went over to the phone, remembered his shoes and put them down carefully on the floor. “Anything else of importance?” he asked.
“On the Cadillacs,” Boyd said. “We’ve got a final report now. Leibowitz and Hardin finally finished checking the last of them—there weren’t quite as many as we were afraid there were going to be. Red isn’t a very popular color around here.”
“Good,” Malone said.
“And there isn’t a doggone thing on any of ‘em,” Boyd said. “Oh, we cleared up a lot of small-time crime, one thing and another, but that’s about all. No such thing as an electro-psionic brain to be found anywhere in the lot. Leibowitz says he’s willing to swear to it.”
Malone sighed. “I didn’t think he’d find one,” he said.
“You didn’t?”
“No,” Malone said.
Boyd stabbed at him with the scissors again. “Then why did you cause all that trouble?” he said.
“Because I thought we might find electro-psionic brains,” Malone said wearily. “Or one, anyhow.”
“But you just said—”
Malone picked up the phone, got Long Distance and motioned Boyd to silence in one sweeping series of moves. The Long Distance Operator said: “Yes, sir? May we help you?”
“Give me Operator Nine,” Malone said.
There was a buzz, a click and a new voice which said: “Operator Ni-yun. May we help you?”
“All nine of you?” Malone muttered. “Never mind. This is Kenneth Malone. I’ve got a call from Dr. Thomas O’Connor at Yucca Flats. Please connect me.”
There was another buzz, a click and an ungodly howl which was followed by the voice of Operator Ni-yun saying: “We are connecting you. There will be a slight delay. We are sor-ree.”
Malone waited. At last there was another small howl, and the screen lit up. Dr. O’Connor’s face, as stern and ascetic as ever, stared through at Malone.
“I understand you called me,” Malone said.
“Ah, yes,” Dr. O’Connor said. “It’s very good to see you again, Mr. Malone.” He gave Malone a smile good for exchange at your corner grocery: worth, one icicle.
“It’s good to see you, too,” Malone lied.[Pg 103]
“Mr. Burris explained to me what it was that you wanted to talk to me about,” O’Connor said. “Am I to understand that you have actually found a teleport?”
“Unless my theories are away off,” Malone said, “I’ve done a lot better than that. I’ve found eight of them.”
“Eight!” Dr. O’Connor’s smile grew perceptibly warmed. It now stood at about thirty-four degrees Fahrenheit. “That is really excellent, Mr. Malone. You have done a fine job.”
“Thanks,” Malone muttered. He wished that O’Connor didn’t make him feel quite so much like a first-year law student talking to an egomaniacal professor.
“When can you deliver them?” O’Connor said.
“Well,” Malone said carefully, “that depends.” O’Connor seemed to view the teleports as pieces of equipment, he thought. “I can’t deliver them until I catch them,” he said. “And that’s why I wanted to talk to you.”
“Some slight delay,” Dr. O’Connor said, “will be quite understandable.” His face left no doubt that he didn’t like the necessity of understanding anything that was going to keep him and the eight teleports apart for even thirty seconds longer, now that he knew about them.
“You see,” Malone said, “they’re kids. Juvenile delinquents, or something like that. But they are teleports, that’s for sure.”
“I see,” Dr. O’Connor said.
“So we’ve got to nab them,” Malone said. “And for that I need all the information I can get.”
Dr. O’Connor nodded slowly. “I’ll be happy,” he said, “to give you any information I can provide.”
Malone took a deep breath, and plunged. “How does this teleportation bit work, anyhow?” he said.
“You’ve asked a very delicate question,” Dr. O’Connor said. “Actually, we can’t be quite positive.” His expression showed just how little he wanted to make this admission. “However,” he went on, brightening, “there is some evidence which seems to show that it is basically the same process as psychokinesis. And we do have quite a bit of empirical data on psychokinesis.” He scribbled something on a sheet of paper and said: “For instance, there’s this.” He held the paper up to the screen so that Malone could read it.
It said:
| md | = | K |
| ft2 |
Malone looked at it for some seconds. At last he said: “It’s very pretty. What is it?”
“This,” Dr. O’Connor said, in the tone of voice that meant You Should Have Known All Along, But You’re Just Hopeless, “is the basic formula for the phenomenon, where m is the mass in grams, d is the distance in centimeters, f is the force in dynes and t is the time in seconds. K is a[Pg 104] constant whose value is not yet known.”
Malone said: “Hm-m-m,” and stared at the equation again. Somehow, the explanation was not very helpful. The value of K was unknown. He understood that much, all right but it didn’t seem to do him any good.
“As you can see,” Dr. O’Connor went on, “the greater the force, and the longer time it is applied, the greater distance any mass can be moved. Or, contrariwise, the more mass, the greater mass, that is, the easier it is to move it any given distance. This is, as you undoubtedly understand, not at all in contradistinction to physical phenomena.”
“Ah,” Malone said, feeling that something was expected of him, but not being quite sure what.
Dr. O’Connor frowned. “I must admit,” he said, “that the uncertainty as to the constant k, and the lack of any real knowledge as to just what kind of force is being applied, have held up our work so far.” Then his face smoothed out. “Of course, when we have the teleports to work with, we may derive a full set of laws which—”
“Never mind that now,” Malone said.
“But our work is most important, Mr. Malone,” Dr. O’Connor said with a motion of his eyebrows. “As I’m sure you must understand.”
“Oh,” Malone said, feeling as if he’d been caught without his homework, “of course. But if you don’t mind—”
“Yes, Mr. Malone?” Dr. O’Connor said smoothly.
“What I want to know,” Malone said, “is this: what are the limitations of this … uh … phenomenon?”
Dr. O’Connor brightened visibly. “The limitations are several,” he said. “In the first place, there is the force represented by f in the equation. This seems to be entirely dependent on the … ah … strength of the subject’s personality. That is if we assume that the process is at all parallel with the phenomena of psychokinesis and levitation. And there are excellent theoretical reasons for so believing.”
“In other words,” Malone said, “a man with a strong will would be able to exert more force than a weaker-willed man?”
“Correct,” Dr. O’Connor said. “And another factor is the time, t. What we are measuring here is the span of attention of the individual—the ability of the subject’s mind to concentrate on a given thing for a span of time. Many people, for example, cannot keep their attention focused on a single thought for more than a few milliseconds, it seems. They are … ah … ’scatter-brained,’ as the saying is.”
His expression left no doubt that he included Malone in that group. Malone tried not to look nervous.
Then Dr. O’Connor scowled. “There is another factor which we feel should be in the equation,” he said, “but we have not yet found a precise way to express it mathematically. You must realize that the[Pg 105] mathematical treatment of psionics is, as yet, in a relatively primitive stage.”
“Oh,” Malone said. “Of course. Sure. But this other factor—”
“It is what might be called the … ah … volume of attention,” Dr. O’Connor said. “That is, the actual amount of space that can be conceived of and held by the subject, during the time he is concentrating.”
Malone blinked.
“For most people,” Dr. O’Connor said, “the awareness of the space surrounding them is limited to a few inches of moving space, no more. To put this in a purely physical matrix: one might say that the ‘teleportation field’ doesn’t extend more than a few inches beyond the skin of the subject. Thus, it would be difficult to teleport anything really large unless one were able to increase the volume of attention, or awareness. However, it is difficult to express this notion mathematically.”
“I’ll bet,” Malone said.
Dr. O’Connor shot him a frozen glance. “One of our early attempts,” he said, “was simply to put this in as a volume factor, so that the left-hand side of the equation, below the line, would read—” He scribbled again on the paper and held it up:
| md | = | K |
| d3ft2 |
“Unfortunately, as you can perhaps see,” Dr. O’Connor said, “the equation would not stand up under dimensional analysis.”
“Oh, sure,” Malone said, adding sympathetically: “That’s too bad. But does that put a limit on how much a man could carry with him? I mean, he couldn’t take a whole building along, or anything like that, could he?”
“I doubt it,” Dr. O’Connor said gravely. “That would require a tremendous volume of space for one to focus his entire attention on, as a whole, for any useful length of time. It would require a type of mind that I am not even sure exists.”
“In the case of a young, inexperienced boy,” Malone said stubbornly, “would you say that he could carry off anything heavy?”
“Of course not,” Dr. O’Connor said. “Nor, as a matter of fact, could he carry off anything that was securely bolted down; I hope you follow me?”
“I think so,” Malone said. “But look here: suppose you handcuffed him to, say, a radiator or a jail cell bar.”
“Yes?”
“Could he get away?”
Dr. O’Connor appeared to consider this with some care. “Well,” he said at last, “he certainly couldn’t take the radiator with him, or the cell bar. If that’s what you mean.” He hesitated, looked slightly shamefaced, and then went on: “But you must realize that we lack any really extensive data on this phenomenon.”
“Of course,” Malone said.
“That’s why I’m so very anxious[Pg 106] to get those subjects,” Dr. O’Connor said.
“Dr. O’Connor,” Malone said earnestly, “that’s just what I had in mind from the start. I’ve been going to a lot of extra trouble to make sure that those kids don’t get killed or end up in reform schools or something, just so you could work with them.”
“I appreciate that, Mr. Malone,” O’Connor said gravely.
Malone felt as if someone had given him a gold star. Fighting down the emotion, he went on: “I know right now that I can catch one or two of them. But I don’t know for sure that I can hold one for more than a fraction of a second.”
“I see your problem,” Dr. O’Connor said. “Believe me, Mr. Malone. I do see your problem.”
“And is there a way out?” Malone said. “I mean a way I can hold on to them for—”
“At present,” Dr. O’Connor said heavily, “I have no suggestions. I lack data.”
“Oh, fine,” Malone said. “We need the kids to get the data, and we need the data to get the kids.” He sighed. “Hooray for our side,” he added.
“There does appear to be something of a dilemma here,” Dr. O’Connor admitted sadly.
“Dilemma is putting it mildly,” Malone said.
Dr. O’Connor opened his mouth, shut it, opened it again and said: “I agree.”
“Well,” Malone said, “maybe one of us will think of something. If anything does occur to you, let me know at once.”
“I certainly will,” Dr. O’Connor said. “Believe me, Mr. Malone, I want you to capture those—kids—just as badly as you want to capture them yourself.”
“I’ll try,” Malone said at random. He flipped off and turned with a sense of relief back to Boyd. But it looked as if Henry VIII had been hit on the head with a cow, or something equally weighty. Boyd looked glassy-eyed and slightly stunned.
“What’s the matter with you?” Malone said. “Sick?”
“I’m not sick,” Boyd said carefully. “At least I don’t think I’m sick. It’s hard to tell.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Teleporting?” Boyd said. “Juvenile delinquents?”
Malone felt a sudden twinge in the area of his conscience. He realized that he had told Boyd nothing at all about what had been going on since the discovery of the notebook two nights ago. He filled his partner in rapidly while Boyd stood in front of the mirror and rather shakily attempted to trim his beard.
“That’s why I had the car search continue,” Malone said. “I was fairly sure the fault wasn’t in the cars, but the boys. But I had to make absolutely sure.”
Boyd said: “Oh,” chopped a small section out of the center of his beard and added: “My hand’s shaky.”[Pg 107]
“Well,” Malone said, “that’s the story.”
“It sure is quite a story,” Boyd said. “And I don’t want you to think I don’t believe it. Because I don’t.”
“It’s true,” Malone said.
“That doesn’t affect me,” Boyd said. “I’ll go along with the gag. But enough is enough. Vanishing teen-agers. Ridiculous.”
“Just so you go along with me,” Malone said.
“Oh, I’ll go along,” Boyd said. “This is my vacation, too, isn’t it? What’s the next move, Mastermind?”
“We’re going down to that warehouse,” Malone said decisively. “I’ve got a hunch the kids have been hiding there ever since they left their homes yesterday.”
“Malone,” Boyd said.
“What?”
“You mean we’re going down to the warehouse tonight?” Boyd said.
Malone nodded.
“I might have known,” Boyd said. “I might have known.”
“Tom,” Malone said. “What’s wrong?”
“Oh, nothing,” Boyd said. “Nothing at all. Everything’s fine and dandy. I think I’m going to commit suicide, but don’t let that bother you.”
“What happened?” Malone said.
Boyd stared at him. “You happened,” he said. “You and the teen-agers and the warehouse happened. Three days’ work—ruined.”
Malone scratched his head, found out that his head still hurt and put his hand down again. “What work?” he said.
“For three days,” Boyd said, “I’ve been taking this blond chick all over New York. Wining her. Dining her. Spending money as if I were Burris himself, instead of the common or garden variety of FBI agent. Night clubs. Theaters. Bars. The works. Malone, we were getting along famously. It was wonderful.”
“And tonight—” Malone said.
“Tonight,” Boyd said, “was supposed to be the night. The big night. The payoff. We’ve got a date for dinner—T-bone steak, two inches thick, with mushrooms. At her apartment, Malone.”
“You’ll have to break it,” Malone said sympathetically. “Too bad, but it can’t be helped now. You can pick up a sandwich before you go.”
“A sandwich,” Boyd said with great dignity, “is not my idea of something to eat.”
“Look, Tom—” Malone began.
“All right, all right,” Boyd said tiredly. “Duty is duty. I’ll go call her.”
“Fine,” Malone said. “And meanwhile, I’ll get us a little insurance.”
“Insurance?”
“John Henry Fernack,” Malone Malone said, “and his Safe and Loft Squad.”
XIV.
The warehouse was locked up tight, all right, Malone thought. In the dim light that surrounded the neighborhood, it stood like a single[Pg 108] stone block, alone near the waterfront. There were other buildings nearby, but they seemed smaller; the warehouse loomed over Malone and Boyd threateningly. They stood in a shadow-blacked alley just across the street, watching the big building nervously, studying it for weak points and escape areas.
Boyd whispered softly: “Do you think they have a lookout?”
Malone’s voice was equally low. “We’ll have to assume they’ve got at least one kid posted,” he said. “But they can’t be watching all the time. Remember, they can’t do everything.”
“They don’t have to,” Boyd said. “They do quite enough for me. Do you realize that, right now, I could be—”
“Break it up,” Malone said. He took a small handset from his pocket and pressed the stud. “Lynch?” he whispered.
A tinny voice came from the earpiece. “Here, Malone.”
“Have you got them located yet?” Malone said.
“Not yet,” Lynch’s voice replied. “We’re working on a triangulation now. Just hold on for a minute or so. I’ll let you know as soon as we’ve got results.”
The police squads—Lynch and his men, the warehouse precinct men and the Safe and Loft Squad—had set up a careful cordon around the area, and were now hard at work trying to determine two things.
First, they had to know whether there was anybody in the building at all.[Pg 109]
Second, they had to be able to locate anyone in the building with precision.
The silence of the downtown warehouse district helped. They had several specially designed, highly sensitive directional microphones aimed at the building from carefully selected spots around the area, trying to pick up the muffled sounds of speech or motion within the warehouse. The watchmen in buildings nearby had been warned off for the time being so that their footsteps wouldn’t occlude any results.
Malone waited, feeling nervous and cold. Finally Lynch’s voice came through again. “We’re getting something, all right,” he said. “There are obviously several people in there. You were right, Malone.”
“Thanks,” Malone said. “How about that fix?”
“Hold it a second,” Lynch said. Wind swept off the river at Malone and Boyd. Malone closed his eyes and shivered. He could smell fish and iodine and waste, the odor of the Hudson as it passes the city. Across the river lights sparkled warmly. Here there was nothing but darkness.
A long time passed, perhaps ten seconds.
Then Lynch’s voice was back: “Sergeant McNulty says they’re on the top floor, Malone,” he said. “Can’t tell how many for sure. But they’re talking and moving around.”
“It’s a shame these things won’t pick up the actual words at a distance,” Malone said.
“Just a general feeling of noise is all we get,” Lynch said. “But it does some good.”
“Sure,” Malone said. “Now listen carefully: Boyd and I are going in. Alone.”
Lynch’s voice whispered: “Right.”
“If those mikes pick up any unusual ruckus—any sharp increase in the noise level—come running,” Malone said. “Otherwise, just sit still and wait for my signal. Got that?”
“Check,” Lynch said.
Malone pocketed the radiophone. “O.K., Tom,” he whispered. “This is H-hour—M-minute—and S-second.”
“I can spell,” Boyd muttered. “Let’s move in.”
“Wait a minute,” Malone said. He took his goggles and brought them down over his eyes, adjusting the helmet on his head. Boyd did the same. Malone flicked on the infrared flashlight he held in his hand.
“O.K.?” he whispered.
“Check,” Boyd said.
Thanks to the goggles, both of them could see the normally invisible beams of the infrared flashlight. They’d equipped themselves to move in darkness without betraying themselves, and they’d be able to see where a person without equipment would be blind.
Malone stayed well within the shadows as he moved silently around to the alley behind the warehouse and then to a narrow passageway that led to the building next door. Boyd fol[Pg 110]lowed a few feet behind him along the carefully planned route.
Malone unlocked the small door that led into the ground floor of the building adjoining. As he did so he heard a sound behind him and called: “Tom?”
“Hey, Malone,” Boyd whispered. “It’s—”
Before there was any outcry, Malone rushed back. Boyd was struggling with a figure in the dimness. Malone grabbed the figure and clamped his hand over its mouth. It bit him. He swore in a low voice, and clamped the hand over the mouth again.
It hadn’t taken him more than half a second to realize what, whoever it was who struggled in his arms, it wasn’t a boy.
“Shut up!” Malone hissed in her ear. “I won’t hurt you.”
The struggle stopped immediately. Malone gently eased his hand off the girl’s mouth. She turned and looked at him.
“Kenneth Malone,” she said, “you look like a man from Mars.”
“Dorothea!” Malone gasped. “What are you doing here? Looking for your brother?”
“Never mind that,” she said. “You play too rough. I’m going home to mother.”
“Answer me!” Malone said.
“All right,” Dorothea said. “You must know anyhow, since you’re here. Yes, I’m looking for that fat-headed brother of mine. But now I suppose it’s too late. He’ll … he’ll go to prison.”
Her voice broke. Malone found his shoulder suddenly occupied by a crying face.
“No,” he said quickly. “No. Please. He won’t.”
“Really?”
Boyd whispered: “Malone, what is this? It’s no place for a date. And I—”
“Oh, shut up,” Malone told him in a kindly fashion. He turned back to Dorothea. “I promise he won’t,” he said. “If I can just talk to your brother, make him listen to reason, I think we can get him and the others off. Believe me.”
“But you—”
“Please,” Malone said. “Believe me.”
“Oh, Ken,” Dorothea said, raising her head. “Do you … do you mean it?”
“Sure I mean it,” Malone said. “What have I been saying? The Government needs these kids.”
“The Government?”
“It’s nothing to worry about,” Malone said. “Just go on home now, all right? I’ll call you tomorrow. Late tonight, if I can. All right?”
“No,” Dorothea said. “It’s not all right. Not at all.”
“But—”
Boyd hissed: “Malone!”
Malone ignored him. He had a bigger fight on his hands. “I’m not going home,” Dorothea announced. “I’m going in there with you. After all,” she added, “I can talk more sense into Mike’s head than you can.”
“Now, look,” Malone began.[Pg 111]
Dorothea grinned in the darkness. “If you don’t take me along,” she said quietly, “I’ll scream and warn them.”
Malone surrendered at once. He had no doubt at all that Dorothea meant what she said. And, after all, the girl might really be some use to them. And there probably wouldn’t be much danger.
Of course there wouldn’t, he thought. He was going to see to that.
“All right,” he said. “Come along. Stick close to us, and don’t worry about the darkness. We can see, even if you can’t, so let us guide you. But be quiet!”
Boyd whispered: “Malone, what’s going on?”
“She’s coming with us,” Malone said, pointing to Dorothea.
Boyd shrugged. “Malone,” he said, “who do you think you are? The Pied Piper of Hamelin?”
Malone wheeled and went ahead. Opening the door, he played his I-R flashlight on the room inside and he, Boyd and Dorothea trailed in, going through rooms piled with huge boxes. They went up an iron stairway to the second floor, and so on up to the roof.
They moved across the roof quickly under the cold stars, to the wall of the warehouse, which was two stories higher than the building they were on. Of course, there were no windows in the warehouse wall facing them, except on the top story.
But there was a single, heavy, fireproof emergency exit. It would have taken power machinery or explosives to open that door from the outside without a key, although from the inside it would open easily.
Fortunately, Malone had a key.
He took it out and stepped aside. “Give that lock the works,” he whispered to Boyd.
Boyd took a lubricant gun from his pocket and fired three silent shots of special oil into the lock. Then he shot the hinges, and cracks around the door.
They waited for a minute or two while the oil, forced in under pressure, did its work. Then Malone fitted the key carefully into the lock and turned it, slowly and delicately. The door swung open in silence. Malone slipped inside, followed by Boyd and Dorothea Fueyo.
Infrared equipment went on again, and the eerie illumination spread over their surroundings. Malone tapped Boyd on the shoulder and jerked his thumb toward the back stairs. This was plainly no time for talk.
From the floor above, they could hear the murmur of youthful voices.
They started for the stairway. Fortunately, the building was of the steel-and-concrete type; there were no wooden floors to creak and groan beneath their feet.
At the bottom of the stairs, they paused. Voices came down the stairwell clearly, even words being defined in the silence.
“… And quit harping on whose fault it was.” Malone recognized Mike Fueyo’s voice. “That FBI guy[Pg 112] was on to us and we had to pull out; you know that. We always figured we’d have to pull out some day. So why not now?”
“Yeah,” another voice said. “But you didn’t have to go and vanish right under that Fed’s nose. You been beating into our heads not to do that sort of stuff ever since we first found out we could make this vanishing bit. And then you go and do it in front of a Fed. Smart. Sure, you get a big bang out of it, but is it smart? I ask you—”
“Yeah?” Mike said. “Listen, Silvo, they never would’ve got onto us if it hadn’t been for your stupid tricks. Slugging a cop on the dome. Cracking up a car. You and your bug for speed!”
Malone blinked. Then it hadn’t been Miguel Fueyo who’d hit Sergeant Jukovsky, but Silvo. Malone tried to remember the list of Silent Spooks. Silvo … Envoz. That was it.
“You slugged the FBI guy, Mike,” Silvo said. “And now you got us all on the run. That’s your fault, Mike. I want to see my old lady.”
“I had to slug him,” Mike said. “Listen, all Ramon’s stuff was in that Cadillac. What’d have happened if he’d found all that stuff?”
“So what happened anyway?” another voice—Ramon?—said. “He found your stupid notebook, didn’t he? He went yelling to the cops, didn’t he? We’re running, ain’t we? So what difference?”
“Shut up!” Mike roared.
“You ain’t telling me to shut up!” (That was the third voice. Malone thought; possibly Ramon Otravez.)
“Me either!” Silvo yelled. “You think you’re a great big-shot, you think you’re king of the world!”
“Who figured out the Vanish?” Mike screamed. “You’d all be a bunch of bums if I hadn’t showed you that! And you know it! You’d all—”
“Don’t give us that!” Silvo said. “We’d have been able to do it, same as you. Like you said, anybody who’s got talent could do it. There were guys you tried to teach—”
“Sure,” said a fourth voice. “Listen, Fueyo, you’re so bright—so why don’t you try teaching it to somebody who don’t have the talent?”
“Yeah!” said voice number five. “You think you could teach that flashy sister of yours the Vanish?”
“You shut up about my sister, Phil!” Mike screamed.
“So what’s so great about her?”
“She got that book back from the Fed,” Mike said. “That’s what. It’s enough!”
A voice said, “Any dame with a little—”
“Shut your face before I shut it for you!”
Malone couldn’t tell who was yelling what at who after a minute. They all seemed unhappy about being on the run from the police, and they were all tired of being cooped up in a warehouse under Mike’s orders. Mike was the only person they could take it out on—and Mike was under heavy attack.[Pg 113]
Two of the boys, surprisingly, seemed to side with him. The other five were trying to outshout them. Malone wondered if it would become a fight, and then realized that these kids could hardly fight each other when the one who was losing could always fade out.
He leaned over and whispered to Dorothea and Boyd: “Let’s sneak up there while the argument’s going on.”
“But—” Boyd began.
“Less chance of their noticing us,” Malone explained, and started forward.
They tiptoed up the stairs and got behind a pile of crates in the shadows, while invectives roared around them. This floor was lit by a single small bulb hanging from a socket in the ceiling. The windows were hung with heavy blankets to keep the light from shining out.
The kids didn’t notice anything except each other. Malone took a couple of deep breaths and began to look around.
All things considered, he thought, the kids had fixed the place up pretty nicely. The unused warehouse had practically been made over into an apartment. There were chairs, beds, tables and everything else in the line of furnishings for which the kids could conceivably have any use. There were even some floor lamps scattered around, but they weren’t plugged in. Malone guessed that a job would have to be done on the warehouse wiring to get the floor lamps in operation, and the kids just hadn’t got around to it yet.
By now, the boys were practically standing toe to toe, ripping air-bluing epithets out at each other. Not a single hand was lifted.
Malone stared at them for a second, then turned to Dorothea. “We’ll wait till they calm down a little,” he whispered. “Then you go out and talk to them. Tell them we won’t hurt them or lock them up or anything. All we want to do is talk to them for a while.”
“All right,” she whispered back.
“They can vanish any time they want to,” Malone said, “so there’s no reason for them not to listen to—”
He stopped suddenly, listening. Over the shouting, screaming and cursing of the kids, he heard motion on the floor below.
Cops?
It couldn’t be, he told himself. But when he took out his radiophone, his hands were shaking a little.
Lynch’s voice was already coming over it when Malone thumbed it on.
“… So hang on, Malone! I repeat: we heard the ruckus, and we’re coming in! We’re on our way! Hang on, Malone!”
The voice stopped. There was a click.
Malone stared at the handset, fascinated and horrified. He swallowed. “No, Lynch!” he whispered, afraid to talk any louder for fear the kids would hear him. “No! Don’t come up! Go away! Repeat: go away! Stay away! Lynch—”
It was no use. The radiophone was dead.[Pg 114]
Lynch, apparently thinking Malone’s set had been smashed in the fight, or else that Malone was unconscious, had shut his own receiver off.
There was absolutely nothing that Malone could do.
The kids were still yelling at the top of their voices, but the thundering of heavy, flat feet galumphing up from the lower depths couldn’t be ignored for long. All the boys noticed it at about the same time. They jerked their heads round to face the stairway. Malone and his campatriots crouched lower behind the boxes.
Mike Fueyo was the first to speak. “Don’t vanish yet!” he snapped. “Let’s see who it is.”
The internal dissent among the Silent Spooks disappeared as if it had never been, as they faced a common foe. Once again, they fell naturally under Fueyo’s leadership. “If it’s cops,” he said, “we’ll give ‘em the Grasshopper Play we worked out. We’ll show ‘em.”
“They can’t fool with us,” another boy said. “Sure. The Grasshopper Play.”
It was cops, all right. Lieutenant Lynch ran up the stairs waving his billy in a heroic fashion, followed by a horde of blue-clad officers.
“Where’s Malone?” Lynch shouted as he came through the doorway.
“Where’s your what?” Mike yelled back, and the fight was on.
Later, Malone thought that he should have been surprised, but he wasn’t. There wasn’t any time to be surprised. The kids didn’t disappear. They spread out over the floor of the room easily and lightly, and the cops charged them in a great blundering mass.
Naturally, the kids winked out one by one—and reformed in the center of the cops’ muddle. Malone saw one cop raise his billy and swing it at Mike. Mike watched it come down and vanish at the last instant. The cop’s billy descended on the head of another cop, standing just behind where Mike had been.
The second cop, hit and blinded by the blow on his head, swung back and hit the first cop. Meanwhile, Mike was somewhere else.
Malone stayed crouched behind the boxes. Dorothea stood up and shouted: “Mike! Mike! We just want to talk to you!”
Unfortunately, the police were making such a racket that this could not be heard more than a foot or so from the speaker. Lynch himself charged into the mass, swinging his billy and his free fist and laying others out one after the other. Pretty soon the floor was littered with cops. Lynch was doing yeoman duty, but it was hard to tell what side he was on.
The vanishing trick Mike had worked out was being used by all of the kids. Cops were hitting other cops, Lynch was hitting everybody, and the kids were winking on and off all over the loft. It was a scene of tremendous noise and carnage.
Malone suddenly sprang to his[Pg 115] feet and charged into the melee, shouting at the top of his lungs and swinging both fists. The first person he saw was one of the teen-agers, and he charged him with abandon.
He should, he reflected, have known better. The kid disappeared. Malone caromed off the stomach of a policeman, received a blow on the shoulder from his billy, and rebounded into the arms of a surprised police officer at the edge of the battle.
“Who’re you?” the officer gasped.
“Malone,” Malone said.
“You on our side?”
“How about you?” Malone said.
“I’m a lieutenant here,” the officer said. “In charge of warehouse precinct. I—”
Malone and the lieutenant stepped nimbly aside as another cop careened by them, waving his billy helplessly.[Pg 116] They looked away as the crash came. The cop had fallen over a table, and now lay with his legs in the air, supported by the overturned table, blissfully unconscious.
“We seem,” Malone said, “to be in an area of some activity. Let’s move.”
They shifted away a few feet. Malone looked into the foray and saw Boyd at work roaring and going after the kids. One of them had established a kind of game with him. He would appear just in front of Boyd, who rushed at him, arms outstretched. As Boyd had almost reached him, the kid disappeared and reappeared again just behind Boyd. He tapped the FBI agent gently on the shoulder; Boyd turned and the process was repeated.
Boyd seemed to be getting winded.
The lieutenant suddenly dashed back into the fray. Malone looked around, saw Mike Fueyo flickering in and out at the edges, and headed for him.
A cop swung at Mike, missed, and hit Malone on the arm. Malone swore. The cop backed off, looking in a bewildered fashion for his victim, who was nowhere in sight. Then Malone caught sight of him, at the other edge of the fight. He started to work his way around.
He tried to avoid blows, but it wasn’t always possible. A reeling cop caught his lapel and tore it, and Lynch, indefatigable in battle, managed to graze his chin with a blow meant for one of the disappearing boys. Other cops were battling each other, going after the kids and clutching empty air, cursing and screaming unheard orders in the fracas.
Malone ducked past Lynch, rubbed at his chin and looked for Mike. In the tangle of bodies it was getting hard to see. There was the sound of breaking ceramics as a floor lamp went over, and then a table followed it, but Malone avoided both. He looked for Mike Fueyo—
A cop clutched him around the middle, out of nowhere, said: “Sorry, buddy, who are you?” and dove back into the mass of bodies. Malone caught his breath and forged onward.
There was Mike, at the edge of the fight, watching everything coolly. No cop was near him. In the dim light the place looked like a scene from Hell, a special Hell for policemen. Malone wove through battling hordes to the edge and came out a few feet away from Mike Fueyo.
Fueyo didn’t see him. He was looking at Boyd instead—still stumbling back and forth as the teen-ager baiting him winked on and off in front of him and behind him. He was laughing.
Malone came up silently from behind. The trip seemed to take hours. He was being very quiet, although he was reasonably sure that even if he yelled he wouldn’t be heard. But he didn’t want to take the slightest chance.
He sprang on Mike and attached[Pg 117] the handcuffs to his wrist, and to Mike’s wrist, within seconds.
“Ha!” he said involuntarily. “Now come with me!”
He gave his end of the handcuffs a tremendous yank.
He started to stagger, trailing an empty cuff behind him, flailing his arms wildly. Ahead of him he could see a big cop with an upraised billy. Malone tried to alter his course, but it was too late. He skidded helplessly into the cop, who jerked round and swung the billy automatically. Malone said: “Yi!” as he caught the blow on the cheekbone, bounced off the cop and kept going.
He careened past a blur of figures, trying to avoid hard surfaces and other human beings. But there was—
Oh, no, Malone thought.
Lynch.
Lynch was ready to swing. His fist was cocked, and he was heading for one of the teen-agers with murder in his eye. Malone knew their paths were going to intersect. “Watch out!” he yelled. “Watch out, it’s me! Stop me! Stop me! Somebody stop me!”
He went completely unheard.
Lynch swung and missed, hitting a cop who had been hiding behind the teen-ager. The cop went down to join the wounded, and Lynch roared like a bull and swung around, looking for more enemies.
That was when Malone hit him.
Long afterward, he remembered Lynch’s hat sailing through the air, and landing in the center of a struggling mass of policemen. He remembered Lynch saying: “So there you are!” and swinging before he looked.
He remembered the blow on the chin.
And then, he remembered falling, and falling, and falling. Somewhere there was a voice: “Where are they? They’ve disappeared for good.”
And then, for long seconds, nothing.
He woke up with a headache, but it wasn’t too bad. Surprisingly, not much time had passed; he got up and dusted off his trousers, looking around at the battlefield. Wounded and groaning cops were all over. The room was a shambles; the walking wounded—which comprised the rest of the force—were stumbling around in a slow, hopeless sort of fashion.
Lynch was standing next to him. “Malone,” he said, “I’m sorry. I hit you, didn’t I?”
“Uh-huh,” Malone said. “You seemed to be hitting everybody.”
“I was trying for the kids,” Lynch said.
“So was I,” Malone said. “I got the cuffs on one and yanked him along—but he disappeared and left me with the cuffs.”
“Great,” Lynch said. “Hell of a raid.”
“Very jolly,” Malone agreed. “Fun and games were had by all.”
A cop stumbled up, handed Lynch his cap and disappeared without a word. Lynch stared mournfully at it. The emblem was crushed and the cap looked rather worn and useless.[Pg 118] He put it on his head, where it assumed the rakish tilt of a hobo’s favorite tam-o’-shanter, and said: “I hope you’re not thinking of blaming me for this fiasco.”
“Not at all,” Malone said nobly. He hurt all over, but on reflection he thought that he would probably live. “It was nobody’s fault.” Except, he thought, his own. If he’d only told Lynch to come in when called for—and under no other circumstances—this wouldn’t have happened. He looked around at the remains of New York’s Finest, and felt guilty.
The lieutenant from the local precinct limped up, rubbing a well-kicked shin and trying to disentangle pieces of floor lamp from his hair. “Listen, Lynch,” he said, “What’s with these kids? What’s going on here? Look at my men.”
“Some days,” Lynch said, “it just doesn’t pay to get up.”
“Sure,” the local man said, “but what do I do now?”
“Make your reports.”
“But—”
“To the Commissioner,” Lynch said, “and to nobody else. If this gets into the papers, heads will roll.”
“My head is rolling right now,” the local man said. “Know what one of those kids did? Stood in front of a floor lamp. I swung at him and he vanished. Vanished. I hit the lamp, and then the lamp hit me.”
“Just see that this doesn’t get out,” Lynch said.
“It can’t,” the local man said. “Anybody who mentioned this to a reporter would just be laughed out of town. It’s not possible.” He paused thoughtfully, and added: “We’d all be laughed out of town.”
“And probably replaced with the FBI,” Lynch said morosely. He looked at Malone. “Nothing personal, you understand,” he said.
“Of course,” Malone said. “We can’t do any more here, can we?”
“I don’t think we can do any more anywhere,” Lynch said. “Let’s lock the place up and leave and forget all about it.”
“Fine,” Malone said. “I’ve got work to do.” He looked round, found Dorothea and signaled to her. “Come on, Dorothea. Where’s Boyd?”
“Here I am,” Boyd said, walking slowly across the big room to Malone. He had one hand held to his chin.
“What’s the matter with you?” Malone asked.
Boyd took his hand away. There was a bald spot the size of a quarter on the point of his chin. “One of those kids,” he said sadly, “has a hell of a strong grip. Come on, Miss Fueyo. Come on, Malone. Let’s get out of here.”
XV.
It is definitely not usual for the Director of the FBI to come stalking into a local office of that same FBI without so much as an advance warning or a by-your-leave. Such things are simply not done.[Pg 119]
Andrew J. Burris, however, was doing them.
Three days after the Great Warehouse Fiasco, a startled A-in-C looked up to see the familiar Burris figure stalk by his office, growling under its breath. The A-in-C leaped to the interoffice phone, wondered whom he ought to call first, and subsided, staring dully at the telephone screen and thinking about retiring.
The next appearance of the head of the FBI was in the office assigned to Malone and Boyd. Burris came through the doorway without warning, his countenance that of a harried and unhappy man.
Malone looked up, blinked, and then readjusted his features to what he imagined was a nice, bright smile. “Oh,” he said. “Hello, chief. I’ve been sort of expecting you.”
“I’ll bet you have,” Burris said. He set his brief case on Malone’s desk and pulled a sheaf of papers from it. “Do you see these?” he said, waving them. “Inquiries. Complaints. Demands. From everybody. I’ve been getting them for three days.”
“Sure are a lot of them,” Malone said at random.
“From Police Commissioner Fernack,” Burris said. “From the mayor. From the governor, in Albany. From everybody. And they all want an explanation. They demand one.”
He sat down suddenly on Malone’s desk, his anger gone.
“Well—” Malone began.
“Malone,” Burris said plaintively, “I can stall them off for a while. I can tell them all kinds of fancy stories. I don’t mind. They don’t really need any explanation. But—” He paused, and then added: “I do!”
Malone closed his eyes, decided things looked even worse that way, and opened them again. “Just what sort of an explanation did you have in mind, chief?” he said.
“Any kind,” Burris said instantly, “so long as it explains. I … no.”
“No?”
“No,” Burris said. “I want the truth! Even if it doesn’t explain anything! Preferably, I want both—the truth and some explanations. If possible. For three days, now, this area has been haunted by the Silent Spooks. They’ve been stealing everything they could carry off! They’ve got the whole city in an uproar!”
“Well,” Malone said. “Not exactly. The papers—”
“I know,” Burris said. “You’ve kept it out of the news. That’s fine, and I appreciate it, Malone. I really do. But I can’t sit around and appreciate it much longer. You’ve got to get those boys!” He bounced off the desk and stood up again. “The longer they keep this up,” he said, “the harder it’s going to be to square everything with the courts. Those kids may end up getting killed! And how would that be?”
“Terrible,” Malone said honestly.
“Something,” Burris summed up, “has to be done.”
Malone thought for a second. “Chief,” he said at last, “if you can think of any way to nab them, I’ll certainly be grateful.”[Pg 120]
“Oh,” Burris said. “Oh. No. No, Malone. This is your baby.” He leaned over and clapped Malone on the shoulder. “I have faith in you,” he said. “You cleared up that nutty telepath case and you can clear this one up, too. But you’ve got to do it soon!”
“I’m working on it,” Malone said helplessly. “We might get a lead any time now.”
“Good,” Burris said. “Meanwhile, let’s sit down and see if we can’t figure out a way to pacify the local bigwigs.”
Malone sighed wearily.
An hour later, he was even more tired. Letting himself into his room at the hotel, he felt completely exhausted. He had spent most of the hour tactfully trying to get away from Burris. It had not been the world’s easiest job.
Dorothea Fueyo was sitting on the couch, waiting for him.
Immediately, he felt much better.
“You’re late,” Dorothea said accusingly. “I had to come up with the duplicate key you gave me. And what are the bellboys going to think?”
“They’re going to think you had a duplicate key,” Malone said. “Anyhow, I’m sorry. I got delayed at the office. Burris came to town—delivering seventeen ultimatums, forty-nine conflicting sets of orders and a rousing lecture.”
“I could have come up to your office, then,” Dorothea said, “instead of compromising my reputation by sneaking up to your hotel room.”
“And what about my reputation?” Malone said. “Besides, the office is no place for what I have in mind.”
“Why, Mr. Malone!”
Malone ignored the comment. “Did you bring the notebook?” he said.
“Certainly.” Dorothea handed a black, plastic-bound notebook over to Malone. “But what’s all this with a notebook? Going to keep score?”
“Not exactly,” Malone said. He took the notebook and leafed through it idly. It was not Mike Fueyo’s book; the boy himself had that now, and there was little chance of getting it back again. This one belonged to Dorothea—but, Malone thought, it could serve the same purpose.
“What I have in mind,” he said, “is something Mike said the other night, just before the cops barged in. He said something about having tried to teach you the Vanish. And that’s why I asked you to come here. Did he teach you?”
“Well, he tried,” Dorothea said. “But I couldn’t do anything with it. I haven’t got the Talent, Mike says.” She paused. “Is that why you figured I had a notebook like his?”
“Sure,” Malone said. “It’s the only thing that makes sense. Mike’s notebook was full of symbols—and that was all they could be. Symbols. If you see what I mean.”
“Not exactly,” Dorothea said.
“Symbolism—anyhow, that’s what Dr. O’Connor says—is one of the[Pg 121] primary factors in psionics.”
“Dr…. oh, yes,” Dorothea said. “Westinghouse. I’ve heard about him.”
“Good,” Malone said. “Anyhow, I decided the pictures in Mike’s notebook were just that—symbols. Things he wanted. And the little squiggles after the names were symbols, too. You know,” Malone said, “the boy’s pretty smart. Nobody else that I know of has ever figured out a way to teach psionics—at least, not on that level. But Mike has.”
“He’s a good boy,” Dorothea said. “Basically.”
“Fine,” Malone said. “Anyhow, if that were true, then the notebook was some sort of guide. And if he tried to teach you the technique, then you had to have a notebook, too. Clear?”
“Perfectly,” Dorothea said, “so what do you want me to do?”
“Teach me,” Malone said.
There was a silence.
“That’s silly,” Dorothea said. “How can I teach you something I can’t do myself? Besides, how do you know you have the Talent?”
“As far as the second question goes, I don’t know. But I can try, can’t I? And as far as the first question goes, that might not be so simple. But I think it can be done—if you remember what Mike tried to teach you.”
“Oh, I can remember all of that,” she said, “but it’s just that it didn’t do me any good. I couldn’t use it.”
“A man who’s paralyzed from the waist,” Malone said hopefully, “can’t play football. But if he knows how the game’s played, he can teach others—anyhow, he can teach the fundamentals. Want to try?”
Dorothea smiled. “All right, Ken,” she said. “It’s a great idea, at that: the blind teaching the possibly-blind to read. Give me the notebook, and I’ll explain the first principles. Later, you’ll have to get a notebook of your own, because these symbols are very personalized.”
Malone grinned and pulled a black book from his pocket. “I thought they might be,” he said. “I’ve already got one. Let’s go.”
Sweating, Malone stared grimly at the picture he had drawn on a page of his notebook. He’d been trying the stunt for four days, and so far all he had achieved was a nice profusion of perspiration. He was beginning to feel like an ad for a Turkish bath.
“No, Ken,” Dorothea said patiently. “No. You can’t do it that way. You’ve got to visualize it. That’s how Mike could find red Cadillacs so easily. All he had to do was—”
“I know,” Malone said, impatiently. “That’s what the pictures are for. But I’m no artist. This doesn’t even look much like my office.”
“It doesn’t have to, Ken,” Dorothea said. “All it has to do is give you enough details to enable you to visualize your destination. The better your memory is, the less detail you need. But you’ve got to grasp the whole area in your mind.”
Malone lifted his eyes from the[Pg 122] book and stared into the darkness outside the window without seeing it. Midnight had come and gone a long time ago, and he was still working.
“If I don’t crack this case pretty soon,” he muttered, “Burris is going to find a special new assignment for me—like investigating the social life of a deserted space station.”
“Now, that’s just what’s bothering you,” Dorothea said. “Get your mind off Burris. You can’t teleport when your mind is occupied with other things.”
“Then how did the kids hop around so much during the fight at the warehouse?”
“Plenty of practice,” Dorothea said. “They’ve been doing it longer than you have. It’s like playing the piano. The beginner has to concentrate, but the expert can play a piece he’s familiar with and hold a conversation at the same time. Now stop worrying—and start concentrating.”
Malone looked at the book again. With an effort, he forced everything out of his mind except the picture. Burris’ face came back once or twice, but he managed to get rid of it. He looked at the lopsided drawings that represented various items in the room, and made himself concentrate solely on visualizing the objects themselves and their surroundings.
Then, as the picture became clearer and achieved more reality, he began going over the other mental exercises that Dorothea had taught him.
He heard a clock tick.[Pg 123]
It was gone.
There was nothing but the picture, and the room it stood for … nothing … nothing….
The lights went out.
Malone blinked and jerked his head up from the notebook. “What hap—” he began.
And then he stopped.
He was no longer in his hotel room at the Statler-Hilton. He was standing in the middle of his office at FBI headquarters, Washington, D.C.
It had worked!
Malone walked over to the wall switch and turned on the lights in the darkened room. He looked around. He was definitely in his office.
He was a teleport.
He blinked and wondered briefly if he were dreaming. He pinched himself, said: “Ow,” and decided that the pain offered no certain proof.
But he didn’t feel like part of a dream.
He felt real. So did the office.
Just as he had promised Dorothea, he went to the phone and dialed the Statler-Hilton.
It took a minute for the long-distance circuits to connect him with Manhattan. Then the pretty operator at the hotel was smiling at him from the screen. “Statler-Hilton Hotel,” she said. “May we help you?”
“Ring Room 814,” Malone said. “I’m probably asleep in it.”
“What?” the operator said.
“Never mind,” Malone said. “Just ring it.”
“Yes, sir.” The screen went blank.
The screen stayed blank for a long time.
And then the operator was back. “I’m sorry, sir,” she said. “That room doesn’t answer.”
“You’re sure?” Malone said.
“Certainly.”
“Try it again,” Malone said.
The operator did so. She returned with the same answer.
Malone frowned and hung up. It didn’t sound right. Even a dream was supposed to make more sense than this was making. There was something wrong.
He had to get back to the hotel room.
There was only one trouble. He didn’t have a picture of the room in his notebook.
Dorothea had said that it was almost impossible to go to a place one hadn’t been to before. Mike Fueyo had been able to pick up any red Cadillac in the city because he’d concentrated solely on the symbol of a red Cadillac. But he never knew which Cadillac he’d end up at.
Malone closed his eyes and tried to remember the hotel room. He half-wished he had a photograph of it, but Dorothea had told him that photos wouldn’t work. They were too complete; they required no effort of the mind. Only a symbol would do.
Of course, the job could be done without a symbol by somebody who’d had plenty of practice. But Malone[Pg 124] had made exactly one jump. Could he do it the second time with nothing to work with except his own recollection and visualization of the room?
He didn’t know, but he was certainly going to try. He had to.
Something was wrong; something had happened to Dorothea.
He tried to imagine what it could be, and then realized that such thoughts were only delaying him by distracting his mind from its main job.
He kept his eyes tightly closed and tried to form the picture in his mind. The couch—there. The dresser—over there. The easy-chair, the rug, the walls, the table—wait a minute: he was losing the couch. There. Now. The table, the desk—all there. In color. And in detail.
Slowly they came, and he held them in place, visualizing his hotel room just as he had visualized his office minutes before. He concentrated. Harder. Harder. Harder. HAR—
“Sir Kenneth!” a voice said. “Will you please stop standing there with your eyes closed and help me with this poor child? She’s fainted.”
Malone’s eyes popped open, but for a minute he wasn’t entirely sure he’d opened them. His visualization blended almost perfectly with the reality of the room around him. There was only one jarring difference.
He had certainly never visualized the richly-dressed figure of Queen Elizabeth I standing in the center of the room.
“Now, now,” she said. “Thinking like that can only lead to confusion. Come over here and help me.”
Dorothea was on the couch. Between them, they managed to wake her gently, and she sat up and stared around at them and the room. “I’m sorry,” she said dazedly. “It’s just that I didn’t expect you to turn into a little old lady in Elizabethan costume. Just a bit disconcerting.” She blinked. “By the way, who is she?”
“This,” Malone said with a sense of some foreboding, “is Queen Elizabeth I.”
“She’s dead,” Dorothea said decisively.
“Not really, my dear,” the Queen said. “Actually, you see … well, it’s too long to explain now.” She gave everybody a bland smile.
“She’s nuts, then,” Dorothea said. “She is nuts, isn’t she? Because if she isn’t, I am.”
“You’re not crazy,” Malone told her diplomatically. “But she—” He stopped. How could he explain everything, in front of the Queen herself?
“Don’t worry about it,” Her Majesty said. “Dorothea is a little confused—but it hardly matters. Perhaps there are other things to do.”
“Sure,” Malone said uncertainly. “By the way, how did you get here?”
“Now, why do you ask that?” the Queen said. “You’ve already figured it all out, Sir Kenneth.”
“I don’t get it,” Dorothea put in.
“Simple,” Malone said. “She’s telepathic. She’s been listening in on our sessions for the past four days—she must have been. So now she can teleport, too.”
Dorothea looked at the little old lady in awe. “But how could you come to a place you’d never been to before?”
“I got all the information I needed, my dear, out of Sir Kenneth’s mind.”
“Sir Kenneth?” Dorothea said. “Sir … Ken? His mind?”
“Never mind it,” Malone said. “What do I do now?”
Her Majesty said: “Don’t worry about anything. And use your own psionic talents. You can catch those dear boys now, you know. You’re better than they are.”
“Me?” Malone said. “But they’ve had—”
“Practice, of course,” the Queen said. “But you have a talent they don’t.”
“I do?”
“Well,” the Queen said, “you’ve been calling it ‘luck’ for years. You’re much too modest, Sir Kenneth. If you’ll think back, you’ll remember that every time you had a bit of your so-called luck, it was because you were at the right place at the right time. There’s no other way to explain the fact that you wandered at random through Greenwich Village—of all places!—and just happened to end up at the very same red Cadillac that young Mike was going to come to—before he got there!”
Malone felt the back of his head. “That,” he said, “was luck?”
“You got the notebook, didn’t you?” the Queen said. “But of course it wasn’t luck. It’s prescience—the ability to predict the future. You’ve had it all along, but you haven’t been consciously using it. The only way you’ll ever catch those boys is to know where they’re going to be before they get there.”
Malone sat down heavily on the couch next to Dorothea. His mind was whirling with a fine, dizzy rapidity. In a few seconds he was going to try and grab the brass ring.
“Oh, I’ll help you,” the Queen added. “Don’t worry about that. I think I can pick up Mike’s mind, now that I’m closer to him. And if we can figure out what their plans are, and where they’re going to be, we can nab them all, Sir Kenneth. Won’t that be nice?”
“Ducky,” Malone said. “Simply ducky. All I have to do is predict the future while you read minds and we both teleport. And Dorothea can sit around sticking pins in dolls, I guess. Or—”
“Well, now,” the Queen said, “I don’t know. Perhaps she just doesn’t have that talent. Besides, why would we want to do anything like that? It seems to me—”
“Never mind,” Malone said hopelessly. “If we’re going to do anything, let’s get started.”
Twelve hours later, Kenneth J. Malone was sitting quietly in a small room at the rear of a sporting-goods store on upper Madison Avenue, trying to remain calm and hoping that the finest, most beautiful and complete hunch—only now it wasn’t a “hunch” any more, he reminded himself; now it was prescience—was going to pay off. With him were Boyd and two agents from the Sixty-ninth Street office. They were sitting quietly, too, but there was a sense of enormous excitement in the air. Malone wanted to get up and walk around, but he didn’t dare. He clamped his hands in his lap and sat tight.
They waited in silence, not daring to talk. There wasn’t a sound in the room. Malone felt like screaming, but he managed to control himself with an effort.
There was no reason why the plan shouldn’t work, Malone told himself. According to all the theory he knew, it was fool proof. Her Majesty had no doubts about it, either. She assured him that he had prescience, and several other powers as well. Unfortunately, Malone wasn’t quite as sure as she was.
Even if the theory seemed to back her up, he thought, there was still a chance that she was wrong, and the theory was wrong, and everything was wrong. His hunch—prescience, if you wanted to call it that, he amended—said definitely that this would be the place the Spooks would hit tonight. Her Majesty was quite sure of it. And Malone couldn’t think of a single really good reason why either of them might be wrong. But maybe he’d got the address mixed up. Maybe the Spooks were somewhere else right now, robbing what they pleased, safe from capture—
It doesn’t do much good to know where a teleporter is, Malone thought. But it’s extremely handy to know where he’s going to be. And if you also know what he plans to do when he gets where he’s going, you’ve got an absolute lead-pipe cinch to work with.
The Queen and Malone had provided that lead-pipe cinch. They were sure that Mike planned to raid the sporting-goods store with the rest of the Spooks that night.
But, of course, they might all just be riding for some kind of horrible, unforeseen fall—
The main part of the sporting-goods store was fairly well lit, even at night, though it was by no means brightly illuminated. There were show-window lights on, and the street lamp from outside cast a nice glow. Malone was grateful for that. But the back room was dark, and the four men there were well-concealed. A curtain closed the room off, and Malone watched the front of the store through a narrow opening in it. He stared until his eyes ached, afraid to blink in case he missed the appearance of the Spooks. Everything had to go off just right, precisely on schedule.
And it was going to happen any minute, he told himself nervously. In just a few minutes, everything would be over.
Malone held his breath.
Then he saw the figure walk slow[Pg 127]ly by the glass front of the shop, looking in with over-elaborate casualness. He was casing the joint, making sure there was no one left in it.
Mike Fueyo.
Malone tried to breathe, and couldn’t.
Seconds ticked by.
And then—almost magically—they appeared. Eight of them, almost simultaneously, in the center of the room.
Mike Fueyo spoke in a low, controlled voice. “O.K., now,” he said. “Let’s move fast. We haven’t got much time. We—”
And that was all he said.
Malone concentrated on just one thing: holding an image of the room, with the eight Spooks in it.
There was a long second of silence.
Malone felt a bead of sweat trickle down his cheek. He held the image.
“What’s wrong?” the tallest boy said suddenly—Ramon Otravez, Malone remembered. “What’s wrong, Mike?”
Mike let out his breath in a ragged sigh. “I … don’t know,” he said slowly. “I can’t move—”
“It’s a trap!” another boy shouted.
Malone bore down. He could feel power draining out of him, but he held on, willing the boys to remain in the room, blanking out their own teleportative abilities with his stronger ones.
The eight boys stood, frozen, in the center of the lit room.
Malone let another second go by, and then he stepped out from behind the curtains.
“Hello, boys,” he said casually.
Mike stared at him. “It’s Malone,” he said.
“That’s right,” Malone said. “Hello, Mike. I’ve been waiting for you.”
Mike gulped. “You found us,” he said. “Somebody talked.”
Malone shook his head. “Nobody talked,” he said. Concentration was getting easier; the longer the situation remained the same, the less power it took to keep it that way. He wished he had brought a cigar, and compromised by fishing out a cigarette and lighting it.
Mike said: “But—” and was silent.
“I knew where you were going to be,” Malone said. “You see, I’ve got a few—powers of my own, Mike.”
Ramon Otravez said: “He’s kidding. It’s some kind of a trick.”
“Shut up,” Mike told him.
“It’s no trick,” Malone said. “I’ve been waiting for you for quite a while, boys.” He paused. “And you can’t move, can you? I’ve taken care of that.”
“Some kind of gas,” Mike said instantly.
“Gas?” Malone said. “Nope.” He shook his head.
“Electricity,” Mike said. It sounded desperate. “Some gimmick you’ve got set up back there behind the curtain, to—”
“No gimmick,” Malone said. “It’s just that I know a couple of tricks,[Pg 128] too—and I’m a little better at them than you are.” The next minute was going to be difficult, he knew, but it had to be done. He “froze” the picture of the room in his mind and, at the same time, pictured himself at the other side of the room. He made the effort, and at first nothing happened. Then—
“You can do the Vanish,” Mike said, very slowly and softly.
“Oh, I can do more than that,” Malone said cheerfully from the other side of the room. “I can do the Vanish, and I can also keep you from doing it. Right?”
It hung in the balance for a second, but Malone was barely worried about the final outcome. He’d beaten the boys, not with scientific gadgetry or trickery, but at their own game. He’d done it simply, easily and completely. And for boys who were sure they were something very special, boys who’d never been beaten on their own grounds before, the shock was considerable.
Malone knew, even before Mike said: “I guess so,” in a defeated voice, that he had won.
“Now,” he said briskly, “you boys are going to come down to the FBI offices with me. And you’re not going to try any tricks—because you can’t get away with a thing, and you know you can’t. I’ve just proven that to you.”
“I guess you have,” Mike said.
Malone beckoned the three other men out of the back room and then, under his watchful guidance, the procession started for the street.
XVI
“The only thing we had to worry about,” Malone said, pouring some more champagne into the hollow-stemmed glasses, “was whether the theory would actually prove out in practice. From all we knew, it seemed logical that I could concentrate on the room with the boys in it, and by that concentration prevent them from teleporting out—but there’s a lot we don’t know, too. And it didn’t damage the kids any.”
Dorothea relaxed in her chair and looked around at the hotel room walls with contentment. “Mike seemed pretty normal—except that he had that awful trapped feeling.”
Malone handed her one of the filled glasses with an air. He was beginning slowly to feel less like the nervous, uncertain Kenneth J. Malone and more and more like good old Sir Kenneth Malone. “I can see why he felt trapped,” he said. “If a guy’s been unhampered by four walls all the time, even for only a year or so, he’s certainly going to feel penned in when he’s stopped from going through them. Especially when what stops him is just what he has—only more of the same. It might be a little ego-crushing, and just a trifle claustrophobic.”
“The main thing is,” Dorothea said, “that everybody’s so happy. Commissioner Fernack, even—with Mr. Burris promising to give him a medal.”
“And Lynch,” Malone said reflectively. “He’ll get a promotion out of[Pg 129] this for sure. And good old Kettleman.”
“Kettleman,” Dorothea said. “Oh, sure. He’s some kind of social worker, isn’t he? Only we never knew what kind.”
“And now he’s getting a scroll from the FBI,” Malone said. “A citation for coming up with the essential clue in this case. Even though he didn’t know it was the essential clue. You know,” he added reflectively, “one thing puzzles me about that man.”
“Yes?”
“Well,” Malone said, “he worked in your neighborhood. You knew him.”
“Of course I did,” Dorothea said. “We all knew Kettleman.”
“He said he had a lot of success as a social worker,” Malone said. “Now, I’ve met him. And talked with him. And I just can’t picture—”
“Oh,” Dorothea said. “We keep him around—kept him around, I mean—as a sort of joke. A pet, or a mascot. Of course, he never did catch on. I don’t suppose he has yet.”
Malone laughed. “Nope,” he said. “He hasn’t.”
“Mike,” Dorothea said.
“Mike what?”
“Mike,” she repeated. “He’s probably the happiest of all. After Mom and I talked to him for a while, anyhow, and he began to … to get used to things. Now he’s excited about being an FBI man.” She looked worriedly at Malone for a second. “You weren’t kidding about that, were you?” she asked.
She looked very pretty when she was worried, Malone decided. He leaned over and kissed her with great care. After a while he said: “You were saying?”
“Was I?” Dorothea said. “Oh, yes. I was. About Mike being an FBI man.”
“Oh,” Malone said. “Well, normally you’ve got to be a lawyer or an accountant, but there are a few special cases. And maybe Mike would fit in to the special-case bracket. If he doesn’t—well, he’ll be doing some kind of official work for the Government.”
“What about Her Majesty, or whatever she is?” Dorothea asked. “Is she—convinced that teleportation’s no good, the way Mike is?”
Malone looked unhappy. “I wish you hadn’t mentioned it,” he said.
“Then what will you do?” Dorothea said.
“Burris has it all down pat,” Malone said bitterly. “Since I’m the only one who can predict where she’s going to be, I’m going to be her permanent bodyguard from now on. She’s promised me that she won’t go teleporting all over the place—but we won’t be able to keep her locked up all the time, either. So: whither she goes, I go—first.”
“Well,” Dorothea said, “don’t feel bad. After all, you did what you set out to do.”
“I suppose so,” Malone said.
“Sure you did,” Dorothea said.[Pg 130] “You got the boys. And they won’t feel so bad after they get used to it.”
“I suppose not,” Malone said. “We had to prove one thing to them, anyway. We can stop them at any time. You see, they’ve got to think about teleporting, and as soon as they do that one of our telepaths—like Her Majesty or me, I guess—will know what they’re thinking. And we can ‘freeze’ them. I mean, I can.”
“It sounds all right,” Dorothea said.
“Sure,” Malone said. “After all, we did them quite a favor—getting them out of all the trouble they’d gotten themselves into.”
“That reminds me, Ken,” Dorothea said. “All the things that were stolen. The liquor and all of that. Money. What’s going to happen to that?”
“Well,” Malone said, “everything that can be returned—and that includes most of the liquor, because they hadn’t had a chance to get rid of it to the bootleggers around this area—will be returned. What can’t be returned—money, stuff they’ve used, broken or sold—well, I don’t exactly know about that. It might take a special act of Congress,” he said brightly.
“All for the boys?” Dorothea said.
“Well, they’ll be at Yucca Flats,” Malone said, “and they’ll be pretty useful. And, as I said before we started all this, if they try to run away from Yucca Flats we’ll just have to keep them ‘frozen’ all the time. I mean, I will. Little as we want to. They can be of some use that way, too. The Government isn’t doing all this for nothing.”
“But keeping them ‘frozen’—”
“I said we didn’t want to do it. And I don’t think we’ll have to. They’ll be well taken care of, don’t worry. Some of the best psychiatrists and doctors are out there. And Mike and the others—if they can show they’re trustworthy—can come home every weekend, or even every night if they can teleport that far.” Malone paused. “But it isn’t charity,” he added. “We need people with specialized psionic abilities—and, for a variety of reasons, they’re pretty hard to find.”
“You know,” Dorothea said, “you’re pretty wonderful, Mr. Malone.”
Malone didn’t answer her. He just kissed her again.
Dorothea pushed him gently away. “I’m envious,” she announced. “Everybody gets a reward but me. Do I get left out just because I swiped your notebook?”
Malone kissed her again. “What kind of a reward do you want?”
She sighed. “Oh, well,” she said, “I suppose this is good enough.”
“Good enough?” Malone said. “Just good enough?”
His lips met hers for the fifth time. She reached one hand gently out to the light switch and pushed it.
The lights went out.
THE END
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