is a major crime.”
“A circulating company psychologist would be legal,” suggested the lean blond man whose name was Stout.
“We have over seventy-five of those on the company payrolls already and I fail to see what use—”
“One of the special high priced boys who iron out kinks in groups by joining them and working with them for a while, like that Conference Manager we had with us last year. Every member of the group that hires one has to sign an application for treatment, and a legal release. They are very quiet and don’t broadcast what they do or who they talked with, but they have a good record of results. The groups who hire them report better work and easier work. We could use one as a trouble shooter.”
“Are they a special organization?” someone asked. “I think I’ve heard of them.”
“Yes, some sort of a union. I can’t remember the name.”
“What would you expect them to do for us?” asked Irving.
“I hear—” Stout said vaguely, his eyes wandering from face to face, “that they have a special tough technique for hard case trouble makers.” For those who knew him, the vague look was a veil over some thought which pleased him. Presumably he was thinking the thing which had occurred to them all.
The culprit might be a member of the Board. There was a sudden cheerful interest visible among them as they wondered who was quarry for the “tough treatment.”
“I’ve heard of that,” said Wan Lun, remembering. “It has been said that they not only do not inform others of the fact of treatment but frequently do not inform the man under treatment but seem to be only a new friend until —poof.” He smiled. “I think the guild name is Manoba. The Manoba Group.”
Stout said, “They’ll probably charge enough for the skill.”
Wan said, smiling, “I also heard some idle rumor that in a few such cases discord within a group was alleviated by sudden suicide. Presumably a psychologist can grow impatient and push a certain button in the mind —”
“Sounds like a good idea,” Beldman said. “Do you think if we offered this Manoba the right kind of money —”
“You don’t mean that, Mister Beldman,” cut in the chairman reprovingly. “You’re joking again.”
“We’re all great jokers,” said Beldman, and laughed.
Everyone laughed.
“I move we vote a sum for the hiring of a Manoba psychologist.”
“Seconded, how about five hundred thousand?”
“I don’t know their fees,” the chairman objected cautiously.
“You can turn back any surplus. We stand to lose more than that by several orders of magnitude. Spend it at your discretion.”
“Make it seven hundred thousand. Give him a little more room.”
“I so move.”
“Seconded.”
“Carry it to a vote.”
They slipped their hands under the table edge before their respective seats, and each man ran his fingers over two buttons concealed there, before him, chose between the yes and the no button and pushed one, the choice of his fingers unseen by the others.
Two numbers lit up on the small divided panel before the chairman. He looked at them with his mild face expressionless. “Rejected by one vote.”
Unanimity was the law on Board decisions, which by a natural law was probably the reason why no love was lost among them, but this time irritation was curbed by interest. They sat watching each other’s expressions with glances which seemed casual. Whose was the one vote?
“I move that the vote be repeated and made open,” someone said.
“Seconded.”
“All in favor of the appropriation for the psychologist raise your left hand,” the chairman requested.
They complied and looked at each other. All hands were up.
“Carried on the second vote,” the chairman said without apparent interest. “For my own curiosity will the gentleman who voted nay on the secret vote the first time speak up and explain his objections, and why he changed his mind on the open vote?”
There was silence a moment—Neiswanger looking at his neat fingernails, Bryce Carter smoking, and smiling slightly as he always smiled, Stout leaning back casually scanning his eyes from face to face. Beldman lit a cigar and released a cloud of blue smoke with a contented sigh. No one spoke.
“Gentlemen,” said the chairman. “It is entirely likely that the culprit is among us.”
“Never mind the melodrama, John.” Irving tapped the table impatiently. “We’ve dealt with that. Let’s get on to the next business.”
II
In the exit lounge at floor five Bryce Carter stopped a moment and glanced at himself in the mirror. Thick neck, thick body—a physique so evenly and heavily muscled that it looked fat until he moved. Atop the thick body a lean face that he didn’t like stared back at him. It was darkly tanned, with underlying freckles that were almost black. Years had passed since he had worked in space, but the space-tan remained indelible. It was not a bland or pretty face.
At the dinner, deep in discussion with Mr. Wan, he had been surprised to find himself smiling at intervals, irrepressibly. He hoped it had looked cordial, and not too much like a cat enjoying the company of mice.
They had no defense against him. The drugs organization could never be traced to him. The connection was too well concealed. Even the organization knew nothing about him.
The only evidence which could make the connection was in his own mind. The only witness against him was himself. He cast his mind back over the meeting and dinner but there had been no slips past the first shock of the chairman’s announcement, and that had been unobserved by anyone. The psychologist they had hired might perhaps get a betraying flicker of expression from him in an interview, many well-trained observers of human reactions could read expressions that keenly, but the interviewing of all the Board by the psychologist was not likely. The Directors of the Board were even now climbing into trains and strato planes to scatter back to the far points of the earth. It would take many days for an investigating psychologist to follow to interview each one. He and Irving would be last on the list, for he went to Moonbase City, and Irving to Luna City.
He had weeks.
He smiled, fastening bands in his cuffs that folded them tightly on his wrists, zipping up his suitcoat and slipping on gloves. He looked at himself again. Where he had been wearing a conservative dark silk business suit with a short cape, he now seemed to be wearing a tailored ski-suit with an odd cowl, or a pressure suit without boots or helmet, which was what it was. Carrying the zipper up further would have turned the cape to an airtight helmet bubble.
Employes and executives passing in and out of the UT building gave the clothes an approving and interested glance as they passed. The justification by utility was obvious. It had cost money to have a pressure suit designed light and flexible enough for comfortable wear, but long ago he had grown irked by the repetitious business of climbing in and out of clothes every time one stepped through a space lock, while overcapes and hoods were needed stepping outside of any temperate zone Earth building in winter.
A pressure suit was completely independent of weather and regulated its own internal heat. Since the suit had been designed the manufacturer had begun to receive an increasing number of orders for duplicates, and was now being put into mass production. Probably in these five minutes he had just made many more sales for the manufacturer.
He was setting a style, he thought in pleased surprise, stepping out of the building. The salt wind hit him with a blast of cold, and the automatic thermostatic wiring in the suit countered with a wave of warmth as he
