net of living energies. He pressed, found points of weakness, poured in more power A circular room leaped into eerie visibility. Ranged around it were lights that winked and glowed. From ranked thousands of cells, white wormforms poked blunt, eyeless heads…
HE IS HERE! The Egon shrieked the warning, and hurled a bolt of pure mind-force along the channel of contact and met a counter-bolt of energy that seared through him, blackened and charred the intricate organic circuitry of his cerebrum, left a smoking pocket in the rank of cells. For a moment, Mallory rested, sensing the shock and bewilderment sweeping through the leaderless Ree mind-segments. He felt the automatic death-urge that gripped them as the realization reached them that the guiding over-power of the Egon was gone. As he watched, a unit crumpled inward and expired. And another 'Stop!' Mallory commanded. 'I assume control of the mind-complex! Let the segments link in with me!'
Obediently, the will-less fragments of the Ree mind obeyed.
'Change course,' Mallory ordered. He gave the necessary instructions, then withdrew along the channel of contact.
'So… the great Mallory broke.' Koslo rocked on his heels before the captive body of his enemy. He laughed. 'You were slow to start, but once begun you sang like a turtledove. I'll give you my orders now, and by dawn your futile revolt will be a heap of charred corpses stacked in the plaza as an example to others!' He raised the gun.
'I'm not through yet,' Mallory said. 'The plot runs deeper than you think, Koslo.'
The dictator ran a hand over his gray face. His eyes showed the terrible strain of the last hours.
'Talk, then,' he growled. 'Talk fast!'
As he spoke on, Mallory again shifted his primary awareness, settled into resonance with the subjugated Ree intelligence. Through the ship's sensors, he saw the white planet swelling ahead. He slowed the vessel, brought it in on a long parabolic course which skimmed the stratosphere. Seventy miles above the Atlantic, he entered a high haze layer, slowed again as he sensed the heating of the hull.
Below the clouds, he sent the ship hurtling across the coast. He dropped to treetop level, scanned the scene through sensitive hull-plates For a long moment he studied the landscape below. Then suddenly he understood…
'Why do you smile, Mallory?' Koslo's voice was harsh; the gun pointed at the other's head. 'Tell me the joke that makes a man laugh in the condemned seat reserved for traitors.'
'You'll know in just a moment…' He broke off as a crashing sound came from beyond the room. The floor shook and trembled, rocking Koslo on his feet. A dull boom echoed. The door burst wide.
'Excellency! The capital is under attack!' The man fell forward, exposing a great wound on his back. Koslo whirled on Mallory With a thunderous crash, one side of the room bulged and fell inward. Through the broached wall, a glittering torpedo-shape appeared, a polished intricacy of burnished metal floating lightly on pencils of blue- white light. The gun in the hand of the dictator came up, crashed deafeningly in the enclosed space. From the prow of the invader, pink light winked. Koslo spun, fell heavily on his face.
The twenty-eight-inch Ree dreadnought came to rest before Mallory. A beam speared out, burned through the chair control panel. The shackles fell away.
Three months had passed since the referendum which had swept John Mallory into office as Premier of the First Planetary Republic. He stood in a room of his spacious apartment in the Executive Palace, frowning at the slender black-haired woman as she spoke earnestly to him.
'John-I'm afraid of that-that infernal machine, eternally hovering, waiting for your orders.'
'But why, Monica? That infernal machine, as you call it, was the thing that made a free election possible-and even now it's all that holds Koslo's old organization in check.'
'John-' Her hand gripped his arm. 'With that-thing-always at your beck and call, you can control anyone, anything on Earth! No opposition can stand before you!'
She looked directly at him. 'It isn't right for anyone to have such power, John. Not even you. No human being should be put to such a test!'
His face tightened. 'Have I misused it?'
'Not yet. That's why…'
'You imply that I will?'
'You're a man, with the failings of a man.'
'I propose only what's good for the people of Earth,' he said sharply. 'Would you have me voluntarily throw away the one weapon that can protect our hard-won freedom?'
'But, John-who are you to be the sole arbiter of what's good for the people of Earth?'
'I'm Chairman of the Republic-'
'You're still human. Stop-while you're still human!'
He studied her face. 'You resent my success, don't you? What would you have me do? Resign?'
'I want you to send the machine away-back to wherever it came from.'
He laughed shortly. 'Are you out of your mind? I haven't begun to extract the technological secrets the Ree ship represents.'
'We're not ready for those secrets, John. The race isn't ready. It's already changed you. In the end it can only destroy you as a man.'
'Nonsense. I control it utterly. It's like an extension of my own mind-'
'John-please. If not for my sake or your own, for Dian's.'
'What's the child got to do with this?'
'She's your daughter. She hardly sees you once a week.'
'That's the price she pays for being the heir to the greatest man-I mean-damn it, Monica, my responsibilities don't permit me to indulge in all the suburban customs.'
'John-' Her voice was a whisper, painful in its intensity. 'Send it away.'
'No. I won't send it away.'
Her face was pale. 'Very well, John. As you wish.'
'Yes. As I wish.'
After she left the room, Mallory stood for a long time staring out through the high window at the tiny craft, hovering in the blue air fifty feet away, silent, ready.
Then:
The Star-Sent Knaves
1
Clyde W. Snithian was a bald eagle of a man, dark-eyed, pot-bellied, with the large, expressive hands of a rug merchant. Round-shouldered in a loose cloak, he blinked small reddish eyes at Dan Slane's travel-stained six-foot-one.
'Kelly here tells me you've been demanding to see me.' He nodded toward the florid man at his side. He had a high, thin voice, like something that needed oiling. 'Something about important information regarding my paintings.'
'That's right, Mr. Snithian,' Dan said. 'I believe I can be of great help to you.'
'Help how? If you've got ideas of bilking me…' The red eyes bored into Dan like hot pokers.
'Nothing like that, sir. Now, I know you have quite a system of guards here-the papers are full of it-'
'Damned busybodies! Sensation-mongers! If it wasn't for the press, I'd have no concern for my paintings today!'
'Yes, sir. But my point is, the one really important spot has been left unguarded.'
'Now, wait a minute-' Kelly started.
'What's that?' Snithian cut in.
'You have a hundred and fifty men guarding the house and grounds day and night-'
'Two hundred and twenty-five,' Kelly snapped.
'-but no one at all in the vault with the paintings,' Slane finished.
'Of course not,' Snithian shrilled. 'Why should I post a man in the vault? It's under constant surveillance from the corridor outside.'
'The Harriman paintings were removed from a locked vault,' Dan said. 'There was a special seal on the door. It wasn't broken.'
'By the saints, he's right,' Kelly exclaimed. 'Maybe we ought to have a man in that vault.'
'Another idiotic scheme to waste my money,' Snithian snapped. 'I've made you responsible for security here, Kelly! Let's have no more nonsense. And throw this nincompoop out!' Snithian turned and stalked away, his cloak flapping at his knees.
'I'll work cheap,' Dan called after the tycoon as Kelly took his arm. 'I'm an art lover.'
'Never mind that,' Kelly said, escorting Dan along the corridor. He turned in at an office and closed the door.
'Now, as the old buzzard said, I'm responsible for security here. If those pictures go, my job goes with them. Your vault idea's not bad. Just
'A hundred dollars a week,' Dan said promptly. 'Plus expenses,' he added.
