THREE BLIND MICE
UNDER the helicopter, disturbed by the hurricane downblast, the lake was lashed to white foam. The curving dark shape of a bass leaped and vanished. A sailboat tacked and made toward the farther shore. In Barton's mind there flamed for an instant a ravening madness of hunger and then an intensity or pure ecstasy, as his thought probed down into the depths of the waters and made contact with some form of life in which there was instinct, but no reason-only the raging avidity of life-lust that, after fifteen years, was so familiar to him now. There had been no need for that purely automatic mental
probing. In these calm American waters one found no sharks, no crocodiles, no poisonous sea snakes. It was habit alone, the trained alertness that had helped to make David Barton expert in his field, one of the few vocations available to the minority of telepathic Baldies. And after six months in Africa, what he wanted most of all was not-contact-but something to calm his psychic tension. In the jungle a Baldy can find a communion with nature that out-Thoreau's Thoreau, but at a cost. Beneath that pagan spirit of the primeval beats the urgent pulse of strong instinct: self-preservation almost without reason. Only in the paintings of Rousseau that had survived the Blowup had Barton felt the same vivid, almost insane passion for life.
Where men are weary of green wine, And sick of crimson seas-
Well, he was back now, not far from his grandfather's birthplace near Chicago, and he could rest for a while.
His hands moved over the complicated controls, sending the copter smoothly up, as though by that action he could escape what was inescapable. You lived, for the most part, on the earth, and if you happened to be a telepath, well, there were of course advantages as well as disadvantages. Nobody lynched Baldies any more, of course. Fairly secure, almost accepted, in their cautious self-effacement-italicized by the wigs they invariably wore-they could find jobs and a pattern for living. Specialized jobs, naturally, which must never involve too much power or profit. Jobs in which you turned your specialized talent to the betterment of the social unit. Barton was a naturalist, a collector of big and little game. And that had been his salvation.
Years ago, he remembered, there had been a conference, his parents, and a few other Baldies, drawn together by the deep, sympathetic friendliness and understanding that always had welded telepaths. He could still vividly recall the troubled patterns of thought that had ebbed and flowed in the room, more clearly than the way their faces had looked. Danger, and a shadow, and a desire to help.
... Outlet for his energy ... no scholar ... misfit unless-
-find the right job-
He could not remember the words, only the absolute meanings, with their significant colorations and shadings of implication, those and the-the name-symbol by which the others
thought of him. To them he was not Dave Barton. Their thought-references to him personally, while different to each mind, had always the kernel of individual meaning that belonged to him alone, of all the people in the world. The name that a candle flame might have, secret and unuttered. His alone.
And because of this, and because each Baldy must survive and adjust, for the ultimate good of the racial mutation, they had found the answer. It was all right for non-Baldies to be reasonably swashbuckling; everyone wore daggers and duelled nowadays. But the telepaths themselves lived on borrowed time. They existed only because of the good will they had created. That good will had to be maintained, and it could not be done by arousing antagonism. No one could be jealous of a mild-mannered, studious semantic expert, but a d'Artagnan could be envied-and would be. An outlet, then, for the boy's curiously mixed inheritance, his blood from pioneering, trail-blazing ancestors mixed with the cautious Baldy strain.
So they had found the answer, and Barton did his pioneering in the jungles, matching his keen mind against the brute savagery of tiger and python. Had that solution not been reached, Barton might not have been alive now. For the non-Baldies were still wary, still intolerant.
Yet he was no extrovert; he could not be. Inevitably he grew tired of the ceaseless symphony of thought that rolled like a living tide even in the deserts and the seas. Erecting a mental barrier wasn't enough; behind that protective wall beat the torrents of thought, and they were sensed. Only in the upper air was there escape for a while.
The plane lifted, rocking a little in the wind. Beneath Barton the lake was dime-sized and dime-colored. Around its borders grew, more thickly than it had fifty years before, the Limberlost forests, a swampy wilderness where the small roving bands of malcontents migrated constantly, unable to adjust to communal life in the hundreds of thousands of villages that dotted America, and afraid to unite. They were antisocial, and probably would simply die out eventually.
The lake became a pinpoint and vanished. A freighter copter, with its string of gliders, whipped westward below, laden perhaps with cod from the Great Banks towns, or with wine grapes from the New England vineyards. Names had not changed much as the country changed. The heritage of lan-
guage was too strong for that. But there were no towns named New York, or Chicago, or San Francisco; there was a psychological taboo there, the familiar fugue that took the form of never naming one of the new, small, semi-specializing villages after the cancerous areas of desolation once called New Orleans or Denver. From American history, thence world history, the names came-Modoc and Lafltte, Lincoln, Roxy, Potomac, Mowhasset, American Gun, and Conestoga. Lafitte, on the Gulf of Mexico, shipped the delicate-fleshed porgie and pompano to Lincoln and Roxy, in the agricultural belt; American Gun turned out farm equipment, and Conestoga, from which Barton had just come, was in mining land. It also had a temperate-zone zoo, one of the many that Barton serviced from Puget to Florida End.
He closed his eyes. Baldies by necessity were socially conscious, and when the world lay spread out maplike below, it was difficult not to visualize it speckled with the heads of colored pins; very many black ones, and a very few white ones. Non-Baldies and Baldies. There was something to be said for intelligence, after all. In the jungle, a monkey with a red flannel coat would be torn to pieces by its undressed colleagues.
The blue, empty wastes of air were all about Barton now; the torrents of world-thought had lessened to a faint, nearly imperceptible beat. He closed the cabin, turned on air and heat controls, and let the copter rise. He lay back in the cushioned seat, a distant alertness ready to galvanize his hands into action if the copter should go into one of its unpredictable tantrums. Meanwhile he rested, alone, in a complete silence and vacancy.
His mind was washed clean. Pure calm, a sort of Nirvana, soothed him. Far below the turbulent world sent vibrations jangling through subetheric levels, but few radiations reached this height, and those did not disturb Barton. His eyes shut, utterly relaxed, he looked like someone who had, for a while, forgotten to live.
It was the panacea for abnormally sensitive minds. At first glance, few took Barton for a Baldy; he wore his brown wig close-cropped, and his years in the jungle had made him almost unhealthily thin. Baldies, naturally self-barred from competitive athletics except among themselves, were apt to grow soft, but Barton was not soft. Outguessing predators had kept him in good trim. Now he relaxed, high above the
earth, as hundreds of other Baldies were resting their taxed minds in the blue calm of the upper air.
Once he opened his eyes and looked up through the transparent ceiling panel. The sky was quite dark, and a few stars were visible. He lay there for a while, simply watching. Baldies, he thought, will be the first to develop interplanetary travel. Out there are clean new worlds, and a new race needs a new world.
But it could wait. It had taken a long time for Barton to realize that his race, not himself, was important. Not until that knowledge came to a Baldy was he really mature. Until then, he was always a possible potential danger. Now, though, Barton was oriented, and had found, like most Baldies, a compromise between self and race. And it involved, chiefly, development of the social instinct and diplomacy.
Several hours had gone past quickly. Barton found a packet of food concentrate in a compartment, grimaced at the brown capsules, and stuffed them back in their place. No. While he was back in America, he wanted the luxuries of civilization. In Africa he had eaten enough concentrate to blast his taste buds. That was because certain game was psychically repugnant to him, after contact with the animal minds. He was not a vegetarian; he could rationalize most of the feeling away, but-for example-he could certainly never eat monkey.
But he could eat catfish, and anticipated the crisp flakiness of white, firm flesh between his teeth. This 'was good cat country. There was a restaurant in downtown Conestoga that Barton knew, and he headed the helicopter toward the airfield nearest to it, circling the village itself to avoid raising dust storms by his low altitude.
He felt refreshed, ready to take his place in the world again. There were, as far as he knew, no Baldies living in Conestoga, and it was with surprise-pleasant surprise-that he felt a thought probe into his mind. It held question.
It was a woman's thought, and she did not know him. That he could tell by the superficialities of the identity-queries. It was like the outspread fingers of a hand reaching out gently in search of another hand that would interlock with its grip. But the searcher's cognizance of Barton as a personality was lacking. No, she did not know him. She knew of him, probably through-Denham? Courtney? He seemed
to recognize the personality-keys of Denham and Courtney sifted through her query.
He answered her question. Available. Here. A courteous, friendly greeting, implying-you are one of Us; a willing desire to help.
Her name, Sue Connaught, with its curious shadings of how Sue Connaught realized her own identity-an indescribable key thought that could never afterwards be mistaken. The mental essence of pure ego.
She was a biologist, she lived in Alamo, she was afraid-
Let me help.
f" (Vital urgency Must see you) -f  Danger, eyes watching secretly
[_ (Beasts around-Sue Connaught Danger-now?
The complicated thought meshed and interlocked as he increased his pace.
C ("I" of all the world knowing- Utterly alone) <  Most urgent secrecy
[^ (Beasts-"I" am in zoo, waiting
Hurrying to you; my mind is with yours; you are one of Us, therefore never alone. Faster than words, the thoughts raced. Oral or written sentences slow the transmission of mental concepts. Adjectives and adverbs convey shades of meaning. But between telepaths complete ideas move with light-speed. In prehuman times simple meanings were completely transmitted by grunts. As language developed, gradations were possible. With telepathy, a whole universe can be created and-conveyed.
Even so, common denominators are necessary. The girl was dodging some vital issues, afraid to visualize it.
What? Let me help!
C (Even here, danger of Them Wariness) J  Pretend utterly all is normal {__ (Use oral speech until~
Her mind closed. Puzzled, Barton automatically raised his own barrier. It is not, of course, ever possible to shut one's mind completely away from the persistent probing of an-
other telepath. At best one can only blur the thought wave by superimposing others upon it, or by submerging the salient ideas deep down in the formlessness of nonthought. But they are resilient things, thoughts. Not even the trained minds of Baldies can keep them submerged very long-the very fact of concentrating to keep them down maintains their wavering shapes cloudily in the background of the mind.
So a barrier can be raised, of willful obscurity or deliberate confusion-reciting the multiplication tables is one evasion-but not for very long or very efficiently. Only the instinctive politeness which a Baldy learns with his alphabet makes the raising of a barrier the equivalent of blanking. A barrier's efficiency is mostly in the mind of the other man, not one's own-if he be a proper telepath.
Barton, like most Baldies, was. He "looked" away immediately as Sue Connaught's thoughts veered from contact with him. But he was the more eager to meet her now and read in her face, if he could, what convention forbade him to read in her mind. The gates of the zoo lay open before him.
Barton stepped through them, noticing a small crowd, mostly out-villagers who had helicoptered over to see the new acquisitions he had brought.
But, despite barriers, he could, as always, sense a Baldy here, and he let his instinct guide him to where a girl, slim in slacks and white blouse, was standing by a railed inclos-ure, held there by some fascination. He sent his thought forward, and it was met by a sudden, desperate warning.
Barrier! Barrier!
He reacted instantly. He stepped up beside her, looking beyond the railing, into the enormous tank where a torpedo body moved lazily. He knew that Sue Connaught had looked into the shark's mind, and had seen something there that held a tremendous significance to her.
"So you don't like it," he said. There was no danger in speech; to a telepath, with barrier raised, it was more secret than thought.
"No,"  she  said.   "I   suppose  it  takes   conditioning."
"But you're a biologist."
"Rabbits and guinea pigs. Even those make me blush sometimes. But-carnivores."
"Tackle a weasel sometime," he suggested. "It's pure insanity. Come on." He led her out of the crowd, toward the terrace where canopied tables were scattered. "Have a cocktail?"
"Thanks." She glanced back at the shark's tank. Barton nodded; it could be bad, if one wasn't used to it. But he was used to it.
"Shall we go somewhere else?" he asked, pausing in the act of drawing out a chair for her. "A zoo can be pretty uncomfortable if you aren't-"
"No. It's safer here. We've got to talk, and we can do it pretty freely in a place like this. None of Us would come here for pleasure." With her mind she "glanced" around at the encircling madness of beast-thoughts, then blurred the surface of her mind again as a protection and smiled at Barton appealingly.
They had met, as all Baldies do, upon a footing of instant semi-intimacy. Nontelepaths may take weeks of friendship to establish a knowledge of one another's character; Baldies do it automatically at first contact, often before they meet at all. Often, indeed, the knowledge formed in first mental meeting is more accurate than later impressions colored by the appearance and physical mannerisms of the telepaths. As non-Baldies, these two would have been Miss Connaught and Mr. Barton for awhile. But as telepaths they had automatically, unconsciously summed one another up while Barton was still in the air; they knew they were mutually pleasant in a contact of minds. They thought of one another instantly as Sue and Dave. No non-Baldy, eavesdropping on their meeting, would have believed they were not old friends; it would have been artificial had the two behaved otherwise than this, once their minds had accepted each other.
Sue said aloud, "I'll have a Martini. Do you mind if I talk? It helps." And she glanced around, physically this time, at the cages. "I don't see how you stand it, even with your training. I should think you could drive a Baldie perfectly gibbering just by shutting him up in a zoo overnight."
Barton grinned, and automatically his mind began sorting out the vibrations from all around him: the casual trivialities from the monkeys, broken by a pattern of hysteria as a capuchin caught the scent of jaguar; the primal, implacable vibrations from the panthers and lions, with their undertone of sheer, proud confidence; the gentle, almost funny radiations from the seals. Not that they could be called reasoning thoughts; the brains were those of animals, but basically the same colloid organism existed under fur and scales as existed under the auburn wig of Sue Connaught.
After a while, over Martinis, she asked, "Have you ever fought a duel?"
Barton instinctively glanced around. He touched the small dagger at his belt. "I'm a Baldy, Sue."
"So you  haven't."
"Naturally not." He didn't trouble to explain; she knew the reason as well as he did. For Baldies could not risk capitalizing on their special ability except in very limited cases. A tele-path can always win a duel. If David hadn't killed Gpliath, eventually the Philistines would have mobbed the giant out of sheer jealousy. Had Goliath been smart, he would have walked with his knees bent.
Sue said, "That's all right. I've had to be very careful. This is so confidential I don't know who-" Her barrier was still up strongly.
"I've been in Africa for six months. Maybe I'm not up with current events." Both of them were feeling the inadequacy of words, and it made them impatient.
"Not current... future. Things are ... help from ... qualify-" She stopped and forced herself into the slower grammatical form of communication. "I've got to get help somewhere, and it's got to be one of Us. Not only that, but a very special kind of person. You qualify."
"How?"
"Because you're a naturalist," she said. "I've looked the field over, but you know what sort of work We usually get. Sedentary occupations. Semantics experts, medical and psychiatric internes, biologists like me, police assistants-that came closer, but I need a man who... who can get the jump on another Baldy."
Barton stared and frowned. "A duel?"
"I think so," she said. "I can't be sure yet. But it seems the only way. This must be completely secret, Dave, absolutely secret. If a word of it ever got out, it would be ... very bad for Us."
He knew what she meant, and pursed his lips in a soundless whistle. That shadow always hung over every Baldy.
"What is it?"
She didn't answer directly. "You're a naturalist. That's fine. What I need is a man who can meet a telepath on slightly more than equal terms. No non-Baldy would do, even if I could talk about this to a non-Baldy. What I've got to get is a man with a fast-moving mind who's also trained his body to respond faster than instantly."
"Uh-huh."
"There weren't many," she said. "Even when minds move at the same speed, there's always a fractional difference in muscular response. And we're not too well trained. Games of competitive skill-"
"I've thought of that," Barton said. "More than once, too. Any game based on war is unsuitable for Us."
"Any game in which you face your opponent. I like golf, but I can't play tennis."
"Well," Barton told her, "I don't box or wrestle. Or play chess, for that matter. But skip-handball--have you seen that?"
She shook her head.
"The backboard's full of convolutions; you never know which way the ball would bounce. And the board's in sections that keep sliding erratically. You can control the force, but not the direction. That's one way. It's something new, and naturally it isn't advertised, but a friend of mine's got one at his place. A man named Denham."
"He told me about you."
"I thought so."
"Uh-huh. For fifteen years you've been catching everything from tigers to king cobras. That takes good timing, the way you do it. Any man who can outguess a king cobra-"
"Watch your barrier," Barton said sharply. "I caught something then. Is it that bad?"
She drew a shaky breath. "My control's lousy. Let's get out of here."
Barton led her across the zoo's main area. As they passed the shark's tank he sent a quick glance down, and met the girl's eyes worriedly.
"Like that,  eh?"
She nodded. "Like that. But you can't put Them in cages."
Over catfish and Shasta white wine she told him-
You can't put Them in cages. Shrewd, dangerous, but very careful now. They were the middle group of the three telepathic assortments. The same mutation, but... but!
The hard radiations had been plain dynamite. When you implant a completely new function in the delicate human brain, you upset a beautiful and long-standing balance. So there had been three groups: one was a complete failure, thrust into the mental borderland of insanity, dementia prae-cox and paranoia. Another group, to which Sue Connaught and
Barton belonged-the vast majority-were able to adjust to a nontelepathic world. They wore wigs.
But the middle group was paranoid-and sane.
Among these telepaths were found the maladjusted egotists, the ones who for a long time had refused to wear wigs, and who had bragged of their superiority. They had the cunning and the utter self-justification of the true paranoid type, and were basically antisocial. But they were not mad.
And you can't put Them in cages. For they were telepaths, and how can you cage the mind?
They finished with Brazilian chocolate cake, demi-tasse and Mississippi liqueur, made by the monks of Swanee monastery. Barton touched his cigarette tip to the igniter paper on the pack. He inhaled smoke.
"It's not a big conspiracy, then."
"These things start small. A few men-but you see the danger."
Barton nodded. "I see it, O.K. It's plenty bad medicine. A few paranoid-type Baldies, working out a crazy sabotage scheme- Tell me -a little more first, though. For instance, why me? And why you?"
To a nontelepath the question might have been obscure. Sue raised her brows and said, "You, because you've got the reflexes I spoke of and because I had the luck to find you before I got desperate enough to look for a substitute. As for me"-she hesitated-"that's the oddest part. No one could have stumbled onto them except by accident. Because telepathy, of course, isn't tight-beam. It's a broadcast. Any receptive mind can pick it up. The minute enough people band together to make a city, that's noticeable. And the minute Baldies get together and form any sort of organization, that's noticeable too. Which is why paranoids never made much trouble, except individually. Banding together would have meant running up a flag-one that could be seen for miles."
"And so?"
"So they've got this special means of communication. It's secret, absolutely unbreakable code. Only it isn't merely code. Then we could detect and trace down, even if we couldn't break it. This is telepathic communication on an entirely new band, one we can't even touch. I don't know how they do it. It might be partly mechanical, or it might not. Children have a higher perceptive level, but we can catch their
thoughts. This is mental ultraviolet. Do you realize the implications?"
Smoke jetted from Barton's nostrils. "Yeah. It wrecks the balance of power-completely. Up to now, decentralization has kept peace. Nobody dared band together or get too big for their boots. They could be detected. But these bichos are wearing invisible cloaks." His hand clenched. "It could become world-wide! The one form of organization we can't fight!"
"It's got to be fought," she said. "It's got to be smashed. And fast, before anyone suspects. If non-Baldies ever find out, there'll be a wave of anti-Baldism that could wipe Us out. If that should happen, people wouldn't stop to sort out the social and the antisocial groups. They'd say, 'We've been nursing a viper, and it's got fangs. Kill 'em all."
Outside the window a man on horseback clattered past, hoofbeats making an urgent rhythm in Barton's brain.
"How many are there?"
"I told you it's just beginning. Only a few more. But it can spread. I suppose the immediate difficulty is in their training neophytes in their special trick telepathy. That's why I think it must be physically self-induced. Gadgets can be detected. And mobility would be necessary; they'd never know when they had to get in touch with each other. You can't pack around a big gadget."
"You could camouflage it," Barton said. "Or it might be pretty small."
"It might," she said, "but there's this little girl-Melissa Carr. She tapped their wave without a gadget. She must be some mutant variant."
"Melissa Carr?" echoed Barton. "Where does she come in?"
"Oh, I haven't told you. She's my contact. I've been in touch with her off and on for a week or so, but it was only yesterday that she let slip, very casually, what she'd learned on that special thought band."
"She isn't one of them, then?"
"I'm sure not. It's very odd. Even the way she reached me first-" Sue had been dressing for a party, and the tentative fingering question had crept into her mind. "It was like Cinderella, somehow. I could feel the pleasure she took in the dress I was wearing, a Mozambique model, and the Karel bag. She strung along with me mentally all evening. And after that-" After that communication had been established.
But it had been days before Melissa spoke of the telepathic signals she had inadvertently tuned in on.
"She guessed what they meant, but she didn't seem much impressed by the danger. I mean, it didn't strike her that something ought to be done. There's some mystery about Melissa; sometimes I've even thought she might have been a member of the group once, and pulled out. Sometimes she won't answer my signals at all. But now that she's told me about this-Faxe-I think I've convinced her of the danger. Sam Faxe. He's one of the paranoids, and from what I've learned, he's trying to sabotage some experiments in Galileo."
"Why?"
"That's what I don't know. Apparently the paranoids are so familiar with their basic plan that they don't need even to think about it. Their thoughts deal with immediate action. And always on that special wave length we can't catch. Only Melissa, as far as I know, can get it, and she must have been born receptive."
"Some are," Barton agreed. "Mutants certainly vary a lot, far more than nonmutants. As for this long-term scheme, you know the paranoid type. They figure Baldies were made to rule the world. They look on ordinary humans as a lower species. And if they're trying to sabotage experiments, that's significant. I wonder what sort of experiment this Galileo business is?"
"I don't know," Sue said. "Melissa's very shaky on technology."
"I can find out through Denham. He lives in Galileo."
"That's where I met him. But maybe you can get more out of Melissa than I can. It isn't wise to"-she hesitated, substituting a familiar word for the unimaginable mental terms-"telepath her too much, but it's necessary, of course. If you feel any probing, sheer off right away."
"Has there been any?"
"No. Not yet. But we must keep in the dark."
Sue hadn't asked Barton if- he would help; she knew that he would. Preservation of the race had been implanted in every Baldy, though in the paranoid type it had been warped and distorted. Now Sue's mind reached out, searching, questioning, seeking the lock to fit her key. And almost immediately the answer came. It was like one hand drawing two others together, Sue mentally introducing Melissa Carr to Barton. He felt something fumble, shy and almost gauche, and then
they-locked. He sent out friendliness and warm assurance. Instantly he was conscious of a strong femininity that amounted almost to sexual attraction. Half clear, half clouded, he sensed what Melissa Carr meant to herself: the intangible consciousness of living ego, different in each individual, and the softness of curling hair-hair? Wig-and the softness of a mouth against fingers drawn gently across them. A demure withdrawal that had in it shades of color and scent, and then something that was the equivalent of a curtsey, purely mental, and with an oddly old-fashioned flavor. After that, he knew he could never mistake Melissa Carr's mind for that of another Baldy.
This is Dave Barton, Melissa.
Recognition and. pleasure-shading. A question: trust? So much danger-
Utter trust, yes-strong affirmative.
f Many-(different)-messages coming strongly
Shadow of menace of Sam Faxe Urgency -I  A growing explosive stain in Galileo
Cannot speak-another symbol for speak-long (_ Possible personal danger
And all these gradations of meaning at once, three minds interlocking like a color wheel, focusing to the central white spot of revelation and truth. There were no barriers, as in oral conversation. Like light the thoughts intermeshed and wove in question, answer, and statement, and despite the concentration, all three had time for the more intimate shadings that took the place of tonal values. It was the capacity for such rapport that made round-table debates so popular among Baldies; the logical and aesthetic play of minds that could ultimately resolve into an ecstacy of complete common awareness. Physically there was no polygamy among Baldies, but mentally the social group had expanded, lending an additional depth and richness to their lives.
But this was merely a hint of complete rapport. Barton was searching for clues in what Melissa told him. He was no technician either, so he was going at it from another angle; that of the naturalist, trained in probing protective coloration, skilled in unraveling the predator's tangled tracks.
How many?
Three.
No more?
Three-and images of Galileo and other towns, symbols of names and identities. A feeling of shadowy communion, links of hatred-
And suddenly, in her mind, he sensed something curiously, disturbingly familiar. He did not know what it was. But momentarily it broke the smooth flow of communication, while he searched.
It was nothing; he concentrated again. Three?
C Known name Sam Faxe Symbol -i  Power-lust
[_ Heavy lethargy
There were other evoked connotations, but he thought he would know Sam Faxe now.
The other symbols, resolving into names: Ed Vargan, mixed with a curious concept of size-difference; and Bertram Smith, where there was sensed a cruelty akin to that of the blood-drinking carnivores. Though with a difference; Barton had reached into the mind of a weasel when it was feasting, and the sheer flood of ecstacy had almost frightened him. Smith was intelligent, though he, like the others, had that singular quality of-of what?
Darkness. Distortion. Blindness.
Yes, Sue thought, they're blind. Blinded by their paranoia. They can't see this world at all-as ifs meant to be.
And Melissa's visualization of the three: vicious small things running through the dark, teeth bared. She identified them, Barton realized, with-what?-with mice; she had a horror of mice, which to her were far more horrible than insects or snakes. Well, he could understand phobias; he himself was abnormally afraid of fire. Most Baldies were phobic in one degree or another, a penalty paid for increased mental -sensitivity.
He thought: "/" must move fast. If they communicate, they may go into hiding. "I" must kill them at one stroke. Can they read your mind?
They do not know Melissa Carr exists. But if one is killed, they will be warned. You must be kept safe.  Where are you? Refusal, definite refusal.
It would be best to tell me, so-
No one can find me as long as 1 don't think my location. There are no directional finders for telepathy. The concept she expressed meant more than telepathy; it was the symbol for a whole race and its unity.
Can you locate Vargan and Smith?
Certainly; they spoke freely in their private wave length; Vargan is in Rye; Smith is in Huron.
How   is   it   you   can   catch   their   wave   length?
Puzzlement. A helpless mental shrug. Born to me?
Barton thought: When one of them dies, the others will be warned. Listen carefully. Be sure to relay their plans. They must not escape.
Melissa thought of the three small, gray, vicious things scuttling across the floor. Barton grinned tightly.
See how they run, he told her. See where they run to. His hand touched his dagger. It was not a carving knife, but it would do.
There was not much more. Melissa relayed some of the paranoid thoughts she had caught, and Barton's guess at the menace of the paranoids was confirmed. They were deadly, in the long run, to the whole mutant group. Individual deaths did not matter much, in this era of the duello, but to risk the good will of the entire race was mad-dog tactics. Nor did there seem to be any motive. Sheer malice? It was not logical, and paranoids are always logical, though their structure is founded on a false keystone. The single clue that would give the whole a meaning was, so far, lacking. Nor could Barton find it by turning to his training as a naturalist. Animals do not commit sabotage. Nor do birds foul their own nests.
After Melissa had left them, Sue showed her impatience. "I want to help," she said, orally now. "There must be some way."
"There isn't. You said yourself that this takes a very special skill. You're a biologist. You don't react instantly, the way I do, and if you were along, my attention would be diverted. I've got to concentrate."
"You'll kill them, then?"
"Certainly I'll kill them. Luckily there are only three, according to Melissa. She wasn't lying; I could tell that."
"Oh, she's honest," Sue agreed. "But she's certainly hiding something."
Barton shrugged. "It doesn't matter. What this calls for is prompt action. I can't do much investigating. If I plant any thoughts or questions in non-Baldy minds, the paranoids will start wondering. I've got to eradicate those bichos before the infection spreads. There are plenty of paranoid Baldies who'd join a movement like that, if they were able to master the secret wave length."
"So what'll I do?"
"It doesn't matter," Barton said, "now. Your job's .finished. It's my meat now."
They stood up together. Outside, on the village sidewalk, he left her, with a handclasp that held a deep significance. All around them the casual, evening life of the town was moving, brightly lighted and symbolic of the vast, intricate check-and-balance system that held civilization together. The civilization that tolerated Baldies, and, though perhaps a little grudgingly, gave them a chance to work out their own salvation. Both of them were thinking of the same thing: how easily that ordinary throng could be integrated into a blood-hungry mob. It had happened before, when Baldies were still new to the world, and the danger still smoldered.
So Barton went off alone, with the unspoken commission of his whole race commanding him to do what since birth he had been conditioned to do. The race was important; the individuals were not. His helicopter had already been serviced, and he took off for Galileo, on the Atlantic Seaboard, still thinking about what he had to do. He was so abstracted that only automatic radio signals kept him from colliding with other copters. But, finally, the lights of the technicians' town glowed on the horizon.
Like all the communities devoted to technology, Galileo was larger than most villages. Scientists were peaceful folk, and no tech-town had ever been dusted off. Niagara, with its immense source of power, held more people than Galileo, but the latter had a far larger area. Due to the danger of some of the experiments, the town sprawled out for miles, instead of being the tight, compact village that was the general American pattern.
Because of this there was surface-car transport, an unusual thing. Bartin guided himself to Denham's house-there were no apartments, of course, in a highly individualistic though interdependent culture-and by good luck found the man at home. Denham was a mild, round-faced Baldy whose wigs had year by year grown grayer until his present one was
shot with white. He greeted Barton warmly, but orally, since
there were people on the street,  and Baldies were tactful
about demonstrating their powers.
"Dave. I didn't know you were back. How was Africa?" "Hot.   I  haven't  had   a  game   of   skip-handball  for  six.
months. I think I'm getting soft."
"You don't look it," Denham said, with an envious glance.
"Come on in. Drink?"
Over a highball they talked non-essentials, except that they didn't-talk. Barton was feeling his way; he didn't want to tell Denham too much, especially since Sam Faxe was here in Galileo, and he went all around the subject without finding out much. It proved more difficult than he had expected. Eventually they ended in the game room, stripped to shorts, facing a vertical wall, scooped into innumerable convolutions, divided into segments that jiggled erratically. There they played skip-handball. It was easy to tell in advance how hard Denham would swat the ball, but there was no earthly way of judging the angle of reflection. The two bounced around a good deal, getting plenty of exercise, and carrying on a telepathic conversation as they played.
Denham indicated that his favorite game was still crap shooting. Or roulette, by preference. Either of them he could play with his non-Baldy friends, whereas bridge or poker- uh! Who'd play poker with a mind reader?
Games that depended on luck or pure muscle were OK., Barton agreed, but there weren't many of the latter. Wrestling or boxing involved pre-planned thought. But many Olympic trials were possible: shot-putting, high-jumping, racing. In those you didn't face your opponent. Any war game, like chess, was impossible.
Well, Denham thought, your vocation's a sort of war game.
Game hunting? Barton let his mind skim over the field, settling on a tiger after a heavy feed, lethargic, and with the deep consciousness of power as in a silently humming dynamo. He tied that in, subtly, with a hunger, and with something, vague and unformed, that was similar to the symbol by which Melissa knew Sam Faxe. His thought then paralleled the identity of Faxe as one musical chord parallels its complement. If Denham knew Faxe at all, he'd probably respond.
And he did. A sense of elation mounted in Barton as he caught the stray fragment, filtering out nonessentials, squeez-
ing it dry of the accumulated Denham-detritus: What remained was a fat, less competent interpreter who served as liaison man sometimes between technicians of different language-groups. Barton hastily changed to another subject so that Denham would not attach any importance to this particular mnemonic ideation.
After that, Barton was anxious to leave. He let Denham win the game, and the novelty of this so delighted the winner that he accepted Barton's excuse of an appointment without obvious skepticism. A a man just back in America, after six months of jungle life, would be looking for something more exciting than skip-handball. But it was swell of Barton to drop in-
Barton strolled along the streets, park-bordered, smooth-tiled, letting his receptive mind absorb the thoughts that boiled around him. Now that he knew what to look for, it was not difficult, though* it took patience. Patchwork scraps of information came to him very occasionally. And Barton did something to which Baldies very seldom resorted, he put leading questions into the minds of non-Baldies.
This had to be done, for Barton could read only what layv above the threshold of conscious awareness. And it took real, straining effort to force even a brief stimulating impulse into a nonreceptive mind. The average man is not a telepath, and to communicate mentally with him is like trying to push a needle between closely-fitted tiles. He can, under special circumstances, receive thoughts, but he himself cannot recognize them as impulses from another mind.
Barton was sweating when he had finished. Yet he had managed to pick up considerable information. Moreover, he had done it so subtly that Faxe himself, if he tuned in, would certainly be unsuspicious. A good many people had thought of Faxe tonight, but they were ordinary thoughts-except to Barton, who fitted the jigsaw together. A little here and a little there. And finally he had the picture-an interpreter, altering a shade of meaning as a Tibetan talked to a Bengali, and as both of them turned to a Yankee physiochemist. It was the easier because technicians, immersed in their work, were apt to be insensitive to the finer gradations of human contact, and the result was that here in Galileo a gadget was being built that would eventually cause trouble.
Just how, not even Faxe knew, of course, but his smattering of technical knowledge was sufficient to enable him to
smear up the works. A shade of meaning in one man's mind, a slightly different hue in another's, when hoth should have matched exactly-these, and other things, told Barton that Faxe was a racial traitor.
Moreover, he found out where Faxe lived.
Now, standing outside the man's bungalow, he tried to communicate with Melissa Carr. Almost immediately her thought touched his, in the ordinary radiation level.
Play it careful, he ordered. Use generalities. And again he was deeply conscious of her femininity, of the softness of curling hair and the smoothness of a curved, youthful cheek. Through the cool, fresh night air breathed something like a wisp of perfume.
Agreement.
Can you locate the others for me quickly? And exactly?
Yes. In-
Keep  tuned in  to .. . you  know  what.
Again agreement, and that delicately feminine demure-ness, soft and curiously attractive. She was a little afraid, Barton sensed, and he felt a strong impulse to protect her. A picture of Melissa Carr was beginning to form in his mind, though he knew that it was of necessity prejudiced. Mental concepts and visual ones may differ a great deal. But he thought that Melissa had a small, triangular face, fragile and with delicate features, and that that face was framed with glossy, jet-black curls. He seemed to see her features from inside, reversing the usual procedure in which an individual's face helps form the concept of what is behind it.
How does she do it? He wondered at the lucky chance as he crossed the street. Out of all the people in the world, only she can tune in on the special wave length of-
Barrier!
He stood now on the porch, facing a closed panel. Through that grained plywood a doubt and a question fingered out, touched his mind, and recoiled. Instantly the man within the house erected a barrier of his own.
Very good. While the mind was thus walled off, Faxe could probably not utilize his super wave length to communicate with the other paranoids. Or ... or could he?
Barton stepped aside to a circular window. He could see nothing through the one-way glass. With a wary look around, he lifted his foot and kicked the glass into splinters. He stepped through the gap cautiously, into a well-furnished
room where a fat man stood against the wall, facing him. The masculinity of the decor told him that Faxe probably lived alone; that was natural for the true paranoid type, which required a wife's subjugation. Faxe would not have married a telepath, and no non-Baldy could have lived with him for long.
Twenty years ago Faxe would have been wigless, but this particular type had learned caution since then. The man's wig was of gleaming yellow that went oddly with his heavy, ruddy face.
And suddenly the barrier slipped from Faxe's mind; his brain lay fallow and blank, and Barton felt Melissa's urgent warning thrill through him. He's warning the others-
Barton ripped out the dagger from his belt and plunged forward. Instantly Faxe's barrier tightened again, as quickly as his own weapon leaped ready to his fat hand. When dueling with another telepath, it is highly advisable to keep your mind guarded, so your intentions cannot be anticipated. As long as Faxe felt himself seriously menaced, he dared not lower his barrier.
Barton moved in, his eyes calculatingly alert, as he might watch the swaying hood of a cobra. He kept his thumb on the hilt of the dagger and held it at thigh-level. The fat man stepped forward from the wall, balancing on his toes, waiting.
It was, after all, too easy. Telepathy wasn't necessary to forestall the stroke of that clumsy arm. With surgical neatness Barton put his knife in the right place, and made certain that Faxe did not communicate with his colleagues before he died. Then, satisfied, he let himself out of the house by the front door and walked quietly toward the nearest surface-car door.
That was done. He sent his thought probing in search of Melissa. Somewhere, far away in the hidden dark, she heard and answered.
Did they receive Faxe's call?
No. No, you were too fast, and they didn't expect him to touch them.
Good. Vargan and Smith now, then.
Tonight?
Yes.
Good. I don't think you can reach me tomorrow.
Why not!
Evasion. Vargan-at Rye.
Listen. This is important. If there are only three of them, fine. But if they try to communicate with others, be sure to let me know!
Yes. That was all, but the personality of Melissa lingered with Barton as he drove his helicopter northwest through the night. He was not at all affected by the fact that he had committed murder. He did not regard the act as such; there was, undoubtedly, a touch of fanaticism in the way Baldies regarded betrayal from within. Nor was this ordinary betrayal. The means of communication Faxe and the others had discovered was the deadliest menace to the race that had ever existed-more serious than the lynchings a few decades after the Blowup.
Barton had fallen into a mental pattern that always was dominant when he hunted. Now his quarry was human, but far more predatory than any jungle carnivore. Animals killed for food. That was simple Darwinism, and a basic law of nature. But the three paranoids had violated another basic entirely: preservation of the species. They menaced it.
In any new culture there must be conflict, Barton thought, watching dim lights flicker past below, the innumerable torches of the towns that dotted America. And certainly the Baldies had a new culture. It was almost embryonic as yet, a mutation heading for an ultimate end that was so far inconceivable. But it was the first true forward step that mankind had made in a million years. Always before mutations had been very slight, or they had been failures. Now, with hard radiations providing the booster charge, a true mutation had opened a thousand possible doors. And before each door lay blind pitfalls.
For there are dominant and secondary, submerged characteristics. Hairlessness was secondary to Baldies, but there might be other, submerged ones that would emerge, in the third or fourth generation. This extraordinary method of subtelepath-ic communication-was that natural? In Melissa's case it seemed to be so, though Faxe and the rest might have developed the trick themselves. If so, the latent potential lay, perhaps, in every Baldy. And that meant danger indeed. It was in the true meaning of the term a focus of infection. Healthy cells could be contaminated. The secret might be passed on, and Barton visualized a perfectly hidden, underground network of paranoids, communicating in utter secrecy, planning-anything. It wasn't a pleasant idea.
He wondered how many social-type Baldies could fight such a menace. Not many; they were not qualified for war. War, because of the atomic bombs, was impossible, but this was a new sort of battle. The thing that made the bombs successful through fear-propaganda-the necessity of centralization before any group could be organized-was inapplicable. There need be no unification, if paranoids could communicate instantly and secretly. Blind luck had stepped in through Melissa, but one could not depend on luck.
Melissa's  thought touched  him.
Vargan has signaled Smith; Smith is flying to Rye.
What do they know?
Vargan told Smith to come immediately. No more.
To Rye?
It must be a new rendezvous. He gave directions. She relayed them to Barton.
O.K. Keep listening.
Puzzled and a little worried, Barton advanced the copter's speed. He was swinging northward now, toward Lake Erie, by-passing Conestoga. It wouldn't take long to reach Rye. But-had Faxe got through, after all? A telepathic message takes only an instant. Perhaps Vargan had received the fat man's S.O.S. And if Faxe had passed on to his accomplices the knowledge that a Baldy had killed him, and why- Barton shrugged. They would be waiting for him, anyhow. They would know Faxe was dead. If he had no more than called to them in formless appeal and made contact with their minds, they would know. No mistaking that-shapeless-ness-as life slips inexorably from the body. When they reached out for him now, they would encounter plain nothingness, a curious sort of hiatus in the ether, as if the void had not yet quite closed over the place where a man had been an hour ago. It was unmistakable; no telepath willingly reached out into that quivering blank. But it would impinge upon any receptive mind near it, and soundlessly through the Baldy population of the town the knowledge would spread. One of Us has died. Yes, Vargan and Smith knew by now. But they did not yet know, in all probability, how he had died. It might have been accident, it might have been organic. It might have been-murder. They would act upon the assumption that it was. They would be waiting.
The nearest Rye airfield to his destination was deserted, only the automatic landing lights flicking on as he dropped
to earth. Melissa's directions had been clear. He walked half a mile up a road, turned into a narrow lane where moonlight made eerie patterns between flickering leaves, and stopped before an unlighted cottage. As he waited, a thought touched him.
Come in. That was Vargan, the size-difference realization a submerged matrix in his mind, a pattern under moving water. Come in. But Vargan did not know Barton; he was radiating blind, conscious only that a Baldy was waiting in the lane outside the cottage.
A light came on. The door opened. A small man, scarcely more than five feet tall, with an abnormally large head, stood on the threshold, a black silhouette.
No traps?
There was a trap, but it was merely the advantage of numbers. Barton felt that his question was answered. Vargan fell back as the taller man advanced, and then Barton was in the room, eyeing his opponent.
Vargan had a pinched, worried face, and protuberant eyes. His mouse-brown wig was untidy. He wore eye lenses that reflected the light with a reptilian glitter, and for a moment his gaze took stock of Barton. Then he smiled.
"All right," he said audibly. "Come in and sit down." The thought of contempt was there. Speaking audibly to another Baldy when caution was unnecessary was insultingly patronizing, but Barton was, not surprised. Paranoid, he thought, and Vargan's mind responded: Which means super!
The kitchen valve opened and Bertram Smith came in, a handsome, blond giant, with pale-blue eyes and an expressionless face. Smith carried a tray with bottles, glasses, and ice. He nodded at Barton.
"Vargan wanted to talk to you," he said. "I see no reason, but-"
"What happened to Faxe?" Vargan asked. "Never mind. Have a drink first"
Poison?
Sincere denial. We are stronger than you-
Barton accepted a glass and sat down in an uncomfortable table chair; he did not want to be too relaxed. His mind was wary, though he knew the uselessness of putting up guards. Vargan hunched his dwarfish form into a relaxer and gulped the liquor. His eyes were steady.
"Now what about Faxe?"
"I killed him," Barton said.
"He was the weakest of us all-"
All?
Three of us-
Good.   Only   two   left   now.
Vargan grinned. "You're convinced you can kill us, and we're convinced we can kill you. And since our secret weapons are intangible-self-confidence that can't be measured arbitrarily-we can talk on equal ground. How did you know about our means of communication?"
He could not hide the thought of Melissa. The mind has too much free will at times.
Smith said, "We'll have to kill her too. And that other woman-Sue Connaught, that he was thinking of."
No point in keeping up useless concealment. Barton touched Melissa's mind. They know. Listen. If they use their secret wave length, tell me instantly.
"Immediately is pretty fast," Vargan said.
"Thoughts are fast."
"All right. You're underestimating us. Faxe was the newest of our band; he wasn't fast-minded, and he was a push-over for you. Our brains are highly trained and faster than yours." That was a guess; he couldn't know, really. Egotism influenced him.
"Do you think," Barton said, "that you can get away with whatever you're trying to do?"
"Yes," Smith said, in his mind a blazing, fanatical conviction that glared like a shining light. "We must."
"All right. What are you trying to do?"
"Preserve the race," Vargan said. "But actively, not passively. We non-Baldies"-He still used the term, though he wore a wig-"aren't willing to bow down before an inferior race, homo sapiens."
"The old quibble. Who says Baldies are homo superior? They simply have an additional sense."
"That's all that keeps man from being a beast. An additional sense. Intelligence. Now there's a new race. It's telepathic. Eventually the next race may have-prescience. I don't know. But I do know that Baldies are the future of the world. God wouldn't have given us our power if He hadn't intended us to use it."
This was merely dueling, but it was something more as well. Barton was intensely curious, for more than one reason. "You're trying to convince me?"
"Certainly. The more who join us, the faster we'll grow. If you say no, we'll kill you." Only on these intangibles was there the possibility of mental secrecy. Semantics could never alter the divergence of absolute opinions.
"What's your plan?"
"Expansion," Vargan ruffled his untidy brown wig. "And complete secrecy, of course. The sabotage angle-we're just beginning that. Eventually it'll be a big thing. Right now we're concentrating on what we can 3o-"
"Sabotage-and what can you offer in exchange?"
A wave of tremendous self-confidence thrust out at Barton. "Ourselves. We are homo superior. When our race is free, no longer enslaved by mere humans, we can-go to the stars if we want!"
"Enslaved.  I  don't see  it that  way."
"You don't. You've been conditioned to accept the pap cowards feed you. It's isn't logical. It isn't just or natural. When a new race appears, it's destined to rule."
Barton said, "Remember the lynchings in the old days?"
"Certainly," Vargan nodded. "Humans have one thing we haven't: numerical superiority. And they're organized. The trick is to destroy that organization. How is it maintained?"
"By communication."
"Which goes back to technology. The world's a smoothly running machine, with humanity in the driver's seat. If the machine cracks up-"
Barton laughed. "Are you that good?"
Again the fanatical self-belief flamed in Smith's mind. A hundred-a thousand mere humans-cannot equal one of us!
"Well," Vargan said more sanely, "ten men could still lynch a Baldy, provided they weren't disorganized and in social chaos. That, of course, is what we're after. Ultimate social chaos. We're aiming at a bust-up. Then we can take over-after humans go to pot."
"How long will that take? A million years?"
"Perhaps," Vargan said, "if we weren't telepaths, and if we didn't have the secret wave length. That, by the way, takes time to learn, but almost any Baldy can learn it. But we're careful; there'll be no traitors among us. How can there be?"
There couldn't. A thought of hesitancy, of betrayal, could be read. It would be a foolproof organization.
Vargan nodded. "You see? Thousands of Baldies, working secretly for a bust-up, sabotaging, killing where necessary- and always, always avoiding even a hint of suspicion."
"You've sense enough for that, anyway," Barton said. "Even that hint would be fatal."
"I know it." Anger. "Humans tolerate us, and we let them. We let them. It's time we took our rightful place."
"We're getting it anyway, slowly. After all, we're intruders in a non-Baldy world. Humans have come to accept us. Eventually we'll get their complete trust and tolerance." ;
"And-forever-live on tolerance, a helpless minority? Eating the crumbs our lessers are willing to throw us-if we lick then- boots?"
"How many Baldies are maladjusted?"
"Plenty."
"All right. They'd be maladjusted in Heaven. The vast majority adjust. I've got the job I want-"
"Have you? You never feel even a little irritated when people know you're a Baldy, and-look at you?"
"Nobody's ever completely happy. Certainly a Baldy world would be rather more pleasant, but that'll come. There are plenty of worlds that will be available eventually. Venus, for one."
"So we sit and wait for interplanetary travel," Vargan mocked. "And what then? There'll be slogans. Earth for humans. No Baldies on Venus. You're a fool. Has it never occurred to you that Baldies are the new race?" He looked at Barton. "I see it has. Every one of us has thought the same thing. But we've been conditioned to submerge the thought. Listen. What's the test of a dominant new race? It must be able to dominate. And we can; we've a power that no non-Baldy can ever hope to match. We're like gods pretending to be human because it'll please humans."
"We aren't gods."
"Compared to humans-we are gods. Do you feel pleased at the thought of rearing your children in fear, training them never to offend their inferiors, forcing them to wear-wigs?" Vargan's hand went up to his head, fingers clawed. "This is the stigma of our cowardice. The day when we can walk hairless in a hairless world-then we'll have come into our heritage. All right. Ask yourself-can you say that I'm wrong?"
"No," Barton said. "You may be right. But we're a small minority; the risk's too great. Since you speak of children, you can add a postscript about lynchings. That isn't pretty. Maybe you could get away with this, but you're certain you won't fail. And that's just crazy. You're refusing to admit
arguments that might weaken your plan. If even a whisper of this ever got out, every Baldy in the world, wigless or not, would be destroyed. The-humans-could do nothing less, for their own protection. And I couldn't blame them. I admit you're logical-to some extent. And you're dangerous, because you've got the secret telepathic band. But you're paranoid, and that means you're blind. We are getting what we want, on the whole, and because a few paranoid Baldies are malcontent, you set yourselves up as saviors for the whole race. If your idea should spread-"
"That would mean fertile ground, wouldn't it?"
"There are other maladjusted Baldies," Barton admitted. "I might have been one myself, maybe, if I hadn't found my pattern for living." He wondered for a moment. His jungle work was fascinating, but what would it be like to return from it to a completely Baldy culture? A world in which he belonged, as no telepath could belong, really, in this day and age.
Barton turned from the mirage. And simultaneously Me-lissa's warning thought struck violently into his mind, faster than a shouted word could be; and with equal speed Barton reacted, spinning to his feet and heaving up his chair as a shield. He had not caught Vargan's command; it had been on the secret wave length, but Smith's thrown knife clattered against the plastic chair seat and bounced off against one of the walls.
Vargan will attack while Smith recovers his weapon. Me-lissa was afraid; she shrank from the idea of violence, and the emotions surging unchecked in the room, but her thought struck unwaveringly into Barton's mind. He sprang toward the fallen dagger as Vargan ran at him. Then the two were back on the ordinary telepathic wave length, but with a difference.
One man Barton could have guarded against. Or two men acting together. But this had been prearranged. Smith was fighting independently, and so was Vargan. Two thought-patterns struck into Barton's mind. Vargan was concentrating on the duello, left right, feint, and feint again. Barton was skilled enough to be a match for his single opponent, but now Smith had picked up the fallen chair and was coming in with it. His mind was confused, too. Drive the chair forward low-no, high-no-
In a feint, there are two mental patterns; dominant and recessive. One has the ring of truth. But Vargan and Smith
were attempting to act completely on impulse, purposely confusing their minds in order to confuse Barton. They were succeeding. And more than once they flashed up to the secret band, so Melissa's thought-warning was added to the confusion.
Smith had his dagger back now. A table went crashing over. Barton had taken it fatally for granted that his enemies would act together, and so a sharp point ripped his sleeve and brought blood from a deep cut. In the jungle, where emotion, tropism, instinct, are stronger than intelligence, Barton had been confused in much the same way, but then his own mental power had been the turning factor. Here his opponents were not mindless beasts; they were highly intelligent predators.
The heavy, choking smell of blood was nauseating in the back of'his throat. Cat-footed, wary, Barton kept retreating, not daring to be pinned between his enemies. Abruptly Me-lissa warned: A rush! and both Smith and Vargan came at him, blades gleaming where they were not crimson.
Heart-clavicle-up-stroke-feint-
Confused and chaotic, the furious thoughts caught him in a whirlwind. He spun to face Smith, knew his mistake, and ducked not quite in time. Vargan's dagger ripped his left biceps. And with that blow Barton knew that he had failed; he was no match for the two paranoids.
He ran for the chair, thinking of it as a shield, but at the last moment, before his mind could be read, he sent it hurtling toward the flourescent. With a tinkle of glass the tube broke. In the dark, Barton dived for the door. They knew what he intended and anticipated him; they knew he would depend on impetus to carry him through. But they could not stop him. He got a knee hard on the point of his jaw, and, dazed, slashed right and left half-mindlessly. Perhaps that saved him.
He broke through, thinking of his copter. Escape and help now. He felt Vargan's thought: the short cut.
Thanks, he sent back mockingly.
The short cut saved time, and he was long-legged. As yet there were no plans. He did not try to think of any. Escape and help; details later. The paranoids came after him for a short distance.
No use; he'll make it. Get my copter.
Right. We'll trail him.
They  went  elsewhere.  Barton  felt  their  brief  questions
touching his mind, though, and concentrated on running. He could not easily escape the paranoids, now that they knew him. Nor would they again lose touch with his mind.
The landing field was still vacant, except for his own helicopter. He got in and sent the plane southwest, a vague thought of Sue Connaught guiding him. Melissa could not help; he didn't even know where she was. But Sue was in Conestoga, and between the two of them- '
Also, she had to be warned. He reached for her mind across the dark miles.
What's wrong?
He told her. Get a weapon. Protect yourself. I'm coming in.
Plan-
Don't try to think of any. They'll know.
And Melissa, frightened, the psychic scent of fear strong in her thought. How can I help?
Don't reveal where you are. If -we fail, tell the truth to other Baldies. These paranoids must be destroyed.
Sue: Can I intercept their copter?
No. Don't try. They're following, but not overtaking.
A grotesque silver shape in the moonlight, the pursuing helicopter raced in Barton's track. He improvised a bandage for his wounded arm. After consideration, he wound many heavy strips of cloth around his left forearm. A shield, if-
He could not plan his tactics; that would be fatal. Tele-paths could not play chess or any war game, because they would automatically betray themselves. They could play skip-handball, but that had a variable factor, the movable backboard. If a random factor could be introduced-
Vargan's eager question touched him. Such as?
Barton shivered. He must, somehow, manage to act on impulse, without any preconceived plan. Otherwise he would inevitably fail.
He called Melissa. Are they using the secret band?
No.
If we fail, it's your job. Vorgan and Smith must die. This is more important than merely killing three men. If other paranoids get the idea, if they, too', learn the secret wave length, this suicidal movement will grow. And non-Baldies will inevitably find out about it, sometime. That will mean the annihilation of every Baldy on earth. For the humans can't afford to take chances. If we fail to check the paranoids-it means the end of our whole race.
The lights of Conestoga glowed. No plan yet. Don't try to think of one.
There must be a way, Vargan urged. What?
Sue broke in. I'm coming up in my copter.
The zoo was below, dark now, except for the silvering moonlight. Another plane, gleaming bright, lifted into view to intercept them. Sue thought: /'// ram them-
Fool, Barton thought. Don't warn them! But it was a new idea, thrust suddenly into his own mind, and he ' reacted instantly. Mechanical controls are not instantaneous. By Vargan's sudden decision to drop to a lower level, where a collision with Sue's plane would not be fatal, he had put himself too close to Barton. And Barton's hands stabbed at the controls.
Vargan read the thought as fast as it was conceived. But his copter could not respond with the speed of thought. The flying vanes meshed and crackled; with a scream of tortured alloys the two ships side-slipped. The automatic safety devices took over-the ones that were not smashed-but only low altitude saved Barton and his enemies from death.
They crashed down in the central zoo area, near the shark's tank. Vargan read the thought in Barton's mind and telepathed to Smith urgently: Kill him! Fast!
Barton scrambled free of the wreckage. He sensed Sue hovering above, ready to land, and told her: Turn your lights on-the spots. Top illumination. Wake the animals.
He dodged away from the two figures closing in on him. He ripped the bandage from his upper arm and let the smell of fresh blood scent the air. And-he yelled.
From Sue's copter beams of light glared down, flaring into cages, dazzling bright.
Kill him, Vargan thought. Quick!
The asthmatic cough of a lion sounded. Barton dodged by the tank and tossed his blood-stained bandage over the railing. There was a flurry of water slashed into foam as the great shark woke to life.
And, from cage and tank, from the beasts waked into a turmoil of light and sound and blood-smell-came the variable.
Sue had got her siren working, and its shattering blast bellowed through the night. Patterns of light blazed erratically here and there. Barton saw Smith pause and shake his head. Vargin, teeth bared, ran forward, but, he, too, was shaken.
Their thoughts were-confused now. For this wasn't chess any more. It was skip-handball, with a variable gone wild.
T?OT beaste aie. not krtaUigesrt, m the. true *&eani&% oi the word. They have instinct, trqpism, a terrible passion that is primevally powerful. Even nontelepaths find the hunger-roar of a lion disturbing. To a Baldy-
What blasted up from the great tank was worst of all. It shook even Barton. The paranoid minds could not communicate, could scarcely think, against that beast-torrent of mental hunger and fury that poured through the night.
Nor could they-now-read Barton's mind. They were like men caught in the blazing rays of a searchlight. Telepathi-cally, they were blinded.
But Barton, a trained naturalist, had better control. It wasn't pleasant even for him. Yet his familiarity with tiger and shark, wolf and lion, gave him some sort of protection against the predatory thoughts. He sensed Melissa's terrified, panic-stricken withdrawal, and knew that Sue was biting her lips and trying desperately to keep control. But for half a mile around that mental Niagara, telepathic communication was impossible except for a very special type of mind.
Barton had that type of mind.
Because he could read the thoughts of Vargan and Smith, and because they could not read his, the duel ended in his favor. He had to kill the pair before help came. The paranoids* secret had to be hushed up forever.
And, with the sharp blade of his dagger, he finished his job. Smith died silently. From Vargan's waning mind came a desperate, passionate cry: You fool! To destroy your own race-
Then silence, as the copter's siren faded, and the spotlights blinked out. Only beast-cries, and the turmoil of water in the enormous tank.
"They'll hush it up," Barton said. "I've done that much already, since yesterday. Luckily we've got a few Baldies high up in the judicial. I didn't tell even them too much, but-they have the general idea. It'll be passed over as a personal quarrel. The duello's legal, anyway."
Afternoon sunlight glittered on the Ohio. The little sailboat heeled under a gust of wind, and Sue moved the tiller, in response to Barton's thought. The soft susurrus of water whispered under the keel.
"But I can't reach Melissa," he added.
Sue didn't answer. He looked at her.
"You've been communicating with her today. Why can't I?"
"She's... it's difficult," Sue said. "Why not forget it?"
"No."
"Later on-in a week or so-"
He remembered Melissa's demure, feminine gentleness, and her frightened withdrawal last night. "I want to be sure she's all right."
"No-" Sue said, and tried to conceal a thought. She almost succeeded, but not quite. Something, a key, a pattern, showed in her mind.
"An altered matrix?" Barton looked at her. "How could she-"
"Dave," Sue said, "please don't touch her now. She wouldn't want it-"
But with the key at hand, and the locked door ready to open. Barton automatically sent his thought out, probing, questioning. And, very far away, something stirred in response.
Melissa?
Silently Sue watched the tiller. After a long time, Barton shivered. His face was strained; there were new lines around his mouth.
"Did you know?" he asked.
"Not till today," Sue said. For some reason neither of them wanted to use telepathy at the moment.
"The... the business at the zoo must have done it."
"It isn't permanent. It must be a cycle."
"So that's why she was able to tune in on the secret wave length," Barton said harshly. "This mutation-it runs very close to the line sometimes." He looked at his shaking hand. "Her mind-that was her mind!"
"It runs in cycles," Sue said quietly. "What I wonder now is-will she talk? Can her thoughts be picked up by-"
"There's no danger," Barton said. "I stayed in long enough to make certain of that. Otherwise I-wouldn't have stayed in at all. In this state, she has no memory of what happens when she's-rational."
Sue moved her lips. "She doesn't know she's insane. She just senses something wrong. That's why she wouldn't tell us where she was. Oh-Dave! So many of us, so many mutants, gone off the track somewhere! It's a horrible price." He nodded slowly, his eyes grave. There was always a price, somehow. And yet, if paying it brought security to the mutants-
But it hadn't, really. For Barton saw clearly now that an era had finally ended in the life of the Baldy race. Till yesterday the path had seemed clear before them. But yesterday an evil had been unveiled in the very heart of their own race, and it was an evil which would menace the peace of the world until one race or the other was wiped wholly off the face of the earth. For what a few telepaths had stumbled upon already, others would discover in the future. Had, perhaps, akeady discovered. And must not be allowed to retain.
Thou, O son of man, I have set a watchman unto the house of Israel.
We must be on guard now, he thought. Always on guard. And he knew suddenly that his maturation had taken one long forward step in the past few hours. First he had been aimless, open to any possibility that knocked loudest at the doors of his mind. Then he had found the job he was suited for, and in its comfortable adjustment thought himself adult at last. Until yesterday-until today.
It was not enough to hunt animals. His work was laid out before him on a scale so vast he could not see it clearly yet. but its outlines were very clear. He could not do the job alone. It would take many others. It would take constant watchfulness from this hour on, over the whole world. Today, perhaps for the first time in nearly two thousand years, the Crusaders were born again.
Strange, he thought, that it had taken a madwoman to give them their first warning. So that not even the mad were useless in the progress of the race. Strange that the threefold divisions of the mutants had so closely interwoven in the conflict just passed. Mad, sane, sane-paranoid. And typical that even in deadly combat the three lines wove together interde-pendently..
He looked at Sue. Their minds reached out and touched, and in the deep, warm assurance of meeting was no room for doubt or regret. This, at least, was their heritage. And it was worth any price the future demanded of them-this knowledge of confident unity, through any darkness, across any miles. The fire on the hearth would not burn out until the last Baldy died.