The Penal Cluster, Randall Garrett [ereader ebook .TXT] 📗

been controlled, and the chances were that he could get away with it. A Controller never did anything directly; their dirty work was done by someone else—a puppet under their mental control. At least, so ran the popular misconception. If Lasser were the man, he stood a good chance of getting away with it, even if he were caught, provided he played his cards right.

That reasoning still didn't eliminate Sager or Pederson. Either of them could be the Controller. And there still remained the possibility that some unknown, unsuspected fourth person had the company of Lasser & Sons under his thumb.

That was what Houston intended to find out tonight.

He took a sip of his coffee, found it still reasonably hot.

Damn the megalomaniacs, anyway! Houston subconsciously tightened his fists. He, personally, had more to fear from the Normals than from another Controller. Normals could kill or imprison him, while a Controller would have a hard time doing either, directly.

But Houston could understand the Normal man; he could see how fear of a Controller could drive a man without the ability into a frenzied panic. He could understand, even forgive their actions, born and bred in ignorance and fear.

No, the ones he hated were the ones who had conceived and fostered that fear—the psychologically unstable megalomaniac Controllers. There were only a handful of them—probably not more than a few hundred or a thousand. But because of them, every telepath on Earth found his life in danger, and every Normal found his life a hell of terror.

Let Dorrine and her do-nothing friends run around the globe recruiting members for their precious Group; that was all right for them. Meanwhile, David Houston would be doing something on a more basic action level.

He glanced at his watch. Almost time.

"How's the deployment?" he whispered in his throat.

"We've got the building surrounded now," said the voice in his ear. "You can go in anytime."

"How about the roof?"

"That's taken care of, sir; we've got 'copter that can be on the top of the Lasser Building at any time you call. They can land within thirty seconds of your signal."

"Okay," Houston said; "I'm going in now. Remember—no matter what I say or do, no one is to leave that building if they're conscious. And keep your eyes on me; if I act in the least peculiar, handcuff me—but don't knock me out.

"And if I'm not back on time, come in anyway."

"Right."

Houston finished his coffee, dropped a coin on the counter, and headed for the other side of the street.

The big problem was getting into the building itself. It was ringed with alarms; Lasser & Sons didn't want just anybody wandering in and out of their building.

So Houston had arranged a roundabout way. The building next to the Lasser Building was a good deal smaller, only forty-five stories high. A week before, Houston had rented an office on the eighteenth floor of the building; on the door, he had already had a sign engraved: Ajax Enterprises.

It was a shame the office would never be used.

Houston walked straight to the next-door building and opened the front door with his key. Inside, a night watchman lounged behind a desk, smoking a blackened briar. He looked up, smiled, and nodded.

"Evening, Mr. Griswold; working late tonight?"

Houston forced a smile he did not feel. "Just doing a little paper work," he said.

He took the automatic elevator to the eighteenth floor. He didn't relish the idea of walking up to the roof, but taking the elevator would make the nightwatchman suspicious.

He didn't bother going to the office; he headed directly for the stairway and began his long climb—twenty-seven floors to the roof.

All through it, he kept up a running comment through his throat mike. "I wish I weighed about fifty pounds less; carrying two hundred and twenty pounds of blubber up these stairs isn't easy."

"Blubber, hooey!" the earphone interrupted. "Any man who's six-feet-three has a right to carry that much weight. Actually, you're a skinny-looking sort of goop."

Both men were exaggerating; Houston wasn't fat, but his broad, powerful frame couldn't be called skinny, either.

When he finally reached the roof, he paused and surveyed the wall of the Lasser Building, which towered high above him, spearing an additional thirty stories in the air. Up there, the lights on the sixtieth floor gleamed in the night.

The air was growing cooler, and the beginnings of a mist were forming. Houston hoped it wouldn't start to rain before he got inside.

The forty-sixth floor of the Lasser Building had no windows on this side, but there were plenty on the forty-seventh.

Leading up to them was an inviting looking fire escape, but Houston knew he didn't dare take that. By law, every fire escape was rigged with a fire alarm, in addition to the regular burglar alarm. He'd have to use another way.

The Lasser Building was a steel structure, shelled over with a bright blue anodized aluminum sheath. Only the day before, Houston, wearing the gray coverall of a power-line workman, had checked the wall to find the big steel beams beneath the aluminum. He had also installed certain other equipment; now he was going to make use of it.

Concealed in the louvres of the air-conditioner intake of the lower building was a specially constructed suit and several hundred feet of power line which was connected to the main line of the building.

In the darkness, Houston slipped on the suit. It was constructed somewhat like a light diving suit or a spacesuit, but without the helmet. In the toes, knees, and hands, were powerful electromagnets controlled by switches in the fingers of the gloves and powered by the current in the long line.

Houston stepped over to the blue aluminum wall, reached out a hand, and lowered one finger. Instantly, the powerful magnet anchored his hand to the wall, held by the dense magnetic field to the steel beam beneath the aluminum sheath. That one magnet alone could support his full body weight, and he had six magnets to work with.

Slowly, carefully, David Houston began to crawl up the wall.

Turn on a magnet in the right hand; lift up the left hand and anchor it higher; turn on the right hand and lift it even with the left, then anchor it again; do the same with both legs; then begin the process all over again, turning the magnets off and on in rotation.

Up and up he went. Past the forty-sixth floor, past the forty-seventh, the forty-eighth, and the forty-ninth. Not until he reached the fiftieth floor did he attempt to open one of the windows.

There was a magnetic lock inside the window, but Houston had taken that, too, into account. The powerful magnet in his right glove slid it aside easily. Houston lifted the window and stepped inside.

He had ten more floors to go.

He took off the suit and rolled it up into a tight package, then dropped it out the window. It landed with a barely audible thump. Houston took a deep breath, drew his stun gun, and headed for the stairway.

On the landing of the sixtieth floor of the Lasser Building, David Houston paused for a moment.

"Sounds like you're out of breath," said the voice in his ear.

"You try climbing all that way sometime," Houston whispered. "I'm no superman, you know."

"Shucks," said the voice, "you've disillusioned me. What now?"

"I'm going to try to get a little information," Houston told him. "Hold on."

On the other side of the door, he could hear faint sound, as if someone were moving around, but he could hear no voices.

Carefully, he sent out a probing thought, trying to see if he could attune his mind with that of someone inside without betraying himself.

He couldn't detect anything. The sixtieth floor covered a lot of space; if whoever was inside was too far away, their thoughts would be too faint to pick up unless Houston stepped up his own power, and he didn't want to do that.

Cautiously, he reached out a hand and eased open the door.

The hallway was brightly lit, but there was no one in sight. The unaccustomed light made Houston blink for a moment before his eyes adjusted to it; the hallways and landings below had been pitch dark, forcing him to use a penlight to find his way up.

He stepped into the hallway, closing the door behind him.

Now he could hear voices. He stopped to listen. The conversation was coming from an office down the hall—if it could be called a conversation.

There would be long periods of silence, then a word or two: "But not that way." "Until tomorrow." "Vacillates."

There were three different voices.

Houston moved on down the hall, his stun gun ready. A few yards from the door, he stopped again, and, very gently, he sent out another thought-probe, searching for the minds of those within, carefully forging his way.

And, at that crucial instant, a voice spoke in his ear.

"Houston! What's going on? You haven't said a thing for two full minutes!"

"I'm all right!" Houston snapped. Only the force of long training and habit kept him from shouting the words aloud instead of keeping them to a subvocal whisper.

"All right or not," said the other, "we're coming in in seven minutes, as ordered. Meanwhile, there's a news bulletin for you; the British division has picked up another Controller—a woman named Dorrine Kent. Two in one night ought to be a pretty good bag."

For a moment, Houston's mind was a meaningless blur.

Dorrine!

And then another voice broke through his shock.

"Dear me, sir! Calm yourself! You're positively fizzing!"

Houston jerked. Standing in the doorway of the office was Norcross Lasser, with a benign smile on his face and a deadly-looking .38 automatic in his hand. Behind him stood John Sager and Loris Pederson, their faces wary.

"Please drop that stun gun, Mr. Cop."

In those few moments, Houston had regained control of himself. He realized what had happened. The interruption of his thought-probe had startled him just a little, but that little had been enough to warn the Controller.

He wondered which of the three men was the actual Controller.

He began to lower his weapon, then, suddenly, with all the force and hatred he could muster, he sent a blistering, shocking thought toward the man with the gun.

Lasser staggered as though he'd been struck. His gun wavered, and Houston fired quickly with his stun gun. At the same time, Lasser's automatic went off.

The bullet went wild, and the stun beam didn't do much better. It struck Lasser's hand, paralyzing it, but it didn't knock out Lasser.

The mental battle that ensued only took a half second, but at the speed of thought, a lot of things can happen in a half second.

Houston realized almost instantaneously that he had made a vast mistake. He had badly underestimated the enemy.

There was no need to worry, now, about which one of the men was a Controller—all three of them were!

As soon as Sager and Pederson realized what had happened, they leaped—mentally—into the battle. Lasser, already weakened by the unexpected mental blow from Houston, lost consciousness when the others let loose their blasts because his mind was still linked with Houston's, and he absorbed a great deal of the mental energy meant for Houston's brain.

Houston, fully warned by now, held up a denial wall which screened his mind from the worst that Sager and Pederson could put out, but he knew he couldn't hold out for long.

"Come in—now!" he said hoarsely into the microphone.

"Stupid swine!" Sager susurrated sibilantly.

Pederson said nothing aloud, but his brain was blazing with fear and hatred. His gun hand jerked towards a holster under his arm. Lasser was still crumpling towards the floor.

The entire action had taken less than a second.

Houston tried to fire again with his stun gun, but it required every bit of concentration he could sum up to hold off the combined mental assaults of Sager and Pederson.

But they, too, were at somewhat of a disadvantage. In order to keep all their efforts concentrated on the PD policeman, both Controllers had to refrain from putting too much attention on their bodily motions. Pederson was still fumbling for his gun, and Sager hadn't yet started for his.

Lasser barely touched the floor before his consciousness began to return. The resulting fraction of a second of mental static afforded Houston a brief respite; it disturbed Pederson just as he was getting his fingers on the butt of his weapon.

Both Controllers were focusing their mental energies on Houston's brain, and during the brief respite, Houston made one vital mental adjustment. He allowed both thought-probes to fuse in a small part of his consciousness. They went through him and lashed back at the two Controllers.

Both of them had had their minds tuned to Houston's, and in that instant they found they, were also attuned to each other.

The resultant of the energy was shocking to Houston, but it was infinitely worse for Sager and Pederson, since neither of them had been expecting it. Pederson, who had already been slightly distracted, got the major brunt of the force. He managed to jerk his gun free, but his brain was already lapsing into unconsciousness.

Houston's fingers tightened on his own weapon. It fired once at Lasser, who was trying to lift himself from the floor. Then it swept up and coughed again, dropping Pederson. His pistol barked once, sending a singing ricochet along the hall.

Sager, who had staggered to one side when he and Pederson had short-circuited each other, had time to get behind the protection of the office door. He couldn't close it because Lasser's and Pederson's inert forms blocked the doorway, but at least it afforded protection against Houston's stun gun.

His thought came through to Houston: So the stupid Normals have a Controller working for them! Traitor!

You're the traitor, Houston thought coldly. You and your megalomaniac friends. It's madmen like you who have made telepaths hated and feared by the Normals.

And so they should hate and fear us, came the snarling mental answer. Within a few generations, we will have supplanted them. We will control Earth—not they.

The exchange had only taken a fraction of a second. Houston was already charging toward the open door, hoping to get inside before Sager could reach a weapon.

You call me a traitor, Houston thought, but you have been framing innocent Controllers, putting them into the hands of the PD Police.

That's a lie! the reply came hotly. We would never betray another telepath to the stupid Normals! If a telepath were so bullheaded as to get in our way, we'd dispose of him. But it would be Controller justice; we wouldn't turn him over to animals!

In one blazing moment, Houston realized that the Controller was telling the truth!

No mental communication can be expressed properly in words. In, behind, and around each statement, other,