earch for him."

"Results?"

"He escaped into the Albertine Mountain Range last night. It'll be
hard to find him. We must expect him to be loose for another
forty-eight hours. It'll take that long for us to arrange the
annihilation of the range area. Perhaps a trifle longer. And
meanwhile--"

"Ready, Commissioner," Kaplan interrupted. "The new totals."

The SRB machines had finished factoring the new data. Reinhart and
Sherikov hurried to take their places before the view windows.

For a moment nothing happened. Then odds were put up, locking in
place.

Sherikov gasped. 99-2. In favor of Terra. "That's wonderful! Now we--"

The odds vanished. New odds took their places. 97-4. In favor of
Centaurus. Sherikov groaned in astonished dismay. "Wait," Reinhart
said to him. "I don't think they'll last."

The odds vanished. A rapid series of odds shot across the screen, a
violent stream of numbers, changing almost instantly. At last the
machines became silent.

Nothing showed. No odds. No totals at all. The view windows were
blank.

"You see?" Reinhart murmured. "The same damn thing!"

Sherikov pondered. "Reinhart, you're too Anglo-Saxon, too impulsive.
Be more Slavic. This man will be captured and destroyed within two
days. You said so yourself. Meanwhile, we're all working night and day
on the war effort. The warfleet is waiting near Proxima, taking up
positions for the attack on the Centaurans. All our war plants are
going full blast. By the time the attack date comes we'll have a
full-sized invasion army ready to take off for the long trip to the
Centauran colonies. The whole Terran population has been mobilized.
The eight supply planets are pouring in material. All this is going on
day and night, even without odds showing. Long before the attack comes
this man will certainly be dead, and the machines will be able to show
odds again."

Reinhart considered. "But it worries me, a man like that out in the
open. Loose. A man who can't be predicted. It goes against science.
We've been making statistical reports on society for two centuries. We
have immense files of data. The machines are able to predict what each
person and group will do at a given time, in a given situation. But
this man is beyond all prediction. He's a variable. It's contrary to
science."

"The indeterminate particle."

"What's that?"

"The particle that moves in such a way that we can't predict what
position it will occupy at a given seco