Public's treasures should be more secure than visible, never
questioned Lonnie's doing good to so much Art.

Thus, nowadays, nobody did anything but accept Lonnie. Except Jason. And
he, perforce, took out his disgust not on hounding the sacrosanct
Lonnie, but on that crackpot, mumchance, captive genius of Physlab Nine.
With the result that, late in 2007, Pol-Anx had an electronic
servo-tracer.

Pending construction of sufficient hundreds of thousands more for full
Anx use, Jason swore Lab Nine to secrecy and installed the pilot model
in his own office. He had enough authority for that.

It was a hellishly unbuildable and deceptively simple gadget, that
tracer. Simply tune it in on the encephalo-aura, the brain wave pattern
of any individual ... and monitor. It never let go until deliberately
switched off by the operator. It tracked; pinpointed the subject
accurately up to twenty thousand miles. It stopped humming and started
panting in proportionately ascending decibels when the subject became
tense, nervous, afraid. It also directed pocket-sized trackers of its
own Damoclean beam. It made it a cinch to gather in known criminals in
the very midst of their first subsequent flagrante delicto.

Jason latched the servo-tracer on Lonnie and settled down to wait.

At 10 p.m., local mean time, January 25, 2008, the tracer hiccupped and,
all by itself, _went to sleep_!

Jason blinked. Jiggled the gadget. Swore. Either the gadget was haywire
or Lonnie was up to something, and, as usual, was making a--

Jason bawled for four reliable squad men he'd mentally selected before.
If he could find Lonnie--catch Lonnie in actual performance of an
act--then Commissioner or no Commissioner, Executive Level or no
Executive Level...!

He roared from Pol-Anx with the men, past the flank of Government Fane,
across the Park and around the bulk of Raichi Museum to Lonnie's mansion
in its shadow. Leaped from the gyro-van, sweeping his men out into a fan
for the neighborhood.

Nothing. Placid. Tree-shadowed, lawn-swept streets, ebony and silver in
the light the moon reflected from solar space.

He'd missed. Too late. Lonnie was gone ... or was he?

Jason didn't give himself time to think; his men time to get even a
momentary hesitation started. He shoved his thumb hard against the door
chimes and his shield under the butler's nose.

Yes, Mr. Raichi was at home. Then, after an interval nicely calculated
to allow Jason to feel how acu