hat you tell them off," snapped James. He turned on his
heel and left, heading for the cellar. In the workshop he found Professor
White and Jack Cowling presiding over the machine. In the chair with the
headset on sat the crowning insult of all:

Paul Brennan leafing through a heavy sheaf of papers, reading and
intoning the words of political oratory.

Unable to lick them, Brennan had joined them--or, wondered young Holden,
was Judge Norman L. Carter paying for Brennan's silence with some plum of
political patronage?

* * * * *

As he stood there, the years of persecution rose strong in the mind of
James Holden. Brennan, the man who'd got away with murder and would
continue to get away with it because there was no shred of evidence, no
witness, nothing but James Holden's knowledge of Brennan's actions when
he'd thought himself unseen in his calloused treatment of James Holden's
dying mother; Brennan's critical inspection of the smashed body of his
father, coldly checking the dead flesh to be sure beyond doubt; the cruel
search about the scene of the 'accident' for James himself--interrupted
only by the arrival of a Samaritan, whose name was never known to James
Holden. In James rose the violent resentment of the years, the certain
knowledge that any act of revenge upon Paul Brennan would be viewed as
cold-blooded premeditated murder without cause or motive.

And then came the angry knowledge that simple slaughter was too good for
Paul Brennan. He was not a dog to be quickly released from misery by a
merciful death. Paul Brennan should suffer until he cried for death as a
blessed release from daily living.

James Holden, angry, silently, unseen by the preoccupied workers,
stole across the room to the main switch-panel, flipped up a small
half-concealed cover, and flipped a small button.

There came a sharp _Crack_! that shattered the silence and
re-echoed again and again through the room. The panel that held the
repeater-circuit of the Holden Educator bulged outward; jets of smoke
lanced out of broken metal, bulged corners, holes and skirled into little
clouds that drifted upward--trailing a flowing billow of thick, black,
pungent smoke that reached the low ceiling and spread outward, fanwise,
obscuring the ceiling like a low-lying nimbus.

At the sound of the report, the man in the chair jumped as if he'd been
stabbed where he sat.

"Ouyeowwww!" yowled Brennan in a pitiful ululat