ng something! Don't you see?"

He didn't, but there was no convincing either the Group or Dorrine. She
was passionately interested in the recruiting work she was doing, and
she thought that the Group was the answer to every Controller's
troubles.

And then she had rushed back to England. "I'll be back soon, Dave,"
she'd said. "I think I have a lead on a girl in Liverpool."

So far, the girl hadn't been found. Controllers didn't like to give
themselves away to anyone, so they kept a tight screen up most of the
time.

It seemed as though everyone on Earth was in deadly fear all the time.
The Normals feared losing their identities to Controllers, and the
Controllers feared death at the hands of the Normals.

And death or the Penal Cluster were their only choices if they were
discovered.

Houston worried about the risks Dorrine was taking, but there was
nothing he could do. She was doing what she thought was right, just as
he was; how could he argue with that?

Houston went on with his job, putting together facts and rumors and
statistical data analysis, searching out his quarry.

And, at the end of the eighth week, everything blew high, wide, and
hellish.

* * * * *

It was late evening. A cool wind blew over New York, bringing with it a
hint of the rain to come. Church Street, in lower Manhattan, was not
crowded, as it had been in the late afternoon, but neither was it
entirely deserted. The cafes and bars did a lively business, but the
tall, many-colored office buildings gaped at the street with blind and
darkened eyes. Only a few of the windows glowed whitely with fluorescent
illumination.

In one of the small coffee shops, David Houston sat, smoking a cigarette
and stirring idly at a cup of cooling coffee.

Across the street was the Lasser Building; high up on the sixtieth
floor, a whole suite of offices was brightly lit. The rest of the
building was clothed in blackness.

Who was up there in that suite? Houston wasn't quite sure. He had
narrowed his list of suspects down to three men: John Sager, Loris
Pederson, and Norcross Lasser, three top officials in the company. Sager
and Pederson were both vice-presidents of the firm; Sager was in charge
of the Foreign Exports department, while Pederson handled the actual
shipping. Lasser, by virtue of being the grandson of the man who had
founded the firm, was president of Lasser & Sons, Inc.

Lasser seemed like a poor choice a