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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Stop Look and Dig by George O. Smith
+
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no
+restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under
+the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or
+online at http://www.gutenberg.org/license
+
+
+
+Title: Stop Look and Dig
+
+Author: George O. Smith
+
+Release Date: November 29, 2006 [Ebook #19963]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STOP LOOK AND DIG***
+
+
+
+
+
+Stop Look and Dig
+
+
+by George O. Smith
+
+
+
+
+Edition 1, (November 29, 2006)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+STOP LOOK AND DIG
+
+
+BY GEORGE O. SMITH
+
+ILLUSTRATED BY SMITH
+
+
+    The enlightened days of mental telepathy and ESP should have made
+    the world a better place, But the minute the Rhine Institute
+    opened up, all the crooks decided it was time to go collegiate!
+
+
+Someone behind me in the dark was toting a needle-ray. The impression came
+through so strong that I could almost read the filed-off serial number of
+the thing, but the guy himself I couldn’t dig at all. I stopped to look
+back but the only sign of life I could see was the fast flick of taxicab
+lights as they crossed an intersection about a half mile back. I stepped
+into a doorway so that I could think and stay out of the line of fire at
+the same time.
+
+The impression of the needle-ray did not get any stronger, and that tipped
+me off. The bird was following me. He was no peace-loving citizen because
+honest men do not cart weapons with the serial numbers filed off.
+Therefore the character tailing me was a hot papa with a burner charge
+labelled "Steve Hammond" in his needler.
+
+I concentrated, but the only impression I could get would have specified
+ninety-eight men out of a hundred anywhere. He was shorter than my
+six-feet-two and lighter than my one-ninety. I could guess that he was
+better looking. I’d had my features arranged by a blocked drop kick the
+year before the National Football League ruled the Rhine Institute out
+because of our use of mentals and perceptives. I gave up trying--I wanted
+details and not an overall picture of a hotbird carrying a burner.
+
+I wondered if I could make a run for it.
+
+I let my sense of perception dig the street ahead, casing every bump and
+irregularity. I passed places where I could zig out to take cover in front
+of telephone poles, and other places where I could zag in to take cover
+beyond front steps and the like. I let my perception run up the block and
+by the time I got to the end of my range, I knew that block just as well
+as if I’d made a practise run in the daytime.
+
+At this point I got a shock. The hot papa was coming up the sidewalk hell
+bent for destruction. He was a mental sensitive, and he had been following
+my thoughts while my sense of perception made its trial run up the street.
+He was running like the devil to catch up with my mind and burn it down
+per schedule. It must have come as quite a shock to him when he realized
+that while the mind he was reading was running like hell up the street,
+the hard old body was standing in the doorway waiting for him.
+
+I dove out of my hiding place as he came close. I wanted to tackle him
+hard and ask some pointed questions. He saw me as I saw him skidding to an
+unbalanced stop, and there was the dull glint of metal in his right hand.
+His needle-ray came swinging up and I went for my armpit. I found time to
+curse my own stupidity for not having hardware in my own fist at the
+moment. But then I had my rod in my fist. I felt the hot scorch of the
+needle going off just over my shoulder, and then came the godawful racket
+of my ancient forty-five. The big slug caught him high in the belly and
+tossed him back. It folded him over and dropped him in the gutter while
+the echoes of my cannon were still racketing back and forth up and down
+the quiet street.
+
+
+
+I had just enough time to dig his wallet, pockets, and billfold before the
+whole neighborhood was up and out. Sirens howled in the distance and from
+above I could hear the thin wail of a jetcopter. Someone opened a window
+and called: "What’s going on out there? Cut it out!"
+
+                              [Illustration]
+
+"Tea party," I called back. "Go invite the cops, Tommy."
+
+The window slammed down again. He didn’t have to invite the law. It
+arrived in three ground cruisers and two jetcopter emergency squads that
+came closing in like a collapsing balloon.
+
+The leader of the squadron was a Lieutenant Williamson whom I’d never met
+before. But he knew all about me before the ’copter hit the ground. I
+could almost feel his sense of perception frisking me from the skin
+outward, going through my wallet and inspecting the Private Operator’s
+license and my Weapon-Permit. I found out later that Williamson was a
+Rhine Scholar with a Bachelor’s Degree in Perception, which put him head
+and shoulders over me. He came to the point at once.
+
+"Any ideas about this, Hammond?"
+
+I shook my head. "Nope," I replied. He looked at one of his men.
+
+The other man nodded. "He’s levelling," he said.
+
+"Now look, Hammond," said the lieutenant pointedly, "You’re clean and we
+know it. But hot papas don’t go out for fun. Why was he trying to burn
+you?"
+
+"I wouldn’t know. I’m as blank as any perceptive when it comes to reading
+minds. I was hoping to collect him whole enough to ask questions, but he
+forced my hand." I looked to where some of the clean-up squad were tucking
+the corpse into a basket. "It was one of the few times I’d have happily
+swapped my perception for the ability to read a mind."
+
+The lieutenant nodded unhappily. "Mind telling me why you were wandering
+around in this neighborhood? You don’t belong here, you know."
+
+"I was doing the job that most private eyes do. I was tailing a gent who
+was playing games off the reservation."
+
+"You’ve gone into this guy’s wallet, of course?"
+
+I nodded. "Sure. He _was_ Peter Rambaugh, age thirty, and----"
+
+"Don’t bother. I know the rest. I can add only one item that you may not
+know. Rampaugh was a paid hotboy, suspected of playing with Scarmann’s
+mob."
+
+"I’ve had no dealings with Scarmann, Lieutenant."
+
+
+
+The Lieutenant nodded absently. It seemed to be a habit with him, probably
+to cover up his thinking-time. Finally he said, "Hammond, you’re clean. As
+soon as I identified you I took a dig of your folder at headquarters.
+You’re a bit rough and fast on that prehistoric cannon of yours, but----"
+
+"You mean you can dig a folder at central files all the way from here?"
+
+"I did."
+
+Here was a _real_ esper for you. I’ve got a range of about two blocks for
+good, solid, permanent things like buildings and street-car tracks, but
+unfamiliar things get foggy at about a half a block. I can dig lethal
+machinery coming in my direction for about a block and a half because I’m
+a bit sensitive about such things. I looked at Lieutenant Williamson and
+said, "With a range like yours, how come there’s any crime in this town at
+all?"
+
+He shook his head slowly. "Crime doesn’t out until it’s committed," he
+said. "You’ll remember how fast we got here after you pulled the trigger.
+But you’re clean, Hammond. Just come to the inquest and tell all."
+
+"I can go?"
+
+"You can go. But just to keep you out of any more trouble, I’ll have one
+of the jetcopters drop you off at home. Mind?"
+
+"Nope. But isn’t that more than the police are used to doing?"
+
+He eyed me amusedly. "If I were a mental," he said, "I could read your
+mind and know that you were forming the notion of calling on Scarmann and
+asking him what-for. But since I’m only a mind-blank esper, all I can do
+is to fall back on experience and guesswork. Do I make myself clear?"
+
+Lieutenant Williamson’s guess-work and experience were us good as mental
+sensitivity, but I didn’t think it wise to admit that I had been
+considering just exactly how to get to Scarmann. I was quickly and firmly
+convoyed home in a jetcopter but once I saw them take off I walked out of
+the apartment again.
+
+I had more or less tacitly agreed not to go looking for Scarmann, but I
+had not mentioned taking a dig at the apartment of the dear departed,
+Peter Rambaugh.
+
+
+
+Rambaugh’s place was uptown and the front door was protected by an eight
+tumbler cylinder job that would have taxed the best of esper lockpicks.
+But there was a service entrance in back that was not locked and I took
+it. The elevator was a self-service job, and Rambaugh’s back door was
+locked on a snaplatch that a playful kitten could have opened. I dug the
+place for a few minutes and found it clean, so I went in and took a more
+careful look.
+
+The desk was not particularly interesting. Just papers and letters and
+unpaid bills. The dresser in the bedroom was the same, excepting for the
+bottom drawer. That was filled with a fine collection of needle-rays and
+stunguns and one big force blaster that could blow a hole in a brick wall.
+None of them had their serial numbers intact.
+
+But behind a reproduction of a Gainsborough painting was a wall safe that
+must have been built before Rhine Institute discovered the key to man’s
+latent abilities. Inside of this tin can was a collection of photographs
+that must have brought Rambaugh a nice sum in the months when the murder
+business went slack. I couldn’t quite dig them clear because I didn’t know
+any of the people involved, and I didn’t try too hard because there were
+some letters and notes that might lead me into the answer to why Rambaugh
+was hotburning for me.
+
+I fiddled with the dial for about fifteen minutes, watching the tumblers
+and the little wheels go around. Then it went click and I turned the
+handle and opened the door. I was standing there with both hands deep in
+Rambaugh’s safe when I heard a noise behind me.
+
+
+
+I whirled and slid aside all in one motion and my hand streaked for my
+armpit and came out with the forty five. It was a woman and she was
+carrying nothing more lethal than the fountain pen in her purse. She
+blanched when she saw my forty-five swinging towards her middle, but she
+took a deep breath when I halted it in midair.
+
+"I didn’t mean to startle you," she apologized.
+
+"Startle, hell!" I blurted. "You scared me out of my shoes."
+
+I dug her purse. Beside the usual female junk she had a wallet containing
+a couple of charge-account plates, a driver’s license, and a hospital
+card, all made out to Miss Martha Franklin. Miss Franklin was about
+twenty-four, and she was a strawberry blonde with the pale skin and blue
+eyes that goes with the hair. I gathered that she didn’t belong there any
+more than I did.
+
+"I don’t, Mr. Hammond," she said.
+
+So Martha Franklin was a mental sensitive.
+
+"I am," she told me. "That’s how I came to be here."
+
+"I’m esper. You’ll have to explain in words of one syllable because I
+can’t read you."
+
+"I was not far away when you cut loose with that field-piece of yours,"
+she said flatly. "So I read your intention to come here. I’ve been
+following you at mental range ever since."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because there is something in that safe I want very much."
+
+I looked at her again. She did not look the type to get into awkward
+situations. She colored slightly and said, "One indiscretion doesn’t make
+a tramp, Mr. Hammond."
+
+I nodded. "Want it intact or burned?" I asked.
+
+"Burned, please," she said, smiling weakly at me for my intention. I
+smiled back.
+
+On my way to Rambaugh’s bedroom I dug the rest of the thug’s safe but
+there wasn’t anything there that would give me an inkling of why he was
+gunning for me. I came back with one of his needle-rays and burned the
+contents of the safe to a black char. I stirred up the ashes with the nose
+of the needier and then left it in the safe after wiping it clean on my
+handkerchief.
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Hammond," she said quietly. "Maybe I can answer your
+question. Rambaugh was probably after you because of me."
+
+"Huh?"
+
+"I’ve been paying Rambaugh blackmail for about four years. This morning I
+decided to stop it, and looked your name up in the telephone book.
+Rambaugh must have read me do it."
+
+"Ever think of the police?" I suggested.
+
+"Of course. But that is just as bad as not paying off. You end up all over
+the front pages anyway. You know that."
+
+"There’s a lot of argument on both sides," I supposed. "But let’s finish
+this one over a bar. We’re crowding our luck here. In the eyes of the law
+we’re just a couple of nasty break-ins."
+
+"Yes," she said simply.
+
+
+
+We left Rambaugh’s apartment together and I handed Martha into my car and
+took off.
+
+It struck me as we were driving that mental sensitivity was a good thing
+in spite of its limitations. A woman without mental training might have
+every right to object to visiting a bachelor apartment at two o’clock in
+the morning. But I had no firm plans for playing up to Martha Franklin; I
+really wanted to talk this mess out and get it squared away. This she
+could read, so I was saved the almost-impossible task of trying to
+convince an attractive woman that I really had no designs upon her
+beautiful white body. I was not at all cold to the idea, but Martha did
+not seem to be the pushover type.
+
+"Thank you, Steve," she said.
+
+"Thanks for nothing," I told her with a short laugh. "Them’s my
+sentiments."
+
+"I like your sentiments. That’s why I’m here, and maybe we can get our
+heads together and figure something out."
+
+I nodded and went back to my driving, feeling pretty good now.
+
+A man does not dig his own apartment. He expects to find it the way he
+left it. He digs in the mailbox on his way towards it, and he may dig in
+his refrigerator to see whether he should stop for beer or whatever else,
+because these things save steps. But nobody really expects to find trouble
+in his own home, especially when he is coming in at three o’clock in the
+morning with a good looking woman.
+
+They were smart enough to come with nothing deadly in their hands. So I
+had no warning until they stepped out from either side of my front door
+and lifted me into my living room by the elbows. They hurled me into an
+easy chair with a crash. When I stopped bouncing, one of the gorillas was
+standing in front of me, about as tall as Washington Monument as seen from
+the sidewalk in front. He was looking at my forty-five with careful
+curiosity.
+
+"What gives?" I demanded.
+
+The crumb in front of me leaned down and gave me a back-and-forth that
+yanked my head around. I didn’t say anything, but I thought how I’d like
+to meet the buzzard in a dark alley with my gun in my fist.
+
+Martha said, "They’re friends of Rambaugh, Steve. And they’re a little
+afraid of that prehistoric cannon you carry."
+
+The bird in front of Martha gave her a one-two across the face. That was
+enough for me. I came up out of my chair, lifting my fist from the floor
+and putting my back and thigh muscles behind it. It should have taken his
+head off, but all he did was grunt, stagger back, dig his heels in, and
+then come back at me with his head down. I chopped at the bridge of his
+nose but missed and almost broke my hand on his hard skull. Then the other
+guy came charging in and I flung out a side-chop with my other hand and
+caught him on the wrist.
+
+But Rhine training can’t do away with the old fact that two big tough men
+can wipe the floor with one big tough man. I didn’t even take long enough
+to muss up my furniture.
+
+I had the satisfaction of mashing a nose and cracking my hand against a
+skull again before the lights went out. When I came back from Mars, I was
+sitting on a kitchen chair facing a corner. My wrists and ankles were
+taped to the arms and legs of the chair.
+
+I dug around. They had Martha taped to another chair in the opposite
+corner, and the two gorillas were standing in the middle of the room,
+obviously trying to think.
+
+So was I. There was something that smelled about this mess. Peter Rambaugh
+was a mental, and he should have been sensitive enough to keep his take
+low enough so that it wouldn’t drive Martha into thinking up ways and
+means of getting rid of him. Even so, he shouldn’t have been gunning for
+me, unless there was a lot more to this than I could dig.
+
+"What gives?" I asked sourly.
+
+
+
+There was no answer. The thug with my forty-five took out the clip and
+removed a couple of slugs.
+
+He went into the kitchen and found my pliers and came back teasing one of
+the slugs out of its casing. The other bird lit a cigarette.
+
+The bird with the cartridge poured the powder from the shell into the palm
+of my hand. I knew what was coming but I couldn’t wiggle my fingers much,
+let alone turn my hand over to dump out the stuff. The other guy planted
+the end of the cigarette between my middle fingers and I had to squeeze
+hard to keep the hot end up. My fingers began to ache almost immediately,
+and I was beginning to imagine the flash of flame and the fierce wave of
+pain that would strike when my tired hand lost its pep and let the
+cigarette fall into that little mound of powder.
+
+"Stop it," said Martha. "Stop it!"
+
+"What do they want?" I gritted.
+
+"They won’t think it," she cried.
+
+The bright red on the end of the cigarette grayed with ash and I began to
+wonder how long it would be before a fleck of hot ash would fall. How long
+it would take for the ash to grow long and top-heavy and then to fall into
+the powder. And whether or not the ash would be hot enough to touch it
+off. I struggled to keep my hands steady, but they were trembling. I felt
+the cigarette slip a bit and clamped down tight again with my aching
+fingers.
+
+Martha pleaded again: "Stop it! Let us know what you want and we’ll do
+it."
+
+"Anything," I promised rashly.
+
+
+
+Even if I managed to hold that deadly fuse tight, it would eventually burn
+down to the bitter end. Then there would be a flash, and I’d probably
+never hold my hand around a gun butt again. I’d have to go looking for
+this pair of lice with my gun in my left. If they didn’t try the same
+trick on my other hand. I tried to shut my mind on that notion but it was
+no use. It slipped. But the chances were that this pair of close-mouthed
+hotboys had considered that idea before.
+
+"Can you dig ’em Martha?"
+
+"Yes, but not deep enough. They’re both concentrating on that cigarette
+and making mental bets when it will--"
+
+
+
+Her voice trailed off. A wisp of ash had dropped and my mental howl must
+have been loud enough to scorch their minds. It was enough to stop Martha,
+at any rate. But the wisp of ash was cold and nothing happened except my
+spine got coldly wet and sweat ran down my face and into my mouth. The
+palm of my hand was sweating too, but not enough to wet the little pile of
+powder.
+
+"Look," I said in a voice that sounded like a nutmeg grater, "Rambaugh was
+a louse and he tried to kill me first. If it’s revenge you want--why not
+let’s talk it over?"
+
+"They don’t care what you did to Rambaugh," said Martha.
+
+"They didn’t come here to practice torture," I snapped. "They want
+something big. And the only guy I know mixed up with Peter Rambaugh is
+Scarmann, himself."
+
+"Scarmann?" blurted Martha.
+
+Scarmann was a big shot who lived in a palace about as lush as the Taj
+Mahal, in the middle of a fenced-in property big enough to keep him out of
+the mental range of most peepers. Scarmann was about as big a louse as
+they came but nobody could put a finger on him because he managed to keep
+himself as clean as a raygunned needle. I was expecting a clip on the
+skull for thinking the things I was thinking about Scarmann, but it did
+not come. These guys were used to having people think violence at their
+boss. I thought a little harder. Maybe if I made ’em mad enough one of
+them would belt me on the noggin and put me out, and then I’d be cold when
+that cigarette fell into the gunpowder and ruined my hand.
+
+I made myself a firm, solid promise that if, as, and when I got out of
+this fix I would find Scarmann, shove the nose of my automatic down his
+throat through his front teeth and empty the clip out through the top of
+his head.
+
+Then the hotboy behind me lifted the cigarette from my fingers very gently
+and squibbed it out in the ashtray, and I got the pitch.
+
+
+
+This is the way it is done in these enlightened days. Rhine Institute and
+the special talents that Rhine developed should and could have made the
+world a better, brighter place to live in. But I’ve heard it said and had
+it proved that the minute someone comes up with something good, there are
+a lot of buzzards who turn it bad and make it a foul, rotten medium for
+their lousy way of life.
+
+No, in these days of mental telepathy and extra sensory perception, crumbs
+do not erase other crumbs. They just grab some citizen and put him in a
+box until he is ready to do their dirty work for them.
+
+Guilt? That would be mine. A crime is a crime and the guy who does it is a
+criminal, no matter how he justifies his act of violence.
+
+The truth? Any court mentalist who waded through that pair of unwashed
+minds would find no evidence of any open deal with Steve Hammond. Sure, he
+would find violence there, but the Court is more than well aware of the
+fact that thinking of an act of violence is not illegal. This Rhine
+training has been too recent to get the human race trained into the
+niceties of polite mental behavior. Sure, they’d get a few months or maybe
+a few years for breaking and entering as well as assault, but after all,
+they were friends of Rambaugh and this might well be a matter of
+retaliation, even though they thought Rambaugh was an incompetent bungler.
+
+So if Steve Hammond believed that he could go free with a whole hand by
+planning to rub out a man named Scarmann, that would be Steve Hammond’s
+crime, not theirs.
+
+They didn’t take any chances, even though I knew that they could read my
+mind well enough to know that I would go through with their nasty little
+scheme. They hustled Martha into the kitchen, chair and all, and one of
+them stood there with my paring knife touching her soft throat enough to
+indent the skin but not enough to draw blood. The other rat untaped me and
+stood me on my feet.
+
+I hurt all over from the pasting I’d taken, so I took a boiling shower and
+dressed leisurely. The guy handed me my forty-five, all loaded, as I came
+out of the bathroom. The other bird hadn’t moved a muscle out in the
+kitchen. His knife was still pressing against Martha’s throat. He was
+still standing pat when I passed out of esper range on the street below.
+
+
+
+In pre-Rhine days, a citizen in my pinch would holler for the cops because
+he couldn’t be sure that the crooks would keep their end of the bargain.
+But Rhine training has produced a real "Honor Among Thieves" so that
+organized crime can run as fast as organized justice. If I kept my end and
+they didn’t keep theirs, the word would get around from their own dirty
+minds that they couldn’t keep a bargain. Well, I was going to keep mine
+for the same reason, even though I am not a thief.
+
+That’s the way it’s done these days. You get a good esper like me to knock
+off a sharp mental operator like Scarmann.
+
+The trouble was that I didn’t really want Scarmann, I wanted that pair of
+mental sadists up in my apartment who were holding a knife against
+Martha’s throat. I wanted them, and I wanted Martha Franklin’s skin to be
+happily whole. And if I crossed them now, the only guys that wouldn’t play
+ball with me in the future would be the crooks. Them I could do without.
+
+So if they figured that an esper could take a mental like Scarmann, why
+couldn’t an esper take the pair of them?
+
+All I had to do was to think of something else until I could get my hands
+on their throats. Sure, they’d follow my mind as soon as they felt my
+mental waves within range, but if I could really find something
+interesting enough to occupy my attention--and maybe theirs as well--they
+could not identify me.
+
+So I went back into the lobby of my apartment and dug into the mailbox of
+another party, thus identifying myself as the man in three eight four.
+Then I punched the elevator button for the Fourth and leaned back against
+the elevator and let my mind wander up through the apartments above.
+
+
+
+I violated all the laws against Esping Toms as the elevator oozed upwards.
+Eventually my sense of perception wandered through my own apartment and I
+located her lying on the bed, fully dressed. She’d probably been freed
+lest some esper cop get to wondering why there was a woman taped to a
+chair in a bachelor’s kitchen. I shut my mind like a clam, but I couldn’t
+withdraw my perception too fast. I let it ooze back there like the eyes of
+a lecherous old man at a burleycue.
+
+I left the elevator at the Fourth and walked up the stairs by reflex,
+while my mind was positively radiating waves of vulgarity.
+
+My mind managed to identify her as "The girl on the bed" without thinking
+any name. She was a good looking strawberry blonde with a slender waist
+and a high bosom and long, slender legs. She was wearing a pair of Dornier
+shoes with three inch heels that did things to her ankles. Her nylons were
+size eight and one half, medium length, in that dark shade that always
+gives me ideas. Her dress was a simple thing that did not have a store
+label on it, and so I dug the stitches for a bit and decided that it had
+been hand made. Someone was a fine dress-maker because it fitted her
+slender body perfectly. Her petticoat was store type. It was simple and
+fitted, too, but it had a label from Forresters in the hem. Her bra was a
+Graceform, size thirty two, medium cup, but the girl on the bed did not
+have much need for molding, shaping, uplifting, padding or pretense. She
+was all her and she filled it right to the brim. I let my perception
+dawdle on the slender ankles, the lissome waist, and the rounded hips.
+
+My door key came out by habit-reflex and entered the keyhole while my
+sense of perception let them have one last vicarious thrill. The girl on
+the bed was an honest allover strawberry blonde. She....
+
+
+
+Then the door swung open and hell went out for breakfast.
+
+My forty-five bellowed at the light as I slid in and sloped to one side.
+The room went dark as I dropped to the floor in front of my bookcase. From
+across the room a hitburner seared the door and slashed sidewise, cutting
+a smoking swathe across my encyclopedia from A-AUD to CAN-DAN and then
+came down as I squirmed aside. It took King Lear right out of Shakespeare
+before the beam winked out. It went off just in time to keep me from
+sporting a cooked stripe down my face.
+
+I triggered the automatic again to make a flash in their faces while I dug
+the room to locate them in the dark. The needle beam flared out again and
+drilled a hole in the bookcase behind me. The other guy made a slashing
+motion with his beam to pin me down, but he made a mistake by standing up
+to do it.
+
+I put a slug in his middle that slammed him back against the wall. He hung
+there for a moment before he fell to the floor with a dull, limp sound.
+His needle beam slashed upward and burned the ceiling before his hand went
+limp and let the weapon drop.
+
+I whirled to dig the other guy in the room just as the throb of a stun-gun
+beam moaned over my head. I wondered where they’d got the arsenal, dug the
+serial number, and realized that it was mine. It gave me a chuckle. I’m a
+pistol man, so the stun-gun that old gorilla-man was toting couldn’t have
+had more than one more charge. I tried to dig it but couldn’t. Even a
+Doctor Of Perception can’t really dig the number of kilo-watt-seconds in a
+meson chamber.
+
+My accurate esping must have made the other guy desperate, because he made
+a dive and let his needle ray burn out a slashing beam that zipped across
+over my head. My forty-five blazed twice. He missed but I didn’t, just as
+the throb of the stun-gun rang the air again. I whirled to face my
+stun-gun coming out of the bedroom door in front of Martha Franklin.
+
+
+
+The slug intended for Martha’s body never came out of my gun because her
+stun-gun got to me first. It froze me like a hunk of Greek statuary and I
+went forward and toppled over until I came on a three-point landing of
+elbow, the opposite knee, and the side of my face.
+
+I was as good as dead.
+
+My brain was still functioning but nothing else was. I was completely
+paralyzed. My heart had stopped breathing and my lungs had stopped
+breathing, and I’ve been told that a healthy man can retain consciousness
+for maybe a minute or so without a fresh supply of blood to the brain.
+Then things get muddy black and you’ve had it for good. My esp was still
+functioning, but that would black out with the rest of Steve Hammond.
+
+There was no physical pain. They could have drilled me with a blunt
+two-by-four and I’d not have felt it.
+
+Then because I couldn’t stare Death in the face, I shut my mind on the
+fact and esped my late girl friend. She was standing there with my
+stun-gun in her hand with a smile on her beautiful puss and that vibrant
+body swaying gently. I wanted to vomit and I would have if I’d not been
+frozen solid. That beautiful body presided over by that vicious brain made
+me sick.
+
+Her smile faded as I began to realize the truth. Her story was thin.
+Rambaugh, a mental, would have been able to play his blackmail game to the
+fine degree; he would have known when Martha’s patience was about to grow
+short--if Martha’s story were true. No blackmailer pushed his victim to
+the breaking point. And Rambaugh wouldn’t have gone for me if this had
+just been a plain case of blackmail.
+
+No, by thinking deeply, Martha Franklin had engineered the death of
+Rambaugh and she’d almost engineered the rubbing-out of Scarmann. A
+mental, Martha Franklin. A high-grade mental, capable of controlling her
+thoughts so that her cohorts could be led by the mind into doing her dirty
+work.
+
+My mind chuckled. I’d be gone before they caught up with Martha, but
+they’d catch up all right. She’d leave the apartment positively radiating
+her act of violence and then the cops would have a catch. And you should
+see how a set of Court Mentalists go to work on a guilty party these days.
+Once they get the guy that pulled the trigger on the witness stand, in
+front of a jury consisting of mixed mentals and espers, with no holds
+barred, the court record gets a full load of the killer’s life,
+adventures, habits, and attitude; just before the guilty party heads for
+the readjustment chamber.
+
+
+
+Things were growing blacker. Waves of darkness clouded my mind and I found
+it hard to think straight. My esper sense faded first and as it faded I
+let it run once more over Martha’s attractiveness and found my darkening
+mind wishing that she were the girl I’d believed her to be instead of the
+female louse she was. It could have been fun.
+
+But now I was about to black out from stun-gun paralysis, and Martha was
+headed for the readjustment chamber where they’d reduce her mental
+activity to the level of a menial, sterilize her, and put her to work in
+an occupation that no man or woman with a spark of intelligence, ambition,
+or good sense would take.
+
+She would live and die a half-robot, alone and ignored, her attractiveness
+lost because of her own lack-luster mind.
+
+And I’d been willing to go out and plug Scarmann for her.
+
+Hah!
+
+And then she was at my side. I perceived her dimly, inconstantly, through
+the waves of blackness and unreality that were like the half-dreams that
+we have when lying a-doze. She levered my frozen body over on its hard
+back and went to work on my chest. Her arms went around me and she
+squeezed. Air whooshed into my dead lungs, and then she was beating my
+breastbone black and blue with her small fists. Beat. Beat-beat. Beat. I
+couldn’t feel a thing but I could dig the fact that she was hurting her
+hands as she beat on my chest in a rhythm that matched the beat of her own
+heart.
+
+I dug her own heartbeat for her, and she read my mind and matched the beat
+perfectly.
+
+Then I felt a thump inside of me and dug my own heart. It throbbed once,
+sluggishly. It struggled, slowly. Then it throbbed to the beat of her
+hands and the blackening waves went away. My frozen body relaxed and I
+came down to rest on the floor like a melting lump of sugar.
+
+Martha dropped on top of my body and pressed me down. Her arms were around
+my chest as she forced air into my lungs. She beat my ribs sore when my
+heart faltered, and squeezed me when my breathing slowed. I felt the life
+coming back into me; it came in like the tide, with a fringe of
+needles-and-pins that flowed inward from fingers and toes and scalp.
+
+Martha pressed me down on the carpet and kissed me, full, open mouthed,
+passionate. It stirred my blood and my mind and I took a deep, shuddering
+breath.
+
+I looked up into her soft blue eyes and said, "Thanks--slut!"
+
+She kissed me again, pressing me down and writhing against me and
+obviously getting a kick out of my reaction.
+
+Then I came alive and threw her off with no warning. I sat up, and swung a
+roundhouse right that clipped her on the jaw and sent her rolling over and
+over. Her eyes glazed for a moment but she came out of it and looked
+pained and miserable.
+
+"You promised," she said huskily.
+
+"Promised?"
+
+"To kill Scarmann."
+
+"Yeah?"
+
+"You thought how you’d kill Scarmann for me, Steve."
+
+"Someday," I said flatly, "I may kill Scarmann, but it won’t be for you!"
+
+She tried to claw me but I clipped her again and this time I made it
+stick. She went out cold and she was still out like a frozen herring by
+the time Lieutenant Williamson arrived with his jetcopter squad to take
+her away.
+
+The last time I saw Martha Franklin, she was still trying to convince
+twelve Rhine Scholars and True that any woman with a body as beautiful as
+hers couldn’t possibly have committed any crime. She was good at it, but
+not that good.
+
+Funny. Mental sensitives always think they’re so damn superior  to  anyone
+else.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STOP LOOK AND DIG***
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