Stop Look and Dig | Page 5

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