“You’re rushed? Come try my forty-eight-hour day. I’ll make it brief. Do you still think you are going to have something for us? I don’t mind the expensive equipment you’ve got tied up; I can overhead that. But business is business—and I have to pay three full crews just to stand by for your signal. union     rules—you know how it is. I want to do you any favor I can. We’ve used lots of your script in the past and we expect to use still more in the future—but I’m beginning to wonder what I’m going to tell our comptroller.”

Harshaw stared at him. “Don’t you think the spot coverage you just got was enough to pay the freight?”

“What spot coverage?”

A few minutes later Harshaw said good-by and switched off, having been convinced that New Word Networks had seen nothing of recent events at his home. He stalled off Mackenzie’s questions about it, because he was dismally certain that a factual recital would simply convince Mackenzie that poor old Harshaw had at last gone to pieces. Nor could Harshaw have blamed him.

Instead they agreed that, if nothing worth picking up happened in the next twenty-four hours, New World could break the linkage and remove their cameras and other equipment.

As the screen cleared Harshaw ordered, “Get Larry. Have him fetch that panic button—Anne probably has it.” He then started making another call, followed it with a third. By the time Larry arrived, Harshaw was convinced that no network had been watching when the Special Service squads attempted to raid his home. It was not necessary to check on whether or not the two dozen “hold” messages that he had recorded had been sent; their delivery depended on the same signal that had failed to reach the news channels.

As he turned away from the phone Larry offered him the “panic button” portable radio link. “You wanted this, Boss?”

“I just wanted to sneer at it and see if it sneered back. Larry, let this be a lesson to us: never trust any machinery more complicated than a knife and fork.”

“Okay. Anything else?”

“Larry, is there a way to check that dingus and see if it’s working properly? Without actually hauling three networks out of their beds, I mean?”

“Sure. The techs set up the transceiver down in the shop and it’s got a switch on it for that very purpose. Throw the switch, push the button; a light comes on. To test on through, you simply call ’em, right from the transceiver and tell ’em you want a hot test clear through to the cameras and back to the monitor stations.”

“And suppose the test shows that we aren’t getting through? If the trouble is here, can you spot what’s wrong?”

“Well, I might,” Larry said doubtfully, “if it wasn’t anything more than a loose connection. But Duke is the electron pusher around here—I’m more the intellectual type.”

“I know, son—I’m not too bright about practical matters, either. Well, do the best you can. Let me know.”

“Anything else, Jubal?”

“Yes, if you see the man who invented the wheel, send him up; I want to give him a piece of my mind. Meddler!”

Jubal spent the next few minutes in umbilical contemplation. He considered the possibility, that Duke had sabotaged the “panic button” but rejected the thought as time wasting, if not unworthy. He allowed himself to wonder for a moment just what had really happened down in his garden and how the lad had done it—from ten feet under water. For he had no doubt that the Man from Mars had been behind those impossible shenanigans.

Admittedly, what he had seen only the day before in this very room was just as intellectually stupefying as these later events—but the emotional impact was something else. A mouse was as much a miracle of biology as was an elephant; nevertheless there was an important difference—an elephant was bigger.

To see an empty carton, just rubbish, disappear in mid-air logically implied the possibility that a squad car full of men could vanish in the same fashion. But one event kicked your teeth in—the other didn’t.

Well, he wasn’t going to waste tears on those Cossacks. Jubal conceded that cops qua cops were all right; he had met a number of honest cops in his life . . . and even a fee-splitting village constable did not deserve to be snuffed out like a candle. The Coast Guard was a fine example of what cops ought to be and frequently were.

But to be a member of the S.S. squads a man had to have larceny in his heart and sadism in his soul. Gestapo. Storm troopers in the service of whatever politico was in power. Jubal longed for the good old days when a lawyer could cite the Bill of Rights and not have some over-riding Federation trickery defeat him.