The escape plan the contractors were doing reminded me of dear Bugs Bunny. I wondered what hewould do in circumstances similar to mine. I couldn't remember any comparable strip and thinking about it unfortunately brought my thoughts to Heller and the mission.

It was not that I coulddo anything about any situation I was in, it was just that I really ought to be thinking about something. I am not happy with my mind idle. It threatens to dive in the direction of terror if I just let it drift.

Little scraps of the euphoric feeling of being safe on Earth had continued to touch me from time to time. This very morning I had enjoyed such a period and had completed all the administrative details of the magic mailing. Bawtch would not tamper with the orders for it would unbalance his despatch tally slips. If I ever got to Earth, I was assured of regular couriers and intimate news and no complaints from Bawtch if the corners of his forms got wrinkled.

Feeling at a loss for occupation, I recalled the midnight dream I had had. I flinched from it a bit and then knew why. I had not done a dream analysis on it!

At first I had to resolve whether it was a dream or a hallucination. Because there is no way to do a dream analysis on a hallucination, I decided it was a dream. I got to work.

While I worked, I made marks on a piece of paper. It is a trick I picked up from a professor of primitive ethnology. It is called "doodling." It had nothing to do with the dream analysis.

The Devil was, of course, a father figure. This was quite visible. The whips of the patrol craft crew were phallic symbols. Ah, now I was getting somewhere. The torch the father figure had wielded was caused by (bleep) envy. It followed logically that I wanted sexual intercourse with my mother and so hated my father. There! I was done. That dream would never bother me again.

Unfortunately, even with doodles, this dream analysis had occupied no time at all. My command of psychology is too certain and swift. My mind again began to drift into my problems.

Suddenly, I was gripped by a premonition of horror to come! The patrol craft! I had been back and forth across the Great Desert several times and I had not noticed any wreck! With near terror, I wondered what had happened to the crew. If those spacers got loose, if the Fleet got word of their kidnap, the duress I had undergone at the officers' club would be nothing!

I hit buzzers. Even though he was sullen, a clerk found me recent newssheet files and I tore through them. No faintest mention of a wrecked patrol craft!

What had happened? Had the Commander of the 2nd Death Battalion, whose men had been placed aboard, sold the ship and crew to smugglers? The Fleet guarded planets against smuggling. What if they intercepted their own ship? It would be enough to start a civil war and I would be in the middle of it!

I made myself fight down the surging horror. Psychology teaches you how to do that. You count slowly. That always works. But by the time I got to twenty, I leaped up and started pacing. I bumped into a workman who, in his powder blue cover suit, looked like the craftleader in the dream.

Shaking, I sat down so as to not call attention to myself and so I could press my hands on the desk top and mask their shaking.

I forced myself to go back over the dream again. The craftleader in it had said, "Sir, we absolutely will not tell him unless we are very generously bribed." Aha! The operative word was "bribed." More clues. The Devil had gone away only when given counterfeit money! Bribed!

Then, with deep probing insight, gritting my teeth so as not to flinch, I realized that all those people in that dream thought I knew something I did not know. What was it?

I also knew they wanted to be bribed.

I went over it again. In a flash, I realized that the patrol crew knew something about Heller. Why not? They had spent fifteen weeks with him!

Bribed?

Yes, but I did not know if they had ever really reached Spiteos.

And furthermore I had no money to do any bribing!

I held my hands so tightly together the knuckles were bone white. That was one way to steady my nerves. I had to think!

Death Battalion. That rang a bell somewhere.

Then I remembered the part in the dream about bribing the Devil with counterfeitmoney.

Suddenly I laughed. My subconscious mind had been repressed by my censor. Deep in the primordial reptile brain which every sentient person has, I had worked it all out already! Because of a normal fear of erotic self-gratification, I had just not let myself know about it.

Although I had been afraid to go out, I was now more afraid to stay in.

I worked out an elaborate charade to account for my trip. I would tell Bawtch I was going hunting. This is my one extravagance: hunting trips. I like to kill small songbirds. One is likely to go anywhere to do that and nobody could trace me.

I got my hunting gear out of my office closet and with great nonchalance, sauntered out of the office, the game bag and needle blastrifle prominently displayed.

"Tell anybody who calls that I've gone hunting to recover my health," I said loudly to Bawtch as I passed his cubicle.

"Good riddance," I heard him mutter. And I knew my ruse had worked.

PART SEVEN

Chapter 1

The airbus was all cleaned out and polished up-Fleet cleaning materials. The driver had on a new uniform – he had even bathed. Heller's influence, (bleep) him. I felt a twinge in my stomach.

"Glad you're better," said the driver.

I know sneers when I hear them. I said, in a cold voice, "Provocation Section!" He closed the door and off we flew. No one had been hanging around outside. I am well trained on such things. We were not being tailed. I was not in instant danger. I sat back in some relief.

I was not without resources. By a lucky fluke six months before, I had been snooping about a brawl some high Apparatus officers were having. They are infrequent as they can get pretty vulgar and scandals have to be hushed up. It had been held in an old ramshackle hotel out in the country, one that had long gone to seed. It was surrounded by acres of dead shrubs and decayed trees. I was wearing one of those tiny lapel cameras. At the time, I had been disappointed in being passed over in rank promotion and I had been shopping around to see if I couldn't get some embarrassing blackmail that might help my career.

With an attentive eye, I had seen a furtive figure slipping off into the shrubs and I followed. And what luck! A female was waiting on a hidden bench. The furtive figure slipped behind her. I had not been able to make it out at first. But from the squabble which followed, unheard above the din of the main party, the female had been waiting for some high officer and the furtive figure wasn't him! She threatened to report the intruder. This may have terrified him or he may just have been awfully drunk. But he proceeded to rape her. I got several shots from a nearby bush. And then, the beauty of it, he took out a knife and cut her throat and silenced her once and for all. And I got several pictures of that.

There were some other possibles that evening. I ran off the whole batch myself in a lab. The camera used was very light sensitive and the pictures were quite good.

Then ensued the laborious process of sorting out who the principals were. Apparatus face files are a little hard to come by but, after a time, I got the pictures all connected up with names.

And wonder of wonders, I identified the woman as the mistress of the Commander of the Death Battalion! The male in the rape-murder shot turned out to be the Chief of the Provocation Section!

I first established that the Commander of the Death Battalion had not himself arranged it to get rid of an unwanted female. He actually was making covert inquiries. The matter never came out in the newssheets: the Apparatus frowns on that. But he had even gone as far as the bluebottles – Domestic Police – to get a list of confirmed rape-murderers.