"He wishes," Patricia said, "that you had left the Emphytal in his medicine cabinet; he wishes he had taken them. Poor Pete, always a potential suicide, aren't you? Always, as far as you're concerned, that's the ultimate way out. The one solution to everything."

Mutreaux said restlessly, "Doctor Philipson should have been here by now. Are you certain the arrangements were understood? Could the moderates have sequestered his services? Legally, they hold the—"

"Doctor Philipson would never yield to the cowards in our midst," Patricia said. "You're familiar with his attitude." Her voice was sharp, laden with dread and concern.

"But he's not here," Mutreaux said. "Something's wrong"

They looked at each other, silently.

"What do you preview?" Patricia demanded.

"Nothing," Mutreaux said. His face, now, was pale.

"Why not?"

"If I could preview, I could preview, period," Mutreaux said bitingly, "Isn't that obvious? I don't know and I wish I did." He got to his feet and went over to the window to look out. For a moment he had forgotten Pete; he held the heat-needle slackly, squinting to see in the evening darkness that lay outside. His back was to Pete, and Pete jumped toward him.

"Dave!" Patricia barked, dropping her armload of books.

Mutreaux turned, and a bolt from the heat-needle zoomed past Pete; he felt the peripheral effects from it, the dehydrating envelope that surrounded the laser beam itself, the narrow, effective beam that was so useful both in close quarters and at a distance.

Raising his arms, Pete struck the man with both elbows, in the unprotected throat.

The heat-needle rolled away from both of them across the

floor. Patricia McClain, sobbing, scrambled after it. "Why? Why couldn't you predict this?" She clutched at the small cylinder, frantically.

His face sickly and dark, Mutreaux shut his eyes and dwindled into physical collapse, pawing at himself, inhaling raucously, no longer concerned with anything else beyond the massive, difficult effort to live.

"I'm killing you, Pete," Patricia McClain gasped, backing away from him, holding the heat-needle waveringly pointed at him. Sweat, he saw, stood out on her upper lip; her mouth quivered violently and tears filled her eyes. "I can read your mind," she said huskily, "and I know, Pete, I know what you'll do if I don't. You've got to have Dave Mutreaux back on your side of the board to win and you can't have him back; he's ours."

Throwing himself away from her he tumbled out of the path of the laser, snatching at anything. His fingers closed over a book and he hurled it; the book fluttered open and dropped at Patricia McClain's feet, harmlessly.

Panting, Patricia backed away, still. "Dave will recover," she whispered. "If you had killed him perhaps it wouldn't matter so much, because then you couldn't get him for your side and we wouldn't—"

She broke off. Swiftly turning her head she listened, not breathing.

"The door," she said.

The knob turned.

Patricia raised the heat-needle. Slowly, her arm bent and twisted, inch by inch, until the muzzle of the heat-needle was pointing at her face. She stared down at it, unable to take her eyes from it. She said, "Please don't, okay? I gave birth to you. Please—"

Her fingers, against her will, moved the stud. The laser beam flicked on.

Pete looked away.

When he looked back at last the door of the apartment stood open. Mary Anne, framed in the outline of darkness, walked in, slowly, hands deep in the pockets of her long coat. Her face was expressionless. She said to Pete, "Dave Mutreaux is alive, isn't he?"

"Yes." He did not look at the heap which had been Patricia McClain; he averted his eyes from it and said, "We need him so leave him alone, Mary." His heart labored slowly, horribly.

"I realize that," Mary Anne said.

"How did you know about—this?"

Mary Anne said, after an interval, "When I got to the condominium apartment in Carmel, with Joe Schilling I saw Nats and of course I understood. I knew that Nats was the organization's overall superior. He outranked even Rothman."

"What did you do there?" Pete said.

Joe Schilling, his face puffy with tension, entered the apartment and went up to Mary Anne; he put his hand on her shoulder but she jerked away, going alone over to the corner to stand and watch. "When she came in," Schilling said. "Katz was fixing himself a drink. She—" He hesitated.

Mary Anne said tonelessly, "I moved the glass which he held. I made it go five inches, that's all. He was—holding it at chest level."

"The glass is inside him," Schilling said. "It very simply cut his heart, or part of his heart, out of his circulatory system. There was a good deal of blood, because the glass didn't go in all the way." He was silent then; neither he nor Mary Anne spoke.

On the floor, Dave Mutreaux, gargling, struggled, his face blue, trying to get air into his lungs. He had stopped stroking his throat now, and his eyes were open. But he did not seem able to see.

"What about him?" Schilling said.

Pete said, "With Patricia dead and Nats Katz dead, and Philipson—" He understood, now, why Doctor Philipson had failed to appear. "He knew you would be here," he said to Mary Anne. "So he was afraid to leave Titan. Philipson saved himself, at their expense."

"I guess so," Mary Anne murmured.

Joe Schilling said, "I can hardly blame him."

Bending down, Pete said to Mutreaux, "Will you be all right?"

Mutely, Dave Mutreaux nodded.

Pete said to him, "You must show up at the Game-board.

On our side. You know why; you know what I intend to do."

Staring at him, Mutreaux nodded.

"I can manage him," Mary Anne said, walking over to watch. "He's too much afraid of me to do anything more for them. Aren't you?" she said to Mutreaux in the same inert, neutral tone. And prodded him with her toe.

Mutreaux, dully, managed to nod.

"Be glad you're alive," Schilling said to him.

"He is," Mary Anne said. To Pete she said, "Will you do something about my mother, please?"

"Sure," Pete said. He glanced at Joe Schilling. "Why don't you go downstairs and wait in the car?" he said to Mary Anne. "We'll call E. B. Black; we don't need you for a while."

"Thank you," Mary Anne said. Turning, she walked slowly out of the apartment; Pete and Joe Schilling watched her until she was gone.

"Because of her," Joe Schilling said, "we're going to win, there at the board."

Pete nodded. Because of her and because Mutreaux was still alive. Alive—and no longer in a position to act for the Titanian authority.

"We're lucky," Joe Schilling said. "Someone had left the door of the con-apt open; she saw Katz before he could see her. She was standing outside and he couldn't make her out until too late. I think he had counted on Mutreaux' pre-cog faculty, forgetting or not understanding that she's a variable as far as that faculty is concerned. He was as unprotected by Mutreaux' talent as if Mutreaux had never existed."

And so are we, Pete thought to himself. That unprotected.

But he could not bother to worry about that now. The Game against the Titanians lay directly ahead; he did not need to be a pre-cog to see that. Everything else would have to wait.

Joe Schilling said, "I have confidence in her. I'm not concerned about what she might do, Pete."

"Let's hope you're right," Pete said. He bent down beside

the body of Patricia McClain. This was Mary's mother, he realized. And Mary Anne did this to her. And yet we have to depend on Mary Anne; Joe is right. We have no choice.