"I'm glad of that," she said. "Because if you aren't, I'll cut your (bleeps) off."

I knew it!

And then she smiled. "But it's not all bad news, Ink-switch. They emptied their purses into this wastebasket. I added five thousand dollars for your great show. You've been asking for ten G's. And here is twelve thousand bucks."

I gaped into the wastebasket she held under my nose. It was full of MONEY!

"Now stop drooling," Miss Pinch said, "and jump into a shower and get the blood off you while we change the sheets. Candy and I have been saving you for days for this sprint. And we're God (bleeped) near dying of sex starvation, to say nothing of getting hot as fire from that show tonight!"

I went into the shower singing.

TWELVE G's!

I could pay my bill to Razza.

I could buy a hit man.

COUNTESS KRAK, YOU'RE DEAD!

I had been told on the phone I could have an appointment with Razza Louseini later in the day, and so I utilized my time in checking up on the target, Countess Krak.

When I turned on the viewers in the back room, I was a little disoriented at first. I couldn't quite make out where Krak and Heller were. It was midmorning and all I got was stacks of books and pages going by too fast for me to see what books they were.

I had to backtrack the recorded strips to find out what they were up to, for I assumed quite rightly that it meant no good for me.

They were up early and, both dressed in stylish blue running sweat suits, had trotted out of the Empire State Building Fifth Avenue side and had gone north the eight blocks to the New York Public Library on 42nd Street. Except for the presence of Heller, or even with it, the Countess Krak's back would have made a perfect sniper target all the way.

And now they were in the huge reference room. Hel­ler was sitting at a table. The Countess Krak was working the card catalogue and turning in slips and pulling books out of the chute when they came. She was doing strictly gofer work.

That they were in running suits, even though this was a current style, filled me with alarm. It seemed to indicate too much eagerness for progress and that was something I strictly did not want.

Finally, she had him so boxed in with towers of books that she had to stand on tiptoe to see him. She looked intently at his face. He seemed to be puzzled, somewhat stopped. She came around and sat down in a chair beside him.

She leaned toward his ear. In Voltarian, she whispered, "If you would tell me what you're trying to do, Jettero, I could help you more."

He pulled a huge sheet he was working on out from under a tome on social organizations. "This," he whispered back, "is a workout of a mathematics we use in combat engineering. It is called 'Command Isolation Geometry.' There are certain theorems which, if applied, will tell you the probable location of the command post of an enemy army corps or a city. When you have worked it out, you can then slip in, plant the bombs and– bango-the enemy has no central command post and can be more easily overrun by the Fleet or its marines or even the Army."

"You mean we're going to blow something up?" said the Countess Krak.

"No, no. I was just telling you what the mathematics was," Heller whispered back. "I've got this spore project to clean up the atmosphere. I'm just making sure I isolate whoever's toes it will step on so I won't be too sur­prised. The way this planet is organized, apparently, is that if you try to do anything to help it, some special-interest group jumps all over you. They have some crazy idea that chaos is profit. Very short-range think. So I am just making sure that when I start putting spores into the

stratosphere and get shot at, I know who's shooting."

"You mean somebody might object to cleaning up the atmosphere?" whispered Krak in surprise.

"You never know," said Heller.

"What a crazy planet!" she muttered.

"Well, be that as it may," he whispered, "but I'm getting some crazy answers here. I don't quite understand it."

"Let me help. I may not know your geometry but I'm good at puzzles."

He oriented the sheet so she could see it better. "I'm getting a repeating answer," he whispered. "When you get one of those, it means that your original premise is too narrow. I started out to find out who had connections and communication lines to the subject of cytology-which is an Earth name for our cellology. So I made a test equation over here in the corner of the sheet and, yes, I assumed too narrow a subject to get a reliable answer. Whatever the answer is, it controls and commands more than cytology. Do you follow me?"

"No."

"Well, it's like I started out to find a corporal in charge of a squad and then found out that wouldn't embrace the area, so I found a captain in charge of a company and that wouldn't embrace the target area, so then I found a colonel in charge of a regiment. This could take forever. I'm nowhere near any real top authority command post."

"How are you doing it?"

"Well, this symbol here is logistic lines like vehicles and supply trucks. And you see its path of emanation and convergence. And this is a symbol of communications. And so on. So if you can get such functions to cross on the plot, you have the command post area."

"It looks very pretty and orderly," whispered the

Countess. "And, looking at the lines, it does seem you have convergences."

"Too many," said Heller. "And they always go off to somewhere else. Blast it." He gave her the sheet. He was really throwing it away, as he now took a big fresh one. "I was doing it for a country. I'm just going to skip a continent and be absurd. I'll do it for the whole planet."

"Why is that absurd, Jettero? I never saw you do anything absurd in all the time I've known you." But she added in a lower mutter, "Except Miss Simmons, of course."

"It's absurd because this planet doesn't have an emperor. I'll wind up with Buckingham Palace in England or something."

"And then you'll blow that up and we can leave," said the Countess Krak with an air of finality.

He laughed quietly. "What a bloodthirsty wench. I'm not trying to find out who to shoot. I'm just trying to find out who might shoot at me if I put spores in the stratosphere." He was checking book titles in the towers around him. "Let's see if I have all the planetary con­trol subjects." He began to put them down. Government control. Fuel control. Finance control. Health control. Intelligence control. Medical control. Medicine control. Mental services control. Media control. Law enforcement control. Judicial control. Food control. Air transport con­trol. Industrial control. Social control. Population volume control.... He was checking already-made notes.

He was back to work drawing in a large ring of symbols of the things named and others. It was hard to follow the symbols and labelling because he was writing very small and very fast.

He asked her to get him another half a dozen books and he spun through them quickly.

Shifting ink color to red, he drew a dwindling spiral from the outside to the inside center of his plot. He stopped and gave a short laugh.

She was sitting beside him again. "It's very pretty."

"And it's absurd," said Heller in a low voice. "When you add up all the interlocking points given in just these available books, it says the planet DOES have an emperor, that the emperor has two planetary command posts and TOTAL planetary control. I'm wasting my time."

"Where are the command posts and WHO is the emperor?" said the Countess Krak.

"I know a nice place to have lunch," said Heller.

"No, no, Jettero. Except for certain females, I have never seen you do an absurd thing ever. You are always right on. Tell me."