“That’s Greek?” said Napoleon.

“No,” said Illya. “It’s San Francisco.”

“Miss Sirrocco’s relationship is known and approved by Thrush, and every effort has been made that it appear purely —ah —social, rather than professional. He had no intimate female friends during the first eight months with this Satrapy, which their psychologists would consider less than optimum. Hence their ‘approval of this liaison.”

“Then he’s been with Thrush nearly two years,” said Napoleon. “But you said Oh, I see! He sold out to her. I thought you said he was our plant.”

“Your first impression was correct. We originally placed him in the Satrapy. But he is unaware of his position, and thus cannot possibly compromise it. You might say his assignment is so secret even he doesn’t know what he’s doing.” Mr. Waverly tapped a fingertip lightly on the table and looked at the clock. “Mr. Simpson should be in shortly to assist in the technical portion of your briefing on the KBG —until he arrives, I might attempt an explanation of Mr. Stevens’ condition.”

He fumbled a pipe from his pocket and reached for the humidor.

“Initially, bear in mind that Mr. Stevens is sincerely loyal to Thrush -almost all the time. Remember also that he volunteered for this assignment, knowing…at least some of the risks he would be taking.” He paused for several seconds, stuffing his pipe; he started to speak when he was finished, then thought better of it and took several more seconds to strike a large wooden match and ignite the packed tobacco.

Napoleon and Illya exchanged glances, but neither spoke Before the pipe was smoldering to its smoker’s satisfaction. Without looking up he addressed them again. “Mr. Stevens voluntarily surrendered his mind, his character -his entire personality to total destruction and rearrangement. Since his programming was activated, he has been clinically insane.”

“Deep posthypnotic?” asked Napoleon.

“Yes. He functions perfectly in a minor clerical capacity with a Gold clearance, which gives him access to nearly everything. His memory of his life before two years ago, I am told, is spotty but adequate; he is happy with Thrush and completely loyal. But once a week he visits little Sirrocco, who keys his lower subconscious and records his full report on anything new he may have observed or heard about, and suggests certain other things which we may want to know about. Then, during the following week and until satisfied or told to stop, he will unconsciously tend to seek out these subjects, and report on them at his next opportunity,”

“I see,” said Illya, “I assume it is more complicated than that.”

“Considerably. You will also meet Dr. Grayson, the hypnotech responsible for Mr. Stevens’ condition, and ”

The door zipped open and Mr. Simpson joined them, white lab coat flapping about his lean frame. Mr. Waverly returned to his pipe as the new arrival said “Good morning,” to Napoleon and Illya, took a chair at the table and looked expectantly at Mr. Waverly. “You expect I wonder why you’ve called me here,” he said.

“We were just discussing our man in San Francisco,” said the object of his attention, amid a cloud of blue smoke.

“Oh, yes. The trance-suggestion case. Fascinating. I’d be interested to hear how he’s getting along. But I have a beaker simmering downstairs, so about the KugelBlitzGewehr —what would you like to know?”

“What it does and how, to start with,” said Illya.

“Ah. Well, we don’t know. In fact, we hope you will be able to tell “us when you get back,”

“Then how about explaining what a plasmoid is. for us language majors in the audience,” said Napoleon. “How powerful is it and what kind of power?”

“Electrical, magnetic, mechanical and thermal. Especially thermal. If you take a quantity of gas and heat it to a point where the atomic particles begin to disassociate and the substance ionizes ”

“How hot?”

“Oh, ten thousand degrees or so —you can have them as cool as seven thousand degrees, and there’s really no upper limit short of mass-energy conversion, which only happens inside stars. We don’t know yet, of course, what temperature the KugelBlitzGewehr generates. Oh, that’s ten thousand .

degrees Celsius, I should say.”

“Celsius?”

“Centigrade. The ionized gas is probably released with a spin on it, and since a moving electric charge generates a magnetic field it is temporarily self-sustaining. Surface turbulence tends to prevent the heat escaping, and its own field holds it together until something stops its rotation.”

“Releasing the heat.”

“Releasing whatever volume of super-heated electrically charged gas went to make it up. If it was the size of a pinhead it wouldn’t last very long, and would likely burn a hole in your coat. Naturally they lose some heat, unless Dr. Warfield has come up with a better way to hold them together.”

This time Illya interrupted. “Dr. Warfield?”

“I’m confident this is his creation. He should be rather elderly now, but he has been involved in research of this nature for many years. Been with Thrush since a few years after the War. Decades ahead of his time.”

“Granting that this could be generated from a handgun, how would you project it? How far would it go and how fast?”

“Well, how far would partly depend on how fast, since they tend to cool off even before they dissipate. This is something else we hope you can find out for us in San Francisco.”

Napoleon and Illya looked at each other, then back to Mr. Simpson. “I don’t even know enough to ask questions,” said Napoleon. “Is there anything else you can think of? If I have this straight, the thing should shoot very bright balls of fire, likely somewhat bigger than a pea and maybe bigger than a basketball. These will presumably travel in a straight line away from the gun.”

“Very bright indeed. And they might get larger as they go away””

“you might mention that anomaly of relative size versus energy,”

suggested Mr. Waverly.

“Oh, yes. A larger plasmoid would not necessarily be more powerful; its destructive capacity would be more governed by the amount of energy stored in it —temperature, charge, turbulence, all would be more important than size.

A film of this device in operation would be most informative.”

“We’ll do our best.”

.If there are no more questions —by the by, did you see the report on the Thrush suicide corps? If not, look it up. I must be going.” And so saying, he went.

.Indeed,” said Mr. Waverly. “San Francisco already has a few.”

.1 think I missed that,” said Napoleon. “What was it?N

.They’re called ‘stim-heads’,” said Illya. “Agents of no particular value whose services call for special rewards. Remember those wolves in Transylvania? With remote-controlled cortical stimulation of pain or pleasure centers, they could be made to do all sorts of things. This is a little simpler, since it’s designed to be plugged into a fixed installation and only stimulates the pleasure center of the cerebral cortex. It has a long technical name in Japanese —I forget the literal translation, but it means ‘Once you’ve had it, you’ll kill to get it.’”

“Reports on the few we’ve identified indicates they tend to wear their hair long —to conceal the terminal implanted in the scalp,” said Mr.

Waverly.

“San Francisco is a city full of surprises, isn’t it,” said Napoleon.

“The surprises I worry about,” said Illya, “are the ones we won’t know about in advance.”

“Those will be kept to a minimum,” said Mr. Waverly, “as long as Ward Baldwin has no reason to suspect you are in town. If you gentlemen can avoid attracting attention, for a change ”

“Believe me, sir,” said Napoleon sincerely, “my deepest desire is to remain as far as possible from the mind of Ward Baldwin. I would wear a false beard if I thought it would fool him. But he’d just make a snide remark about my. costume.”