"He got away," Foote said, aloud.

His two leadies said nothing; no comment was indicated.

Returning to the phalanx of Lindblom leadies guarding the bedroom hall door, Foote said, "Inform your type VI below that they came too late."

"Yes, Mr. Foote," the in-charge leady said, and did so. "The response," it informed him in its metallic, gracious manner, "is that such could not be. The killer of Mr. Lindblom is in the bedroom area; anything else is impossible."

"According to your kind of deduct leady logic, perhaps," Foote agreed. "But empirical fact says otherwise." He turned to his own two leadies. "I will ask you now," he instructed them, "to begin collecting data. Assuming that the assassin was a human, not a leady, pay special attention for the presence of organic traces. Dermal deposits, hair."

One of the higher-type Lindblom leadies said, "Mr. Foote, there is, within the wall, a brain pattern receptor. Access to which we have the key."

"Good," Foote said. "I'll gather its readings."

"Plus an audio recorder. This also in continuous operation."

"Very good." _If_ the assassin had been a human. _If_ he had said something. And if he had passed near the percept-extensors of the brain pattern receptor. Webster Foote thoughtfully walked back into the bedroom, then into the adjoining room to examine the window through which entry had been made.

On the floor rested a portable TV set.

Bending, he took hold of it by the handle, ignoring the possible loss of fingerprints; it was unlikely that the murderer had involved himself in moving a TV set around.

The TV set was too heavy. He could lift it, but with difficulty. Aloud, Foote said, "This is it."

Within •the room's closet, engaged in unlocking the unit which contained the brain-pattern record, if any, one of Lindblom's leadies said, "Pardon, sir?"

Foote said, "This is the killer. This TV set."

"Sir," the Lindblom leady said and snickered, "a portable television set is not an instrument by which a human death can be--"

"Do you want to take over the job," Foote said, "of finding your lord's slayer? Or will you leave it to me?"

"You, of course, Mr. Foote, are in charge."

"Thank you," Webster Foote said acidly. And wondered how, if at all, he was going to manage to pry open this object masquerading-- chameleoned, as it was called--as a portable TV receiver. Because if he were right, it would resist being pried apart, had been built to withstand every sort of forced, hostile inspection.

He had, then, a bleak precog hunch. It was going to take days, even weeks, to get at the works within this "TV set." Even under the pressure of his many, varied shop assists.

Here in his hands he had the death instrument. But a hell of a lot of good it was going to do him.

The clues. The trail, beginning at the bent aluminum frame of the room's window, where the glass had been melted away; Webster Foote's two leadies crouched at the frame, photographed and analyzed the exact extent of the warpage of the metal, recorded its misalignment, calculated the pressure, in terms of pounds, which would have produced such a warp.

Foote's leadies gathered data like the good and successful machines they were. But he himself felt nothing, stared sightlessly; he was not interested, not involved.

"Spot of blood, Mr. Foote," one of the leadies informed him.

"Good," he said tonelessly.

The Lindblom leady which had opened the deeply embedded case set within the closet wall now informed him, "The brain pattern recept shows on its permanent record, in its repository, the presence of--"

"A man," Foote said. "Who passed by it and emitted an Alphawave pattern."

"The aud recorder, too, contains--"

"The man spoke," Foote said. "He came here to kill a sleeping victim and yet he spoke, loudly enough to get his voice on the iron oxide tape."

"And not only loudly," the leady said, "but distinctly. Would you care to have that sequence of tape rerun for you right now?"

Foote murmured, "No, I'll wait. Later."

One of his own leadies exclaimed in shrill, metallic triumph, "Three human hairs, not those of the victim."

"Keep going," Foote said. There'll be more clues by which to identify the murderer, he said to himself. We've got his unique brain wave pattern, his distinctive voice; we know his weight, we have hairs from his head, a drop of blood--although it seems rather strange that he should all at once have, for no reason, bled a drop, right in the middle of the room: a drop and no more.

Within the next few minutes a fragment of cloth fiber was found. And then, on a low table, fingerprints, not those of the victim.

"You can stop, now," Foote said to his two leadies.

"But sir," one of them said, "we may also find--"

"That's all," Foote said. "All which the standard model 2004 Eisenwerke Gestalt-macher produces. Voice, fingerprints, hairs, drop of blood, fiber of clothing, indication of body weight and idiosyncratic Alpha-wave brain emanation pattern--that's the extent and that's sufficient. Based on those, any reasonably adequate computer can pop a signal card; _you've got seven factors of delineation_." And actually six were unnecessary. The brain-emanation pattern alone--if not the fingerprints--was adequate.

This was what annoyed him about this wartime West German invention; it overdid its job. Ninety percent of its circuitry, its activities, could have been left out--in which event as portable TV receiver it would have tended to possess the proper weight. But that was the German mentality, their love of the _Gestalt_, the complete picture.

Now, with the trail of clues, the data which made the Gestalt, in his possession, the question arose as to which population-catalog computer to consult. Actually he had his choice of three, and each possessed an enormous memory bank, an adequate library of crossindexed reference aspects; in fact, by an odd coincidence, the exact aspects which his team of leadies had for the last hour been gathering in these two rooms

He could go to Moscow. The big BB-7 would probably find him the reference card to which these seven aspects, this Gestalt, pertained. Or the 109-A3 at Estes Park. Or even Megavac 6-V at the Yance-man Agency in New York; he could utilize it, relatively small and specialized as it was, in that its memory file consisted solely of Yance-men past and present. Because, Foote intuited, the Gestalt depicted a Yance-man and not one out of all the millions of subsurface tankers; the existence of reference cards representing them was not required. So why not Megavac 6-V?

One very good reason presented itself to Webster Foote immediately. His client, Stanton Brose, would automatically, at his _Festung_ in Geneva, be notified of the event, would be handed a duplicate first of the data fed to the computer and then the computer's response.

And it might serve the interests of all parties concerned that Brose have that information.

Therefore the big BB-7 in Moscow, which was the furthest removed from Brose's control.

As Foote and his two leadies, each of them again lugging a heavy case, got back into their flapple, he said to himself, I wonder whose card the computer will pop... and, theoretically anyhow, set the wheels of punitive justice turning. What individual, within the Yanceman class, was this Gestalt-macher programmed to indict? Carefully, as he set the ersatz television set on the seat beside him, again conscious of its inordinate weight--the quality which it could not conceal and hence that which had given it away... it could mimic any object of its general size but it could not decide to cease being affected by Earth's gravity.

He had, already, an idea of whose card would emerge. But it would be interesting to have his precog hunch verified.