Matt let his imagination play. They'd have an escape hatch somewhere--those of the inner circle-and if the police showed, they would use it during a perfectly genuine panic. Matt and his brethren of the outer circle would be expendable.

"But why should all of these occult powers be connected to mind-reading? Does that make sense to you, Jay?"

"Certainly. Don't you see that telepathy is a survival trait? When human beings evolved psi powers, they must have evolved telepathy first. All the others came later, because they're less likely to get you out of a bad situation....

Matt dismissed the idea of leaving. Safer? Sure. But here he had, for a time, escaped from his persnickety mining worms and their venal crewish growers and the multiple, other problems that made his life what it was. And his curiosity bump itched madly. He wanted to know how they thought, how they worked, how they protected themselves, what they had in mind. He wanted to know--

He wanted to know Polly Tournquist. Now more than ever. She was small and lovely and delicate looking, an every man who had ever looked at her must have wanted to protect her. What was such a girl doing throwing her life away? Really, that was all she was doing. Sooner or later the organ banks would run short of healthy livers or live skin or lengths of large intestine at a time when there was a dearth of crime on the Plateau. Then Implementation would throw a raid, and Polly would be stripped down to her component parts.

Matt had a sudden urge to talk her out of it, get her to leave here with him and move to another part of the Plateau. Would they be able to hide out in a region so limited? Possibly not, but But she didn't even know he'd guessed. If she found out, he could die for his knowledge. He'd have to put a fail-safe on his mouth. It spoiled things. If Matt could have played the observer, the man who watched and said nothing ... But he wasn't an observer. He was involved now. He knew Jay and liked him, he'd liked Laney Mattson and Harry Kane at sight, and he could have fallen in love with Polly Tournquist. These people were putting their lives on the line. And his too! And he could do nothing about it. The middle-aged man with the brush cut was still at it. "Jay," he said with a poor imitation of patience, "you're trying to tell us that Earth had psi powers under good control when the founding fathers left. Well, what have they done since? They've made all kinds of progress m biological engineering. Their ships improve constantly. Now the ramrobots go home all by themselves. But what have they done about psi powers? Nothing. Just nothing. And why?"

"Because--'

"Because it's all superstition. Witchcraft. Myths." Oh, shut up, Matt thought. It was all cover for what was really going on, and he wasn't a part of that. He dropped back out of the circle, hoping nobody would notice him--except Polly. Nobody did. He eased toward the bar for a refill. Harry Kane was gone, replaced by a kid somewhat younger than Matt, one who wouldn't last another half hour if he kept sampling his own wares. When Matt tasted his drink, it was mostly vodka. And when he turned around, there was Polly, laughing at his puckered face.

The half-dozen suspects were deeply asleep along one wall of the patrol wagon. A white-garbed Implementation medic looked up as Jesus Pietro entered. "Oh, there you are, sir. I think these three must be deadheads. The others had mechanisms in their ears."

The night outside was as black as always on moonless Mount Lookitthat. Jesus Pietro had left Millard Parlette standing before the glass wall of the organ banks, contemplating ... whatever he might be contemplating. Eternal life? Not likely. Even Millard Parlette, one hundred and ninety years old, would die when his central nervous system wore out. You couldn't transplant brains without transplanting memories. What had Parlette been thinking? His expression had been very odd.

Jesus Pietro took a suspect's head in his hands and rolled it to look in the ears. The body rolled too, limply, passively. "I don't see anything."

"When we tried to remove the mechanism, it evaporated. So did the old woman's. This girl still has hers."

"Good." He bent to look. Far down in the left ear, too deep for fingers to reach it, was something colored dead black with a rim of fleshy pink. He said, "Get a microphone.

The man made a call. Jesus Pietro waited impatiently for someone to bring a mike. Someone eventually did. Jesus Pietro held it against the girl's head and turned the sound up high.

Rustling noises came in an amplified crackle.

"Tape it on," said Jesus Pietro. The medic stretched the girl on her side and taped the mike against her head. The thunder of rustling stopped, and the interior of the wagon was full of the deep drumbeat sound of her arteries.

"How long since anybody left the meeting?"

"That was these two, sir. About twenty minutes."

The door in back opened to admit two men and two women, unconscious, on stretchers. One man had a hearing aid.

"Obviously they don't have a signal to show they're clear," said Jesus Pietro. "Foolish." Now, if he'd been running the Sons of Earth ...

Come to think of it, he might send out decoys, expendable members. If the first few didn't come back, he'd send out more, at random intervals, while the leaders escaped. Escaped where? His men had found no exit routes; the sonics reported no tunnels underground. It was seconds before Jesus Pietro noticed that the mike was speaking. The sounds were that low. Quickly he put his ear to the loudspeaker.

"Stay until you feel like leaving, then leave. Remember, this is an ordinary party, open-house style. However, those of you who have nothing important to say should've gone by midnight. Those who wish to speak to me should use the usual channels. Remember not to try to remove the earpieces; they will disintegrate of themselves at six o'clock. Now enjoy yourselves!"

"What's he say?" asked the medic.

"Nothing important. I wish I could be sure that was Kane." Jesus Pietro nodded briefly at the medic and the two cops. "Keep it up," he said, and stepped out into the night.

"Why'd you leave? It was just getting interesting."

"No it wasn't, and my glass was empty, and anyway I was hoping you'd follow." Polly laughed. "You must believe in miracles."

"True. Why'd you leave?" Embedded in wall-to-wall humanity, drowned in a waterfall of human voices, Polly and Matt nevertheless had a sort of privacy. Manners and lack of interest would prevent anyone from actually listening to them. Hence nobody could hear them; for how could anyone concentrate on two conversations at once? They might have been in a room by themselves, a room with yielding walls and unyielding elbows, a room as small and private as a phone booth.

"I think Jay's bugs on psi powers," said Polly. She had not answered his question, which was fine by Matt. He'd expected to escape unnoticed from Hood's debate. He was lucky that way. But Polly coming to join him was new and different, and he enjoyed guessing at her motives.

"He talks like that all the time?"

"Yes. He thinks if we could only--' She stopped. Girl with a secret. "Forget Jay. Tell me about yourself." So he talked of mining worms and home life and the school in sector nine, Gamma Plateau; and he mentioned Uncle Matt, who had died for being a rebel, but she ignored the bait. And Polly talked about growing up a hundred miles away, near the Colony University; and she described her job at the Delta Retransmitting Power Station, but she never mentioned her hearing aid.

"You look like a girl with a secret," Matt said. "I think it must be the smile." She moved closer to him, which was very close, and lowered her voice. "Can you keep a secret?" Matt smiled with one side of his mouth to show that he knew what was coming. She said it anyway. "So can I."