Chapter IV

Captain Hunter left the lift at Level Nineteen. An automatic entry probe accepted his blue-tinted executive card, and he walked the short distance to the hotel which specialized in catering to spacemen. It was traditionally neutral ground, where the mercenaries of Consolidated or United Research met as friends, although a week before they might have been firing radiation fire at each other in the outer reaches of space. The frontier conflict was a business to the spaceman. Hunter was too well-adjusted to become emotionally involved in it himself.

The spacemen called their hotel the Roost, a contraction lifted from the public micropic code. The full name was the Roosevelt, lettered on the entry. The hotel was popularly supposed to have been built close to the site of a twentieth century Los Angeles hotel of the same name, destroyed in the last convulsive war that had shattered the earth.

By micropic Hunter had made his customary reservation. His room was high in an upper floor overlooking Level Twenty-three. Through the visipanel he could see the walk-ways thronged by the various classifications of executives who worked in the central offices of the cartels--lawyers, engineers, administrators, directors, astrogeographers, designers, statisticians, researchers.

Somewhere in the crowd, perhaps, were the two men who ruled the cartels and directed the struggle for the Galactic empire. Glenn Farren of Consolidated Solar and Werner von Rausch of United Researchers. Max Hunter had never seen either of the men or any of their dynastic families. He knew little about them. Their pictures were never published.

Yet Farren and Von Rausch held in their hands more despotic power, more real wealth and military might, than any ancient Khan or Caesar had ever dreamed of.

Did they now want Ann Saymer’s patent? The answer, Hunter realized, was obvious. With Ann’s Exorciser, they could enslave the centers of civilization as they had enslaved the frontier. In itself that was a minor factor, already accomplished by man’s acceptance of the jungle ethics of the cartels. Far more important, if one of the cartels controlled the patent, it had a weapon that would ultimately destroy the other.

With trembling fingers, Hunter took Ann’s last micropic from his bag and rolled the tiny film into a wall-scanner. He could have recited it by heart; yet, by reading it again, he somehow expected to extract a new meaning. The code he and Ann used, contrived for economy rather than secrecy, was merely a telescoping of common phrases into single word symbols.

IHTKN, at the beginning, was easily interpreted as “I have taken,” and COMJB became “commission-job.” The micropic transmission monopoly arbitrarily limited all code words to five letters or less, counting additional letters as whole words. But because of the simplicity of the technique, some of Ann’s symbols were open to a number of interpretations.

Hunter was sure of one thing. Ann had not specifically named the clinic where she was working. She said she had gone to work for the biggest--or possibly the symbol meant best--of the private clinics. Either term could apply to the clinics run by the two cartels; or, for that matter, to the largest of them all, operated by Eric Young’s union.

But Ann, having invented the Exorciser, would know all its possible misuses--a factor which had not occurred to Hunter until Dawn spelled it out for him. Would Ann, then, have been fool enough to let herself fall into the hands of the cartels?

That line of reasoning gave Hunter new hope. If one of the cartels tried to trap her, Ann would simply go into hiding. It would complicate the problem of finding her, but at least he could assure himself she was safe. Ann had brains to match her ambition. She couldn’t otherwise have earned a First in Psychiatry. No, Hunter was certain the cartels didn’t have her.

The telescreen buzzer gave a plaintive bleep. Hunter jerked down the response toggle. Surprisingly, the screen remained dark, but Hunter heard a man’s voice say clearly, “You are anxious to find Ann Saymer, Captain Hunter?”

Apparently the transmission from Hunter’s screen was unimpaired, for the speaker seemed to recognize him.

“Who is this?” Hunter asked, his mouth suddenly dry.

“A friend. We have your interest at heart, Captain. We suggest that you investigate United Researchers’ clinic when you start looking for Miss Saymer.”

The contact snapped off. Hunter sat down slowly, his mind reeling. Since only his screen had been neutralized, the machine was not at fault. Only a top-ranking cartel executive could arrange for a deliberate interruption of service. The rest followed logically. No one in United would have given him the information.