Calhoun said grimly:
"And he already has you scared. I begin to suspect I haven't even time to argue with you."
"I'll get you a car and driver as soon as you've seen the President. It's only a little way!"
Calhoun growled and moved toward the exit from the laboratory. Past the sentries. Out to the open air. Here was the wide clear space which once had been a park for the city and the site of the government buildings of Tallien Three. A little distance away, children played gaily. But there were women who watched them with deep anxiety. This particular space contained all the people considered certainly free of the para syndrome. Tall buildings surrounded the area which once had been tranquil and open to all the citizens of the planet. But now those buildings were converted into walls to shut out all but the chosen—and the chosen were no better off for having been someone's choice.
"The capitol building's only yonder," said the Minister, at once urgently and affrightedly and persuasively. "It's only a very short walk. Just yonder!"
"I still," said Calhoun, "don't want to go there." He showed the Minister for Health the blaster he'd aimed at Doctor Lett only minutes ago. "This is a blaster," he said gently. "It's adjusted for low power so that is doesn't necessarily burn or kill. It's the adjustment used by police in case of riot. With luck, it only stuns. I used it on Doctor Lett," he added unemotionally. "He's a para. Did you know? The vaccine he's been giving to certain high officials to protect them against becoming paras—it satisfies the monstrous appetite of paras without requiring them to eat scavengers. But it also produces that appetite. In fact, it's one of the ways by which paras are made."
The Minister for Health stared at Calhoun. His face went literally gray. He tried to speak, and could not.
Calhoun added again, as unemotionally as before:
"I left Doctor Lett unconscious in his laboratory, knocked out by a low-power blaster-bolt. He knows he's a para. The President is a para, but with a supply of 'vaccine' he can deny it to himself. By the look on your face you've just found out you can't deny it to yourself any longer. You're a para, too."
The Minister for Health made an inarticulate sound. He literally wrung his hands.
"So," said Calhoun, "I want to get back to my ship and see what I can do with the 'vaccine' I took from Doctor Lett. Do you help me or don't you?"
The Minister for Health seemed to have shriveled inside his garments. He wrung his hands again. Then a ground-car braked to a stop five yards away. Two uniformed men jumped out. The first of them jerked at his blaster in its holster on his hip.
"That's the tormal!" he snapped. "This's the man, all right!"
Calhoun pulled the trigger of his blaster three times. It whined instead of rasping, because of its low-power setting. The Minister for Health collapsed. Before he touched ground the nearer of the two uniformed men seemed to stumble with his blaster halfway drawn. The third man toppled.
"Murgatroyd!" said Calhoun sharply.
"Chee!" shrilled Murgatroyd. He leaped into the ground-car beside Calhoun.
The motor squealed because of the violence with which Calhoun applied the power. It went shrilly away with three limp figures left behind upon the ground. But there wouldn't be instant investigation. The atmosphere in Government Center was not exactly normal. People looked apprehensively at them. But Calhoun was out of sight before the first of them stirred.
"It's the devil," said Calhoun as he swung to the right at a roadway-curve. "It's the devil to have scruples! If I'd killed Lett in cold blood, I'd have been the only hope these people could have. Maybe they'd have let me help them!"
He made another turn. There were buildings here and there, and he was often out of sight from where he'd dropped three men. But it was astonishing that action had been taken so quickly after Lett regained consciousness. Calhoun had certainly left him not more than a quarter of an hour before. The low-power blaster must have kept him stunned for minutes. Immediately he'd recovered he'd issued orders for the capture or the killing of a man with a small animal with him, a tormal. And the order would have been carried out if Calhoun hadn't happened to have his own blaster actually in his hand.
But the appalling thing was the over-all situation as now revealed. The people of Government Center were turning para and Doctor Lett had all the authority of the government behind him. He was the government for the duration of the emergency. But he'd stay the government because all the men in high office were paras who could conceal their condition only so long as Doctor Lett permitted it. Calhoun could picture the social organization to be expected. There'd be the tyrant; the absolute monarch at its head. Absolutely submissive citizens would receive their dosage of vaccine to keep them "normals" so long as it pleased their master. Anyone who defied him or even tried to flee would become something both mad and repulsive, because subject to monstrous and irresistible appetites. And the tyrant could prevent even their satisfaction! So the citizens of Tallien Three were faced with an ultimate choice of slavery or madness for themselves and their families.
Calhoun swerved behind a government building and out of the parking area beyond. Obviously, he couldn't leave Government Center by the way he'd entered it. If Lett hadn't ordered him stopped, he'd be ordering it now. And Murgatroyd was an absolute identification.
Again he turned a corner, thrusting Murgatroyd down out of sight. He turned again, and again. . . . Then he began concentratedly to remember where the sunset-line had been upon the planet when he was waiting to be landed by the grid. He could guess at an hour and a half, perhaps two, since he touched ground. On the combined data, he made a guess at the local time. It would be mid-afternoon. So shadows would lie to the north-east of the objects casting. Then—
He did not remain on any straight roadway for more than seconds. But now when he had a choice of turnings, he had a reason for each choice. He twisted and dodged about—once he almost ran into children playing a ritual game—but the sum total of his movements was steadily southward. Paras were turned out of the south gate. That gate, alone, would be the one where someone could go out with a chance of being unchallenged.
He found the gate. The usual tall buildings bordered it to left and right. The actual exit was bare concrete walls slanting together to an exit to the outer world no more than a house-door wide. Well back from the gate, there were four high-sided trucks with armed police in the truck-bodies. They were there to make sure that paras, turned out, or who went out of their own accord when they knew their state, would not come back.
He stopped the ground-car and tucked Murgatroyd under his coat. He walked grimly toward the narrow exit. It was the most desperate of gambles, but it was the only one he could make. He could be killed, of course, but nobody would suspect him of attempting exit at any gate. He should be too desperate to take a chance like this.
So he got out, unchallenged. The concrete walls rose higher and higher as he walked away from the trucks and the police who would surely have blasted him had they guessed. The way he could walk became narrower. It became a roofed-over passageway, with a turn in it so it could not be looked through end to end. Then—he reached open air once more.
Nothing could be less dramatic than his actual escape. He simply walked out. Nothing could be less remarkable than his arrival in the city outside of Government Center. He found himself in a city street, rather narrow, with buildings as usual all about him, whose windows were either bricked shut or smashed. There were benches against the base of one of those buildings, and four or five men, quite unarmed, lounged upon them. When Calhoun appeared one of them looked up and then arose. A second man turned to busy himself with something behind him. They were not grim. They showed no sign of being mad. But Calhoun had already realized that the appetite which was madness came only occasionally. Only at intervals which could probably be known in advance. Between one monstrous hunger-spell and another, a para might look and act and actually be as sane as anybody else. Certainly Doctor Lett and the President and the Cabinet-members who were paras acted convincingly as if they were not.