The door of the motel office was open, and Doctor Philip-son went toward it, peering into the darkness within. "Roth-man?" he said, in a hesitant, questioning voice.
A figure appeared, a woman. It was Patrician McClain.
"Sorry I'm late," Doctor Philipson began. "But this man here and a companion showed up at the—"
Patricia McClain said, "She's out of control. Alien couldn't help. Get away." She ran past Doctor Philipson and Joe Schilling, across the parking lot toward a car parked there. Then all at once she was gone. Doctor Philipson grunted, cursed, stepped back from the motel door as swiftly as if he had been seared.
High in the mid-day sky Joe Schilling saw a dot, rising and then disappearing toward invisibility. On and on it rushed, away from Earth, away from the ground until finally he could no longer see it. His head ached from the glare and the effort of seeing, and he turned to Doctor Philipson "My god, was that—" he started to say.
"Look," Doctor Philipson said. He pointed, with his heat-needle, at the motel office, and Joe Schilling looked inside; he could not see at first and then by degrees his eyes accustomed themselves to the gloom.
On the floor lay twisted bodies of men and women, tangled together like multi-armed monsters, as if they had been shaken and then dropped there, discarded, the remains jammed together, forced into an impossible fusion. Mary Anne
McClain sat on the floor in the corner, curled up, her face buried in her hands. Pete Garden and a well-dressed middle-aged man whom Schilling did not know stood together, silently, their faces blank.
"Rothman," Doctor Philipson choked, staring at one of the shattered bodies. He turned toward Pete Garden. "When?" he said.
"She just now did it," Pete murmured.
"You're lucky," the well-dressed middle-aged man said to Doctor Philipson. "If you had been here she would have killed you, too. You're fortunate; you missed your appointment."
Doctor Philipson, shaking, lifted his heat-needle and pointed it unsteadily at Mary Anne McClain.
"Don't," Pete Garden said. "They tried that. At the end."
"Mutreaux," Doctor Philipson said, "why didn't she—"
"He's a Terran," Pete Garden said. "The only one of you who was. So she didn't touch him."
"The best thing," the well-dressed man, Mutreaux, said, "is for none of us to do anything. Move as little as possible-that's the safest." He kept his eyes fixed on the huddled shape of Mary Anne McClain. "She didn't even miss her father," Mutreaux said. "But Patricia got away; I don't know what happened to her."
"The girl got her, too," Doctor Philipson said. "We watched; we didn't understand, then." He tossed the heat-needle away; it rolled across the floor and came to rest against the far wall. His face was gray. "Does she understand what she's done?"
Pete Garden said, "She knows. She understands the dangerousness of her talent and she doesn't want to use it again." To Joe Schilling he said, "They couldn't seem to manage her; they had partial control but it kept slipping away. I watched the struggle. It's been going on here in this room for the last few hours. Even when their last member came." He pointed to a squashed, crumpled body, a man with glasses and light hair. "Don, they called him. They thought he'd turn the tide, but Mutreaux threw his talent in with hers. It all happened in a second; one minute they were sitting in their chairs, the next she just simply began
flinging them around like rag dolls." He added, "It wasn't pleasant. But," he shrugged, "anyhow, that's what happened."
Doctor Philipson said, "A dreadful loss." He glanced at Mary Anne with hatred. "Poltergeist," he said. "Unmanageable. We knew but because of Patricia and Alien we accepted her as she was. Well, we'll have to begin all over again, from the start. Of course I have nothing personally to fear from her; I can return to my primary nexus, Titan, whenever I wish. Presumably, her talent doesn't extend that far, and if it does there's not much we can do. I'll take the chance. I have to."
"I think she can freeze you here, if she wants to," Mutreaux said. "Mary Anne," he said sharply. In the corner the girl raised her head; her cheeks, Joe Schilling saw, were tear-stained. "Do you have any objection if this last one returns to Titan?"
"I don't know," she said listlessly.
Joe Schilling said, "They've got Sharp there."
"I see," Mutreaux said. "Well, that makes a difference." To Mary Anne he said, "Don't let Philipson go."
"All right," she murmured, nodding.
Doctor Philipson shrugged. "A good point. Well, it's agreeable to me. Sharp can return here, I'll go to Titan." His tone was calm but, Schilling saw, the man's eyes were opaque with shock and tension.
"Arrange for it now," Mutreaux said.
"Of course," Doctor Philipson said. "I don't want to be around this girl; that must be obvious even to you. And I can hardly say I envy you and your people, depending on a crude, erratic power of this sort; it's apt to rebound or be turned deliberately against you any moment." He added, "Sharp is now back from Titan. At my clinic in Idaho."
"Can that be verified?" Mutreaux said to Joe Schilling.
"Place a call to your car, there," Doctor Philipson said. "He should be in it or close by it, by now."
Going outdoors, Joe Schilling found a parked car. "Whose are you?" he asked it, opening its door.
"Mr. and Mrs. McClain's," the Rushmore Effect stated. "I want to use your vidphone." Seated within the sun-
scorched interior of the car, Joe Schilling placed a call to his own car at Doctor Philipson's clinic in the outskirts of Pocatello, Idaho.
"What the hell do you want now?" the voice of Max, his car, answered after a wait.
"Is Laird Sharp there?" Joe Schilling asked.
"Who cares."
"Listen," Schilling began, but all at once Laird Sharp's features formed on the small vidscreen. "You're okay?" Schilling asked him.
Sharp curtly nodded. "Did you see the Titanian Game-players, Joe? How many were there? I couldn't seem to count them."
"I not only saw them, I conned them," Joe Schilling said. "So they right away bumped me back here. Take Max—you know, my car—and fly back to San Francisco; I'll meet you there." To the old, sullen car he said, "Max, you cooperate with Laird Sharp, goddam it."
"All right!" Max said irritably. "I'm cooperating!"
Joe Schilling returned to the motel room.
"I previewed your narration about the attorney," Mutreaux said. "We let Philipson go."
Schilling looked around. It was so. There was no sign of Doctor E. G. Philipson.
"It's not over," Pete Garden said. "Philipson is back on Titan, Hawthorne is dead."
"But their organization," Mutreaux said. "It's abolished. Mary Anne and I are the only ones remaining. I couldn't believe it when I saw her destroy Rothman; he was the pivot of the organization's power." He now bent down beside Rothman's body, touching it.
"What's the wisest thing to do now?" Joe Schilling said to Pete. "We can't pursue them to Titan, can we?" He did not want to face the Game-players of Titan again. And yet—
Pete said, "We'd better bring in E. B. Black. It's the only thing I can think of at this point that might help. Otherwise, we're finished."
"We can trust Black, can we?" Mutreaux said.
Schilling said, "Doctor Philipson implied that we could." He hesitated. "Yes, I vote we take the chance."