Troublemakers

The first man exhaled sharply, got up and put on his hat. The personality flowed out of his face. He was a carboncopy of the other telepath once more. They were no longer individuals; they were Bureau men, studiedly, exactly, precisely alike in every detail.

“This is the one,” he said.

“Come on, Alf,” the Mindee named Ralph said. “Let’s go.”

The authority in his voice no more served to move Gu

What’s the matter with him? the second one flashed.

If you had what he’s got-you’d be a bit buggy yourself, the first one replied.

They hoisted the prisoner under his arms, lifted him unresisting, off the bunk. The turnkey came at a call, and-still marveling at these men who had come in, shown Bureau cards, sworn him to deadly silence, and were now taking the tramp firebug with them-opened the cell door.

As they passed before him, the telepath named Ralph turned suddenly sharp and piercing eyes on the old guard. “This is government business, mister,” he warned. “One word of this, and you’ll be a prisoner in your own jail. Digit?”

The turnkey bobbed his head quickly. “

And stop thinking, mister,” the Mindee added nastily, “we don’t like to be referred to as slimy peekers!” The turnkey turned a shade paler and watched silently as they disappeared down the hall, out of the Pawnee County jailhouse. He waited, blanking fiercely, till he heard the whine of the Bureau solocab rising into the afternoon sky.

Now what the devil did they want with a crazy firebug hobo like that? He thought viciously, goddam Mindees!

After they had flown him to Buenos Aires, deep in the heart of the blasted Argentine desert, they sent him in for testing.

The testing was exhaustive. Even though he did not really cooperate, there were things he could not keep them from learning, things that showed up because they were there:

Such as his ability to start fires with his mind.

Such as the fact that he could not control the blazes.

Such as the fact that he had been burning for fifteen years in an effort to find peace and seclusion.

Such as the fact that he had become a tortured and unhappy man because of his strange mind-power...

“Alf,” said the bodiless voice from the rear of the darkened auditorium, “light that cigarette on the table. Put it in your mouth and make it light, Alf. Without a match.”

Alf Gu

He was trapped in it again. The harrying, the testing, the staring. He was different-even from the other accredited psioid types-and they would try to put him away. It had happened before, it was happening now. There was no real peace for him.

“I don’t smoke,” he said, which was not true. But this scene was brother to the uncountable police lineups he had gone through, all the way across the American continents, across Earth, to A Centauri IX and back. It a

Except this time there were no hard rocky-faced cops out there in the darkness beyond his sight. This time there were hard, rocky-faced Bureau men and SpaceCom officials.

Even Terrence, head of SpaceCom, was sitting in one of those pneumoseats, watching him steadily.

Daring him to be what he was!

He lifted the cylinder hesitantly, almost put it back. “Smoke it, Alf!” snapped a different voice, deeper in tone, from the darkness.

He put the cigarette between his lips. The men waited.

He wanted to say something, perhaps to object, but he could not. Alf Gu

The cigarette flamed into life.

A tongue of fire leaped up from the tip. In an instant it had consumed tobacco, paper, and denicotizer in one roar. The fire slammed against Gu

He screamed, fell on his face and beat at the flames with his hands.

Suddenly the stage was clogged with ru

“Get the Mallaport! Get the goddammed Mallaport, willya!” A young ensign with brush-cut blond hair, first to reach the stage, as though he had been waiting crouched below, cradled Gu

In a few minutes the angular, spade-jawed, Malleable. Transporter was smoothing the skin on Gu

Another few moments and the psioid was finished. The burns had been erased; Gu

All through it he had been murmuring. As the Mallaport finished his mental work and stood up with a sigh, the words filtered through to the young SpaceCom ensign. He stared at Gu

He stared at them with a mixture of fear and bewilderment.

Gu

The ship was heading toward Omalo, sun of the Delgart system. It had been translated into inverspace by a Driver named Carina Correia. She had warped the ship through, and gone back to her deep-sleep, till she was needed at Omalo snap-out.

Now the ship whirled through the crazy quilt of inverspace, cutting through to the star system of Earth’s adversary.

Gu

The SpaceCom ensign’s watery blue eyes swept between the pallid man and the teleport-proof safe set in the cabin’s bulkhead.

“Any idea why they’re sending us so deep into Delgart territory?” the ensign fished. “It’s pretty tight lines up this far. Must be something big. Any idea?”

Gu

“Don’t you even know who your planet’s at war with?”

“I’ve been rural for many years. And aren’t we always at war with someone?”

The ensign looked startled. “Not unless it’s to protect the peace of the galaxies. Earth is a peace-loving-”

Gu

The spaceman’s face contorted in a picture of conditioned hatred. “We’ve been after the bastards since they jumped one of our mining planets outside their cluster.” He twisted his lips in open loathing. “We’ll clean the bastards out soon enough! Teach them to jump peaceful Earthmen.”

Gu