Stop, Look And Dig - George O Smith

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Stop, look and dig by George O. Smith. The enlightened
days of metal telepathy and e s P should have
made the world a better place. But the minute the
Rhine Institute opened up, all the crooks decided it was
time to go collegiate. Some one behind me in the
dark was toting a needle ray. The impression came through

(00:22):
so strong that I could almost read the filed off
serial number of the thing, but the guy himself I
couldn't dig at all. I stopped to look back, but
the only sign of life I could see was the
fast flick of taxicab lights as they crossed an intersection
about a half mile back. I stepped into a doorway
so that I could think and stay out of the

(00:43):
line of fire. At the same time. The impression of
the needle ray did not get any stronger, and that
tipped me off. The bird was following me. He was
no peace loving citizen, because honest men do not cart
weapons with serial numbers filed off. Therefore, the character tailing
me was a hot papa with a burner charge labeled
Steve Hamilton in his needler. I concentrated, but the only

(01:07):
impression I could get would have specified ninety eight men
out of a hundred anywhere. He was shorter than my
six feet two and lighter than my one ninety I
could guess that he was better looking. I'd had my
features arranged by a blocked drop kick the year before
the National Football League ruled the Rhine Institute out because

(01:28):
of our use of mentals and perceptives. I gave up trying.
I wanted details, and not an overall picture of a
hotbird carrying a burner. I wondered if I could make
a run for it. I let my sense of perception
dig the street ahead, casing every bump and irregularity. I
passed places where I could zig out to take cover

(01:49):
in front of telephone poles, and other places where I
could zag in to take cover beyond front steps and
the like. I let my perception run up the block,
and by the time I got to the end of
my I knew the block just as well as if
I'd made a practice run in the daytime. At this
point I got a shock. The hut Papa was coming

(02:09):
up the sidewalk, hell bent for destruction. He was a
mental sensitive and he had been following my thoughts while
my sense of perception made its trial run up the street.
He was running like the devil to catch up with
my mind and burn it down per schedule. It must
have come as quite a shock to him when he
realized that while the mind he was reading was running

(02:30):
like hell up the street, the hard old body was
standing in the doorway waiting for him. I dove out
of my hiding place as he came close. I wanted
to tackle him hard and ask some pointed questions he
saw me. As I saw him skidding to an unbalanced stop,
and there was the dull glint of metal in his
right hand, his needle ray came swinging up, and I

(02:53):
went for my armpit. I found time to curse my
own stupidity for not having hardware in my own fist
at the moment. Then I had my rod in my fist.
I felt the hot scorch of the needle going off
just over my shoulder, And then came the god awful
racket of my ancient forty five. The big slug caught
him high in the belly and tossed him back. It

(03:14):
folded him over and dropped him in the gutter. While
the echoes of my cannon were still racketing back and forth,
up and down the quiet street. I had just enough
time to dig his wallet, pockets and billfold before the
whole neighborhood was up and out. Sirens howled in the distance,
and from above I could hear the thin whale of
a jet coptor. Some one opened a window and called,

(03:37):
what's going on out there? Cut it out tea party,
I called back, go invite the cops, Tommy. The window
slammed down again. He didn't have to invite the law.
It arrived in three ground cruisers and two jet copter
emergency squads that came closing in like a collapsing balloon.
The leader of the squadron was a Lieutenant Williamson, whom

(03:59):
i'd know ever met before, but he knew all about
me before the copter hit the ground. I could almost
feel his sense of perception frisking me from the skin outward,
going through my wallet, inspecting my private operator's license and
my weapon permit. I found out later that Williamson was
a Rhine scholar with a bachelor's degree in perception, which

(04:20):
put him head and shoulders over me. He came to
the point at once any ideas about this Hammond, I
shook my head. Nope, I replied. He looked at one
of his men. The other man nodded, he's leveling. He said,
now look, Hammond said the lieutenant pointedly, you're clean and

(04:40):
we know it. But hot papas don't go out for fun.
Why was he trying to burn you? I wouldn't know.
I'm as blank as any perceptive when it comes to
reading minds. I was hoping to collect him whole enough
to ask questions, but he forced my hand. I looked
to where some of the clean up squad were tucking
the corpse into a basket. It was one of the

(05:02):
few times I'd have happily swapt my perception for the
ability to read a mind. The lieutenant nodded, unhappily. Mind
telling me why you were wandering around his neighborhood. You
don't belong here, you know. I was doing the job
that most private eyes do. I was tailing a gent
who was playing games off the reservation. You've gone into

(05:22):
this guy's wallet, of course, I nodded. Sure he was.
Peter Rambaugh aged thirty, and don't bother. I know the rest.
I can add only one item that you may not know.
Rambaugh was a paid hut boy suspected of playing with
Scarman's mob. I've had no dealings with Scarman, Lieutenant. The

(05:44):
lieutenant nodded absently. It seemed to be a habit with him,
probably to cover up his thinking time. Finally, he said, Hammond,
you're clean. As soon as I identified you, I took
a dig at your folder at headquarters. You're a bit
rough and fast on that prehistoric cannon of yours, But
you mean you can dig a folder at Central files

(06:05):
all the way from here? I did. Here was a
real esper for you. I've got a range of about
two blocks for good, solid permanent things like buildings and
street car tracks, but unfamiliar things get foggy at about
half a block. I can dig lethal machinery coming in
my direction for about a block and a half. Because
I'm a bit sensitive about such things. I looked at

(06:28):
Lieutenant Williamson and said, with a range like yours, how
come there's any crime in this town at all? He
shook his head slowly. Crime doesn't out until it's committed.
He said, you'll remember how fast we got here after
you pulled the trigger. But you're clean, Hammond. Just come
to the inquest and tell all I can go. You

(06:49):
can go, but just to keep you out of any
more trouble, I'll have one of the jet coppers drop
you off at home. Mind nope, But isn't that more
than the police are used to doing? He eyed me amusedly.
If I were a mental he said, I could read
your mind and know that you were forming a notion
of calling on Scarman and asking him what for. But

(07:11):
since I'm only a mind blank esper, all I can
do is to fall back on experience and guesswork. Do
I make myself clear? Lieutenant Williamson's guess work and experience
were as good as mental sensitivity. But I didn't think
it was wise to admit that I'd been considering just
exactly how to get to Scarman. I was quickly and
firmly conveyed home in a jet copter, but once I

(07:33):
saw them take off, I walked out of the apartment again.
I had more or less tacitly agreed not to go
looking for Scarman, but I had not mentioned taking a
dig at the apartment of the dear departed Peter Rambaugh.
Rambaugh's place was uptown, and the front door was protected
by an eight tumbler cylinder job that would have tax

(07:55):
the best of Esper lockpicks. But there was a service
entrance in back that was not locked, and I took it.
The elevator was a self service job, and Rambaugh's back
door was locked on a snap latch that a playful
kitten could have opened. I dug the place for a
few minutes and found it clean, so I went in
and took a more careful look. The desk was not

(08:16):
particularly interesting, just papers and letters and unpaid bills. The
dresser in the bedroom was the same, excepting for the
bottom drawer that was filled with a fine collection of
needle rays and stun guns, and one big force blaster
that could blow a hole in a brick wall. None
of them had their serial numbers intact. But behind a

(08:37):
reproduction of Gainsborough painting was a wall safe that must
have been built before Rhine Institute discovered the key to
man's latent abilities. Inside of this tin can was a
collection of photographs that must have brought Rambaugh a nice
sum in the months when the murder business went slack.
I couldn't quite dig them clear because I didn't know

(08:57):
any of the people involved, and I didn't try too
hard because there were some letters and notes that might
lead me into the answer to why Rambo was hut
burning for me. I fiddled with the dial for about
fifteen minutes, watching the tumblers and the little wheels go around.
Then it went click, and I turned the handle and
opened the door. I was standing there with both hands

(09:19):
deep in Ramboss safe when I heard a noise behind me.
I whirled and slid aside, all in one motion, and
my hand streaked for my armpit and came out with
the forty five. It was a woman, and she was
carrying nothing more lethal than the fountain pen in her purse.
She blanched when she saw my forty five swinging towards

(09:40):
her middle, but she took a deep breath when I
halted it in mid air. I didn't mean to startle you,
she apologized. Startle hell, I blurted, you scared me out
of my shoes. I dug her purse. Besides the usual
female junk, she had a wallet containing a couple of
charge account plates, a driver's license, and a hospital card,

(10:03):
all made out to Miss Martha Franklin. Miss Franklin was
about twenty four and she was a strawberry blonde, with
the pale skin and blue wies that go with the hair.
I gathered that she didn't belong there any more than
I did. I don't, mister Hammond, she said. So Martha
Franklin was a mental sensitive I am, she told me,

(10:24):
and that's how I came to be here. I'm an esper.
You'll have to explain in the words of one syllable
because I can't read you. I was not far away
when you cut loose with that field piece of yours,
she said flatly. So I read your intention to come here.
I've been following you at mental range ever since. Why

(10:46):
because there is something in that safe I want very much.
I looked at her again. She did not look like
the type to get into awkward situations. She colored slightly
and said, one indiscretion doesn't make a tramp, mister Hammond.
I nodded one it intact or burned? I asked, burned, please,

(11:08):
she said, smiling weakly at me, for my intention. I
smiled back. On my way to Rambaugh's bedroom, I dug
the rest of the thug safe, but there wasn't anything
there that would give me an inkling of why he
was gunning for me. I came back with one of
his needle rays and burned the contents of the safe
to a black char I stirred up the ashes with

(11:29):
the nose of the needler and left it in the
safe after wiping it clean on my handkerchief. Thank you,
mister Hammond, she said quietly. Maybe I can answer your question.
Ramba was probably after you because of me. Huh. I've
been paying Rambaugh blackmail for about four years. This morning
I decided to stop it and looked your name up

(11:52):
in the telephone book. Ramba must have read me. Do
it ever think of the police, I suggested, of course,
But that is just as bad as not paying off.
You end up all over the front pages anyway. You
know that there's a lot of argument on both sides,
I supposed, But let's finish this one over a bar.

(12:14):
We're crowding our luck here in the eyes of the law,
we're just a couple of nasty break ins. Yes, she
said simply. We left Rambaugh's apartment together, and I handed
Martha into my car and took off. It struck me
as we were driving that mental sensitivity was a good thing,
in spite of its limitations. A woman without mental training

(12:36):
might have every right to object to visiting a bachelor
apartment at two o'clock in the morning, But I had
no firm plans for playing up to Martha Frankman. I
really wanted to talk this mess out and get it
squared away. This she could read, so I was saved
the almost impossible task of trying to convince an attractive
woman that I really had no designs upon her beautiful

(12:57):
white body. I was not all that cold to the idea,
but Martha did not seem to be the pushover type.
Thank you, Steve, she said, thanks for nothing, I told
her with a short laugh, them's my sentiments. I like
your sentiments. That's why I'm here. Maybe we can get
our heads together and figure something out. I nodded and

(13:19):
went back to my driving, feeling pretty good. Now. A
man does not dig his own apartment. He expects to
find it the way he left it. He digs in
the mailbox on his way towards it, and he may
dig in his refrigerator to see whether he should stop
for beer or whatever else, because these things save steps.
But nobody really expects to find trouble in his own home,

(13:41):
especially when he's coming in at three o'clock in the
morning with a good looking woman. They were smart enough
to come with nothing deadly in their hands, so I
had no warning until they stepped out from either side
of my front door and lifted me into my living
room by the elbows. They hurled me into an easy
chair with a crash. When I stopped bouncing, one of

(14:02):
the gorillas was standing in front of me, about as
tall as the Washington Monument as seen from the sidewalk
in front. He was looking at my forty five with
careful curiosity. What gives? I demanded. The crumb in front
of me leaned on and gave me a back and
forth that yanked my head around. I didn't say anything,
but I thought, how I'd like to meet the buzzard

(14:24):
in a dark alley with my gun in my fist.
Martha said, they're friends of Rambaugh, Steve, and they're a
little afraid of that prehistoric cannon you carry. The bird
in front of Martha gave her a one two across
the face. That was enough for me. I came up
out of my chair, lifting my fist from the floor

(14:44):
and putting my back and thigh muscles behind it. It
should have taken his head off, but all he did
was grunt, stagger back, dig his heels in, and then
come back at me with his head down. I chopped
at the bridge of his nose, but missed and almost
broke my hand and on his hard skull. Then the
other guy came charging in and I flung out a
side chop with my other hand and caught him on

(15:06):
the wrist. But Ryan training can't do away with the
old fact that two big tough men can wipe the
floor with one big tough man. I didn't even take
long enough to mess up my furniture. I had the
satisfaction of mashing a nose and cracking my hand against
a skull again before the lights went out. When I

(15:26):
came back from Mars, I was sitting on a kitchen
chair facing a corner. My wrists and ankles were taped
to the arms and legs of the chair I dug around.
They had Martha tape to another chair in the opposite corner,
and the two gorillas were standing in the middle of
the room, obviously trying to think. So was I. There

(15:48):
was something that smelled about this mess. Peter Rambaugh was
a mental and he should have been sensitive enough to
keep his take low enough so that it wouldn't drive
Martha into thinking up ways and means of getting rid
of him. Even so, he shouldn't have been gunning for
me unless there was a lot more to this than
I could dig. What gives? I asked sourly. There was

(16:12):
no answer. The thug with my forty five took out
the clip and removed a couple of slugs. He went
into the kitchen and found my pliers and came back,
teasing one of the slugs out of its casing. The
other bird lit a cigarette. The bird with the cartridge
poured the powder from the shell into the palm of
my hand. I knew what was coming, but I couldn't

(16:34):
wiggle my fingers much, let alone turn my hand over
to dump the stuff out. The other guide planted the
end of the cigarette between my middle fingers, and I
had to squeeze hard to keep the hot end up.
My fingers began to ache almost immediately, and I was
beginning to imagine the flash of the flame and the
fierce wave of pain that would strike when my tired

(16:55):
hand lost its pep and let the cigarette fall into
that little mound of powder. Stop it, said Martha, stop it.
What do they want? I gritted, They won't think it,
she cried. The bright red on the end of the
cigarette grayed with ash, and I began to wonder how
long it would be before a fleck of hot ash

(17:16):
would fall, how long it would take for the ash
to grow long and top heavy and then fall into
the powder, and whether or not the ash would be
hot enough to touch it off. I struggled to keep
my hands steady, but they were trembling. I felt the
cigarette slip a bit and clamp down tight with my
aching fingers. Martha pleaded again, stop it. Let us know

(17:41):
what you want, and we'll do it anything, I promised rashly.
Even if I managed to hold that deadly fuse tight,
it would eventually burn down to the bitter end. Then
there would be a flash, and I'd probably never hold
my hand around a gun butt again. I'd have to
go looking for this pair of lice with my gun

(18:01):
in my left if they didn't try the same trick
on my other hand. I tried to shut my mind
on that notion, but it was no use. It slipped.
But the chances were that this pair of closed mouth
hut boys had considered that idea before. Can you dig em? Martha, Yes,
but not deep enough. They're both concentrating on that cigarette

(18:24):
and making mental bets when it will Her voice trailed off.
A wisp of ash had dropped, and my mental howl
must have been loud enough to scorch their minds. It
was enough to stop Martha at any rate. But the
wisp of ash was cold, and nothing happened except my
spine got coldly wet, and sweat ran down my face
and into my mouth. The palm of my hand was

(18:47):
sweating too, but not enough to wet the little pile
of powder. Look, I said, in a voice that sounded
like a nutmeg grater. Ramble was a louse, and he
tried to kill me first. If it's revenge you want,
why not talk it over. They don't care what you
did to Rambaugh, said Martha. They didn't come here to

(19:07):
practice torture, I snapped. They want something big, And the
only guy I know mixed up with Peter Rambaugh is
Scarman himself. Scarman, blurted Martha. Scarman was a big shot
who lived in a palace about as lush as the
taj Mahal in the middle of a fenced inn property
big enough to keep him out of the mental range

(19:30):
of most peepers. Scarman was about as big a louse
as they came, but nobody could put a finger on
him because he managed to keep himself as clean as
a ray gun needle. I was expecting a clip on
the skull for thinking the things I was thinking about Scarman,
but it did not come. These guys were used to
having people think violence at their boss. I thought a

(19:52):
little harder. Maybe if I made him mad enough, one
of them would belt me on the noggin and put
me out, and then I'd be cold when the cigarette
fell into the gunpowder and ruined by hand. I made
myself a firm, solid promise that if, as and when
I got out of this fix, I would find Scarman,
shove the nose of my automatic down his throat through

(20:13):
his front teeth, and empty the clip out through the
top of his head. Then the hot boy behind me
lifted the cigarette from my fingers very gently and squibbed
it out in the ash tray. I got the pitch.
This is the way it is done in these enlightened days.
Ryan Institute and the special talents that Ryan developed should

(20:33):
and could have made the world a better, brighter place
to live in. But I've heard it said and had
it proved that the minute someone comes up with something good,
there are a lot of buzzards who turn it bad
and make it a foul, rotten medium for their lousy
way of life. No, in these days of mental telepathy
and extrasensory perception, crumbs do not erase other crumbs. They

(20:57):
just grabbed some citizen and put him in a box
until he's ready to do their dirty work for them.
Guilt that would be mine. A crime is a crime,
and the guy who does it is a criminal, no
matter how he justifies his active violence the truth. Any
court mentalist who waded through that pair of unwashed minds
would find no evidence of any open deal with Steve Hammond.

(21:20):
Sure he would find violence there, but the court is
no more than well aware of the fact that thinking
of an act of violence is not illegal. This rhine
training has been too recent to get the human race
trained into the nice cities of polite mental behavior. Sure
they'd get a few months or maybe a few years
for breaking and entering as well as assault, but after all,

(21:42):
they were friends of Rambaugh and this might well be
a matter of retaliation, even though they thought Rambought was
an incompetent bungler. So if Steve Hammond believed that he
could go free with a whole hand by planning to
rub out a man named Scarman, that would be Steve
Hammond's crime, not theirs. They didn't take any chances, even

(22:03):
though I knew that they could read my mind well
enough to know that I would go through with their
nasty little scheme. They hustled Martha into the kitchen chair,
and all and one of them stood there with my
paring knife, touching her soft throat enough to indent the skin,
but not enough to draw blood. The other rat untaped
me and stood me on my feet. I hurt all

(22:25):
over from the pasting I'd taken, so I took a
boiling shower and dressed leisurely. The guy handed me my
forty five, all loaded, as they came out of the bathroom.
The other bird hadn't moved a muscle out in the kitchen.
His knife was still pressing against Martha's throat. He was
still standing pat when I passed out of esper Range
on the street below. In pre Rhine days, a citizen

(22:48):
in my pinch would holler for the cops because he
couldn't be sure that the crooks would keep their end
of the bargain. But Rhine training had produced a real
honor among thieves, so that organized crime can run as
fast as organized justice. If I kept my end and
they didn't keep theirs, the word would get around from
their own dirty minds that they couldn't keep a bargain. Well,

(23:10):
I was going to keep mine for the same reason,
even though I am not a thief. That's the way
it's done these days. You get a good esper like
me to knock off a sharp mental operator like Scarman.
The trouble was, I really didn't want Scarman. I wanted
the pair of mental sadists up in my apartment who
were holding a knife against Martha's throat. I wanted them,

(23:33):
and I wanted Martha Franklin's skin to be happily whole.
And if I crossed them now, the only guys they
wouldn't play ball with me in the future would be
the crooks. Them I could do without. So if they
figured that an esper could take a mental like Scarman,
why couldn't an esper take the pair of them. All
I had to do was think of something else until

(23:54):
I could get my hands on their throats. Sure they'd
follow my mind as soon as they felt my mental
waves within range. But if I could really find something
interesting enough to occupy my attention and maybe theirs as well,
they could not identify me. So I went back into
the lobby of my apartment dug into the mail box
of another party, thus identifying myself as the man in

(24:18):
three eight four. Then I punched the elevator button for
the fourth and leaned back against the elevator and let
my mind wander up through the apartments above. I violated
all the laws against esping Tom's as the elevator oozed upwards. Eventually,
my sense of perception wandered through my own apartment, and
I located her lying on the bed, fully dressed. She'd

(24:41):
probably been freed lest some esper cop get to wondering
why there was a woman taped to a chair in
a bachelor's kitchen. I shut my mind like a clam
but I couldn't withdraw my perception too fast. I let
it ooze back there, like the eyes of a lecherous
old man at a burlycue. I left the elevator at
the fourth and walked up the stairs by reflex. While

(25:04):
my mind was positively radiating waves of vulgarity, my mind
managed to identify her as the girl on the bed
without thinking any name. She was a good looking strawberry
blonde with a slender waist and a high bosom and long,
slender legs. She was wearing a pair of Dornier shoes
with three inch heels that did things to her ankles.

(25:27):
Her nylons were size eight and one half medium length
in that dark shade that always gives me ideas. Her
dress was a simple thing that did not have a
store label on it, so I dug the stitches for
a bit and decided that it had been hand made.
Someone was a fine dress maker because it fitted her
slender body perfectly. Her petticoat was a store type. It

(25:50):
was simple and fitted too, but it had a label
from Foresters in the hem. Her bra was a graceform
size thirty two medium cup. But the girl in the
bed did not have much need for molding, shaping, uplifting,
padding or pretense. She was all her and she filled
it right to the brim. I let my perception dawdle

(26:11):
on the slender ankles, the lissome waist, and the rounded hips.
My door key came out by habit reflex and entered
the keyhole, while my sense of perception let them have
one last vicarious thrill. The girl on the bed was
an honest, all over strawberry blonde. She then the door

(26:32):
swung open and hell went out for breakfast. My forty
five bellowed at the light as I slid in and
sloped to one side. The room went dark. As I
dropped to the floor in front of my bookcase. From
across the room, a hip burner seared the door and
slashed sidewise, cutting a smoking swath across my encyclopedia from

(26:53):
A AUD to C A N D A N, and
then came down as I squirmed aside. It took King
Lear right out of Shakespeare. Before the beam winked out.
It went off just in time to keep me from
sporting a cooked stripe down my face. I triggered the
automatic again to make a flash in their faces while

(27:13):
I dug the room to locate them in the dark,
the needle beam flared out again and drew the hole
in the bookcase behind me. The other guy made a
slashing motion with his beam to pin me down, but
he made a mistake by standing up to do it.
I put a slug in his middle that slammed him
back against the wall. He hung there for a moment
before he fell to the floor with a dull limp sound.

(27:37):
His needle beam slashed upward and burned the ceiling before
his hand went limp and let the weapon drop. I
whirled to dig the other guy in the room just
as the throb of a stun gum beam moaned over
my head. I wondered where they'd got the arsenal, dug
the serial number and realized that it was mine. It
gave me a chuckle. I'm a pistol man, so the

(27:59):
stun gun that old gorilla man was toting couldn't have
had more than one charge. I tried to dig it,
but couldn't. Even a doctor of perception can't really dig
the number of kilowat seconds in a mason chamber. My
accurate esping must have made the other guy desperate, because
he made a dive and let his needle ray burn
out a slashing beam that zipped across over my head.

(28:22):
My forty five blazed twice. He missed, but I didn't.
Just as the throb of the stun gun rang in
the air again, I wore up to face my stun
gun coming out of the bedroom door in front of
Martha Franklin. The slug intended for Martha's body never came
out of my gun because her stun gun got me first.

(28:43):
He froze me like a hunk of Greek statuary, and
I went forward and toppled over until I came on
a three point landing of elbow, the opposite knee and
the side of my face. I was as good as dead.
My brain was still functioning, but nothing else was. I
was completely paralyzed. My heart had stopped beating and my

(29:04):
lungs had stopped breathing. And I've been told that a
healthy man can retain consciousness for maybe a minute or
so without a fresh supply of blood to the brain.
Then things get muddy black, and you've had it for good.
My esp was still functioning, but that would black out
with the rest of Steve Hammond. There was no physical pain.

(29:26):
They could have drilled me with a blunk two by
floor and I'd not have felt it then, because I
couldn't stare death in the face. I shut my mind
on the fact and asked my late girlfriend. She was
standing there with my stun gun in her hand, with
a smile on her beautiful puss, and that vibrant body
swaying gently. I wanted to vomit, and I would have

(29:48):
if I had not been frozen solid. That beautiful body,
presided over by that vicious brain, made me sick. Her
smile faded as I began to realize the truth her
story was. Rambaugh a mental, would have been able to
play his blackmail game to the fine degree. He would
have known when Martha's patience was about to grow short.

(30:10):
If Martha's story were true, no blackmailer pushed his victim
to the breaking point, and Rambaugh wouldn't have gone for
me if this had been just a plain case of blackmail. No.
By thinking deeply, Martha Franklin had engineered the death of Rambaugh,
and she'd almost engineered the rubbing out of Scarman. A mental.

(30:30):
Martha Franklin a high grade metal, capable of controlling her
thoughts so that her cohorts could be led by the
mind into doing her dirty work. My mind chuckled. I'd
be gone before they caught up with Martha. But they'd
catch up, all right. She'd leave the apartment positively radiating
her active violence, and then the cops would have a catch.

(30:53):
And you should see how a sin of court menalists
go to work on a guilty party these days. Once
they get the guide that pulled the trigger on the
witness stand in front of a jury consisting of mixed
mentals and espers with no holds barred, the court gets
a full load of the killer's life, adventures, habits, and attitude.

(31:14):
Just before the guilty party heads for the readjustment chamber,
things were growing blacker. Waves of darkness clouded my mind
and I found it hard to think straight. My esper
sense faded first, and as it faded, I let it
run once more over Martha's attractiveness and found my darkening
mind wishing that she were the girl I believed her

(31:35):
to be instead of the female louse she was. It
could have been fun, but now I was about to
black out from stun gun paralysis, and Martha was headed
for the readjustment chamber, where they'd reduce her mental activity
to the level of a menial, sterilize her, and put
her to work in an occupation that no man or
woman with a spark of intelligence, ambition, or good sense

(31:59):
would take. She would live and die a half robot
alone and ignored her attractiveness, lost because of her own
lackluster mind. And I'd been willing to go out and
plug Scarmin for her ha And then she was at
my side. I perceived her dimly inconstantly through the waves

(32:20):
of blackness and unreality that were like the half dreams
that we have when lying a doze. She levered my
frozen body over on its hard back and went to
work on my chest. Her arms went around me and
she squeezed air wooshed into my dead lungs, And then
she was beating my breastbone black and blue with her
small fists. Beat, beat, beat, beat. I couldn't feel a thing,

(32:45):
but I could dig the fact that she was hurting
her hands as she beat on my chest in a
rhythm that matched the beat of her own heart. I
dug her own heart beatfore her, and she read my
mind and matched the beat perfectly. Then I felt a
thump inside of me and dug my own heart. It
throbbed once, sluggishly, It struggled slowly. Then it throbbed to

(33:09):
the beat of her hands, and the blackening waves went away.
My frozen body relaxed, and I came down to rest
on the floor like a melting lump of sugar. Martha
dropped on top of my body and pressed me down.
Her arms were around my chest as she forced air
into my lungs. She beat my ribs sore when my
heart faltered, and squeezed me when my breathing slowed. I

(33:33):
felt the life coming back into me. It came in
like the tide, with a fringe of needles and pins
that flowed inward from the fingers and toes and scalp.
Martha pressed me down on the carpet and kissed me full,
open mouthed, passionate. It stirred my blood and my mind,
and I took a deep, shuddering breath. I looked up

(33:54):
into her soft blue eyes and said, thanks, slut. She
kissed me again, pressing me down and writhing against me
and obviously getting a kick out of my reaction. Then
I came alive and threw her off with no warning.
I sat up and swung a rodjaase right that clipped
her on the jaw and sent her rolling over and over.

(34:16):
Her eyes glazed for a moment, but she came out
of it and looked pained and miserable. You promised, she said, huskily,
promised to kill Scarman. Yeah, you thought how you'd kill
Scarman for me, Steve, someday, I said, flatly, I may
kill Scarman, bit it won't be for you. She tried

(34:38):
to claw me, but I clipped her again, and this
time I made it stick. She went not cold, and
she was still out like a frozen herring by the
time Lieutenant Williamson arrived with his jet copter squad to
take her away. The last time I saw Martha Franklin,
she was still trying to convince twelve Rhine scholars and
true that any woman with the body as beautiful as

(35:01):
hers couldn't possibly have committed any crime. She was good
at it, but not that good. Funny mental sensitives always
think they're so damned superior to any one else. End
of Stop Look and Dig by George O. Smith