way with an audible
whine: the guard might not hear me.

"X. 2. AY."

The sorter's desk. He came in. I murmured Hanley's rating. "Rush.
Danger. Special."

It went swiftly through. Hanley, thank Heaven, was at his desk.

* * * * *

I plugged in my little image finder; held it over my head; turned it
slowly. I whispered:

"Look around, Chief. See where I am? Near Nareda; couple of miles out.
Followed Perona; he met these men.

"The big one is De Boer, the depth bandit. I can't hear what they're
saying--but I can send you their voice murmurs."

"Amplify them all you can. Relay them up," Hanley ordered.

I caught Perona's murmurs again; I swung them through my tiny
transformers and off my transmitter points into the ether.

"Hear them, Chief?"

"Yes. I'll try further amplification."

It was what I had intended. Hanley's greater power might be able to
amplify those murmurs into audible strength.

"I'm getting them, Phil."

He swung them back to me. Grotesquely distorted, blurred with tube-hum
and interference crackle, they roared in my ear-grids so loudly that I
saw the nearby guard turn his head as though startled. Listening....

But evidently he concluded it was nothing.

I cut down the volume. Hanley switched in.

"By God. Phil! This--"

"Off, Chief! Let me hear, too!"

* * * * *

He cut away. Those distorted voices! They came from Perona and the
bandits to me across this five hundred foot moonlit bowl; from me,
thirteen hundred miles up to Hanley's instruments; and back to me once
more. But the words, most of them, now were distinguishable.

Perona's voice: "I tell it to you. De Boer ... and a good chance for you
to make the money."

"But will they pay?"

"Of course they will pay. Big. A ransom princely."

"And why, Perona? Why princely? Who is this fellow--so important?"

"He is with rich business men, I tell to you."

"A private citizen?"

"... And a private citizen, of a surety. Fool! Have you come to be a
coward, De Boer?"

"Pah!"

"Well then I tell you it is a lifetime chance. All of it I have
arranged. If he was a government agent, that would be very different,
for they are very keen, this administration of the American government,
to protect their agents. But their private citizens--it is a scandal! Do
you not ever pick the newscasters' reports, De Boer? Has it not been a
scandal that this administration does very