o I took a boiling shower and
dressed leisurely. The guy handed me my forty-five, all loaded, as I 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 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 has 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, 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 Scarmann.

The trouble was that I didn't really want Scarmann, I wanted that pair of
mental sadists up in my apartment who were holding a knife against
Martha's throat. I wanted them, and I wanted Martha Franklin's skin to be
happily whole. And if I crossed them now, the only guys that 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 Scarmann, why
couldn't an esper take the pair of them?

All I had to do was to think of something else until 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 and dug into the mailbox of
another party, thus identifying myself as the man in 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 Toms 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 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 o