hat kind of organization. He had to rescue one
other man before--well, before history was changed and spun off on the
wrong course, the long downward path. He had his knowledge and
abilities but they wouldn't stop a bullet. Nor did they include
education for this kind of warfare. War that was not war, politics
that were not politics but a handful of scrawled equations and a
bookful of slowly gathered data and a brainful of dreams.

Bancroft had Tighe--somewhere. The Institute could not ask the
government for help, even if to a large degree the Institute was the
government. It could, perhaps, send Dalgetty a few men but it had no
goon squads. And time was like a hound on his heels.

* * * * *

The sensitive man turned, suddenly aware of someone else. This was a
middle-aged fellow, gaunt and gray-haired, with an intellectual cast
of feature. He leaned on the rail and said quietly, "Nice evening,
isn't it?"

"Yes," said Dalgetty. "Very nice."

"It gives me a feeling of real accomplishment, this place," said the
stranger.

"How so?" asked Dalgetty, not unwilling to make conversation.

The man looked out over the sea and spoke softly as if to himself.
"I'm fifty years old. I was born during World War Three and grew up
with the famines and the mass insanities that followed. I saw
fighting myself in Asia. I worried about a senselessly expanding
population pressing on senselessly diminished resources. I saw an
America that seemed equally divided between decadence and madness.

"And yet I can stand now and watch a world where we've got a
functioning United Nations, where population increase is leveling off
and democratic government spreading to country after country, where
we're conquering the seas and even going out to other planets. Things
have changed since I was a boy but on the whole it's been for the
better."

"Ah," said Dalgetty, "a kindred spirit. Though I'm afraid it's not
quite that simple."

* * * * *

The man arched his brows. "So you vote conservative?"

"The Labor Party _is_ conservative," said Dalgetty. "As proof of which
it's in coalition with the Republicans and the Neofederalists as well
as some splinter groups. No, I don't care if it stays in, or if the
Conservatives prosper or the Liberals take over. The question is--who
shall control the group in power?"

"Its membership, I suppose," said the man.

"But just who is its membershi