* *

A police auto was screeching to a halt in the driveway before the big
house, and a half-dozen uniformed men, armed with deadly blasters, were
piling out. Another car was whipping around the final curve.

I knew that Maxwell was giving me a look of gratitude, but suddenly I
wasn't sure it was warranted. I had assumed on a sort of blind faith
that the police would get here in time--but as I watched the scene, I
didn't feel so good.

For the policemen were not charging the house. They were not even
looking at it.

They were milling around, aimlessly. No, not aimlessly, exactly. They
were looking _for_ something; but they weren't seeing it. One of them
got back in the car and used the radio, and the others wandered around,
glancing unseeingly in all directions.

"Mass telenosis?" I asked quietly, not taking my eyes from the scene,
feeling my heart pound harder as I caught a glimpse of the bobbing,
slower lights of another vehicle on the road far back.

Blekeke said, "Yups. Plug all loop-hole. Police not see house, not see
ship. No one see ship leave, not knowing Blekeke on board. Complete
vanish." He shrugged. "Ship keep commercial schedule. Take auxiliary
power to right course, then switch rocket. Stopped on way, maybe, so
what? Telenize searchers, yups?"

"What about the house?" I asked.

"Go boom when we leave," Blekeke said.

Maxwell said, "Judas! Everyone will just assume that we and Blekeke and
all the cultists have gone boom, too. That's likely to end the
investigation right there. Slow it down plenty, at least."

Blekeke nodded applaudingly. "Yups. Is so."

He pushed the wall-button and we had the spaceship scene again. Men and
Martians were loading large crates into the port of the ship. The other
bulky boxes were being moved across the beach from the opening in the
hill.

"Leaving soon now," Blekeke said as he switched the lights on. "That
most of vital equipment. Other going boom. We work awful quickness,
yups?"

"Just how do you mean?" I asked, more to kill time than out of real
curiosity.

"Ha! You not knowing how quickness we work since morning--since getting
Maxwell brain band on measure machine Sun Ray...."

Maxwell exclaimed; "Oh, hell, of course! Son of a blunder! _That's_ how
you got it."

* * * * *

I had already figured that out, and I guessed it was the information
Blekeke had gained from Maxwell's mind that was forcing him to act now