f it; they have an operative planted in
Murchison's office. And some of our banking friends got the rest. This
Human Supremacy League is being financed by somebody. Every so often,
their treasurer makes a big deposit at one of the banks here, all
Federation currency, big denomination notes. When I asked them to,
they started keeping a record of the serial numbers and checking
withdrawals. The money was paid out, at the First Planetary Bank, to
Mr. Samuel S. Murchison, in person. The Armegeddonists are getting
money, too, but they're too foxy to put theirs through the banks. I
believe they're the ones who mind-probed Lucy Nocero. Barton-Massarra
believe, but they can't prove, that Human Supremacy launched that
robo-bomb at us, that time at the spaceport."

"Have you done anything with those audiovisuals of Leibert?"

"Gave them to Barton-Massarra. They haven't gotten anything, yet."

"So we have to admit that Klem wasn't crazy after all. What do you
want me to do?"

"Go out to Force Command and take charge. We have to assume that there
may be a Merlin, we have to assume that it may be dangerous, and we
have to assume that Kurt Fawzi and his covey of Merlinolators are just
before digging it up. Your job is to see that whatever it is doesn't
get loose."

The trouble was, if he started giving orders around Force Command he'd
stop being a brilliant young man and become a half-baked kid, and one
word from him and the older and wiser heads would do just what they
pleased. He wondered if the pro-Leibert and anti-Leibert factions were
still squabbling; maybe if he went out of his way to antagonize one
side, he'd make allies of the other. He took the precaution of
screening in, first; Kurt Fawzi, with whom he talked, was almost
incoherent with excitement. At least, he was reasonably sure that none
of Klem Zareff's trigger-happy mercenaries would shoot him down coming
in.

The well, fifty feet in diameter, went straight down from the top of
the mesa; as the headquarters had been buried under loose rubble,
they'd had to vitrify the sides going down. He let down into the hole
in a jeep, and stood on the collapsium roof of whatever it was they
had found. It wasn't the top of the headquarters itself; the microray
scannings showed that. It was a drum-shaped superstructure, a sort of
underground penthouse. And there they were stopped. You didn't cut
collapsium with a cold chisel, or even an atomic torch. He began to
see how he w