eing prepared."

* * *

While Belle had been greeting and conversing, she had also been
scanning. Her range, her sensitivity, and her power were immensely
greater than Lola's; were probably equal to Garlock's own. She scanned
by miles against the scant yards covered by the Secret Service.

"Where?"

"Give me your thought." The Secret Service man did not know what she
meant--telepathy was of course new to him--so she seized his attention
and directed it to a certain window in a building a couple of miles away
on a hill.

"But they couldn't, from there!"

"But they can. They have a quite efficient engine of destruction--a
'rifle' is their thought. Large, and long, with a very good telescope on
it--with crosshairs. If I scan their minds more precisely you may know
the weapon.... Ah, they think of it as a 'Buford Mark Forty
Anti-Aircraft Rifle'."

"A Buford! My God, they can hit any button on her clothes--get her away,
quick!" He tried to jump, but could not move.

"As you were," she directed. "There was another Buford there, and
another over there." She guided his thought. "Two men to each Buford.
There are now six handless men in your hospital room. If you will send
men to those three places you will find the Bufords and the hands. Your
surgeon will have no difficulty in matching the hands to the men. If any
seek to remove either Bufords or hands before your men get there, I will
de-hand them, also."

* * *

To say that the Secret Service man was flabbergasted is to put it very
mildly indeed. Cordeen had told him, with much pounding on his desk and
in searing, air-blueing language, what to expect-or, rather, to expect
_anything_, no matter what and with no limits whatever--but he hadn't
believed it then and simply could not believe it now. Goddamn it, such
things _couldn't_ happen. And this beautiful, beautifully-stacked,
half-naked woman--girl, rather, she couldn't be a day over
twenty-five--even if it had been their black-browed, toplofty leader,
Captain Garlock himself....

"I am twenty-three of your years old, not twenty-five," she informed
him, coldly, "and I will permit no distinction of sex. In your primitive
culture the women may still be allowing you men to believe in the
fallacy of the superiority of the male, but know right now that I can do
anything any man ever born can do and do it better."

"Oh, I'm ... I'm sure ... certainly...." Aveng