y the transmission from Hunter's screen was unimpaired, for
the speaker seemed to recognize him.

"Who is this?" Hunter asked, his mouth suddenly dry.

"A friend. We have your interest at heart, Captain. We suggest that
you investigate United Researchers' clinic when you start looking for
Miss Saymer."

The contact snapped off. Hunter sat down slowly, his mind reeling.
Since only his screen had been neutralized, the machine was not at
fault. Only a top-ranking cartel executive could arrange for a
deliberate interruption of service. The rest followed logically. No
one in United would have given him the information.

So Ann had fallen into their hands after all! Someone in
Consolidated--perhaps Glenn Farren himself--was setting him on Ann's
trail, on the chance that Hunter could find her when Consolidated's
operatives had failed.

Hunter was used to the risk of long odds. He had a ten-year
apprenticeship in the treachery and in-fighting of the frontier. There
was a good chance that he could play one cartel against the other, and
in the process get Ann away from both of them.

One more thing he wanted before he planned his opening attack against
United Researchers--the note Ann had sent to Mrs. Ames. It might give
him a clue as to where United had taken her. Hunter wasn't naive
enough to suppose they had kept her in center-city. But perhaps she
was not even in Sector West.

* * * * *

Each of the eleven sectors into which the Earth was divided was
controlled by one of the two cartels, as an agricultural or industrial
appendage of the western metropolis. It was a paternal relationship,
although no comparable city had been permitted to develop and company
mercenaries policed the sectors.

Children who exhibited any spark of initiative or ability were skimmed
off from the hinterland to Sector West and thrown into the competitive
struggle of the general school. If they fought to the top there, they
were integrated as adults into the hierarchy of the cartels.

The rest became the labor force of Sector West, enrolled in Eric
Young's union and crowded into the minimum housing. The teeming
millions left in the hinterland were a plodding, uninspired mass
content with trivialities. They felt neither ambition nor frustration.
While the number of the mentally ill continued to multiply in Sector
West, only a fraction of the hinterland population suffered the mental
decay.

Hunter fervently