Since that time, he'd been on a rampage of robbery and murder. He was as callously indifferent to human life and property as a human being might be with the life and property of a cockroach. There have been human criminals whose actions could be described in the same way, but the Nipe had a few touches that few human criminals would have thought of and almost none would have had the capacity to execute. If, for instance, the Nipe had time to spare, his victims would be an annoying problem in identification when found, for there would be nothing left but well-gnawed bones. And "time to spare," in this case meant twenty or thirty minutes. The Nipe had, if nothing else, a very efficient digestive tract. He ate like a shrew. And the Nipe never, under any circumstances, used any weapon but the weapons Nature had given him--hands-or-feet, or claws or teeth. Never did he use a knife or gun or even a club. * * * * * Almost as an afterthought, one realized that the loot which the Nipe stole was seemingly unpredictable. Money, as such, he apparently had no use for. He had taken gold, silver, and platinum, but one raid for each of these elements had evidently been enough, except for silver, which had required three raids over a period of four years. Since then, he hadn't touched silver again. He hadn't tried yet for any of the radioactives except radium. He'd taken a full ounce of that in five raids, but hadn't attempted to get his hands on uranium, thorium, plutonium, or any of the other elements normally associated with atomic energy. Nor had he tried to steal any of the fusion materials; the heavy isotopes of hydrogen or any of the lithium isotopes. Beryllium had been taken, but whether there was any significance in the thefts or not, no one knew. [Illustration] There was a pattern in the thefts, nonetheless. They had begun small and increased. Scientific and technical instruments--oscilloscopes, X-ray generators, radar equipment, maser sets, dynostatic crystals, thermolight resonators, and so on--were stolen complete or gutted for various parts. After awhile, he went on to bigger things--whole aircraft, with their crews, had vanished. That he had not committed anywhere near all the crimes that had been attributed to him was certain; that he _had_ committed a great many of them was equally certain. There was no doubt at all that his loot was being used to make instruments and devices of unknown kinds. He had used several of them on his raids. The one that could apparently phase out almost any electromagnetic frequency up to about a hundred thousand megacycles--including sixty-cycle power frequencies--was considered to be a particularly cute item. So was the gadget that reduced the tensile strength of concrete to about that of a good grade of marshmallow.