He stared at the twitching body for only an instant. People were pounding on the door, shouting. He tugged at the desk drawer to get his notebook, then remembered sickly that he had left his keys in the lab. He would have to leave his notes. [Illustration] The shouts were growing louder, people were battering the door. Swiftly he moved to the bookcase, swung it away from the wall, and dropped into darkness. He brought the bookcase back, then turned and ran along the black passageway. * * * * * Leader Lanza sat in his suite at State House, conferring with his subordinates. "It hardly seems possible, Magnun, that so many people could have slipped through your fingers without help from the Military. You say both the Hachovnik twins have disappeared?" "Yes, Leader." "And how many people from the Institute?" "Six, Leader. But it didn't do them any good. We got them, all right." "But you found no bodies!" "They wouldn't _have_ bodies after we got through with them, Leader." "You're quite certain, Officer Magnun, that all the fugitives were destroyed?" Lanza looked tired, and his officers noticed in him a lack of firmness, an indecision, to which they were not accustomed in a Leader. "Say, those babies never had a chance, Leader. We picked up their roboplanes somewhere over Kansas, and we shot them out of the air like ducks. They didn't even fire back. They just crashed, burned, disintegrated. They won't give you any more trouble. Why, we even picked up the remains of Doc Wong's wristwatch and that old beat-up pencil case of his." He flung them on the desk. Lanza fingered the charred and molten relics. "That will do, Magnun. I'll call you when I need you." "Say, ain't you feeling well, Leader? You look kind of green." "That will be all, Magnun!" "As you say, Leader." Lanza shoved aside the charred remnants and spread out the papers waiting for him, the unimportant, miscellaneous notes accumulated over the years by Hudson, Fauré, and Haslam. And the unreadable notebook of David Wong. He sighed and looked up as his secretary entered. "I'm sorry to disturb you, Leader. You look tired." "The funeral this morning was quite an ordeal, and so much has happened the last three days!" "Well, I thought you ought to know that strange reports are coming in. Some of our most prominent citizens have disappeared. We're trying to trace them, of course, but--" "Anything more?" "Those rumors about Blue Martian are cropping up again." "Yes? And--?" "That old man you asked me to bring from the Vermont quarries, the one who was detained for illegal study of the Coptic language? Well, I guess the excitement of his release was too much for him. He died of a heart attack when he was being taken to the plane." Lanza sighed. "Very well, that will be all."