Tanner walked to the middle of the room and stood over the body of Piazza. "What are you going to do with our friend?" "Send him away--I think to Africa." Stan picked the body up and lugged it into what had once been the bedroom. Now it was a room jammed with transmitting equipment and, against the far wall, a single hoop of shining metal standing upright on a black marble base. The hoop was large, over six feet in diameter, with a thin, metal filament winding around it. * * * * * He turned a dial set in the base. The filament glowed red and then a brilliant white. The hoop itself shimmered and faded, while at the same time a whirling circle of brilliant black built up where it had been. He tensed his muscles and heaved and Piazza's body hit the circle and disappeared, like a man plunging into quicksand. "Where will he land?" "In a doorway on the Street of Lepers in Casablanca." Stan turned the dial again and the whirling circle slowed and became translucent and then faded out altogether as the hoop sprang back into view. Tanner gestured to the other equipment. "What's all this for?" "Transmitting equipment to set off the fusion packages." Stan pointed to two box-like structures against the far wall. One held a bank of fifty small, white lights. The other, a bank of fifty red. "The white lights are the operators themselves--I can tell immediately if anything happens to them. The others represent the fusion packages. If one of them goes, I know the package has been tampered with." Even as he watched, one of the white lights flickered and died. Tanner looked surprised. "What happened?" "We just lost an agent," Stan said grimly. "Chicago sector." He glanced over at the bank of red lights--they were still lit. "It couldn't have been about the fusion packages. It must have been about the ... other operation." He looked at Tanner. "The one you were sent to handle." "What are you going to do about it?" Stan shrugged. "We'll handle it ourselves, and then recruit another agent." He leafed through a filing cabinet, then finally pulled a dossier and gave it to Tanner. "Trace this man and find out what you can. We'll meet there in a week." Tanner tapped the card lightly against his knuckles. "Mr. Ainsworth didn't think you'd be meeting any opposition." Stan blanked his face of expression. He wasn't exactly sure why, but he didn't like Tanner. "I didn't expect to." There was a short silence and then Tanner walked to the hoop and worked the dial. The shimmering black sprang up and he stepped up on the marble. Just before he went through, he said: "What are you going to do about the ... opposition?" "When we find them, we'll smash them," Stan said coldly. After Tanner had gone through, Stan shut off the hoop. As the circle faded it caught his image and held it briefly, like a mirror. He stared at it abstractly.