We didn't need visas; we didn't have to go into the antiseptic wards; we didn't have to be scanned. Every time we came into contact with Guards, or doctors or officers--those guys thought whatever Glora and Malcolm wanted them to think. So we walked right straight through all the red tape, and caught a sky-taxi to a sky-top hotel bordering Central Park West; by then it was noon of a nice spring day. I sat there, sweating and feeling cold in spite of the even temperature. I didn't savvy anything; I felt like a kid who'd gotten lost. They brought a three-dimensional map out of the air, I guess; I couldn't tell. It hung in the air like it was glued to nothingness. Glora moved around me and stood in front of the big tri-dimensional map. Her legs were long and slim and smooth; she'd be a prize for some big shot, I thought; but she wasn't my kind. My kind you'll still find along the North Canal, with very little on, and nothing in their heads but phony dreams. "Now," she pointed at various marked sections on the map. "These are the locations of the ten Uranium Piles that supply all of Earth's power. If these piles should all reach critical mass at the same time, the earth would vaporize instantaneously. "Scientific theory here is that even if all of them blew at once, though the destruction would be terrific, it wouldn't be fatal. That a hundred square miles around each pile would be destroyed only. That's so wrong, Ray. Through special abilities, Mal and I are aware of an unstable element existing here; Earth scientists can't discover it. If those Ten Piles reach simultaneous critical mass, it will react on this big unstable element. The Earth won't exist anymore." I gulped. "Is that liable to happen?" "It probably will, unless you can stop it from happening." I felt gray sickness on my face, felt that she knew what she was talking about. "How?" I whispered. "Who'd want to do a thing like that?" "There's an atomician Chief in control of each of those Piles. Men who have been tested and scanned and conditioned until the Atomic Energy Commission hasn't any doubt of their reliability. But we happen to know that an unintegrated personality of great mental power--powers like our own--has gotten control of these ten Chief's minds. At a specific time, acting in complete unconscious accord, they will respond to a posthypnotic command already planted in their unconscious minds. Upon responding, they will allow those Piles to reach critical mass." And so then, naturally, I wanted to know what that had to do with me. Malcolm Mergon spoke then. "So--you are going to meet this person who controls them. We can not move against those ten while he is around, and he is stronger than we are. When he is gone, then we can go to work on those Chief's minds. _You will have to kill this man!_" "_Who_ is this man," I said, not very loud. "Ronal LeStrang," he said. "President of the Atomic Energy Commission."