Hawkes shook him several times. "Come on--get up and put some clothes on. Some people here who want to talk to you." Only half comprehending, Alan clambered unwillingly from bed, dressed, and splashed cold water in his face. He followed Hawkes back inside. The living room was crowded. Seven or eight men were there--the ones Alan thought of as the inner circle of Hawkes' cronies. Johnny Byng, Mike Kovak, Al Webber, Lorne Hollis, and some others. Sleepily Alan nodded at them and took a seat, wondering why Hawkes had dragged him out of bed for this. Hawkes looked at him sharply. "Alan, you know all these people, don't you?" Alan nodded. He was still irritated at Hawkes; he had been sound asleep. "You're now facing ninety per cent of what we've come to call the Hawkes Syndicate," Hawkes went on. "These eight gentlemen and myself have formed the organization recently for a certain specific purpose. More of that in a few minutes. What I got you out here to tell you was that there's room in our organization for one more man, and that you fit the necessary qualifications." "Me?" Hawkes smiled. "You. We've all been watching you since you came to live with me, testing you, studying you. You're adaptable, strong, intelligent. You learn fast. We had a little vote tonight, and decided to invite you in." Alan wondered if he were still asleep or not. What was all this talk of syndicates? He looked round the circle, and realized that this bunch could be up to no good. Hawkes said, "Tell him about it, Johnny." Byng leaned forward and blinked his drug-stained eyes. In a quiet voice, almost a purr, he said, "It's really very simple. We're going to stage a good old-fashioned hold-up. It's a proposition that'll net us each about a million credits, even with the ten-way split. It ought to go off pretty easy but we need you in on it. As a matter of fact, I'd say you were indispensable to the project, Alan." _Chapter Fourteen_ Hawkes took over, explaining the proposition to a now very much awake Alan. "There's going to be a currency transfer at the World Reserve Bank downtown next Friday. At least ten million credits are going to be picked up by an armored truck and taken to branch banks for distribution. "Hollis, here, happens to have found out the wave-patterns of the roboguards who'll be protecting the currency shipment. And Al Webber has some equipment that can paralyze roboguards if we know their operational wavelength. So it's a simple matter to leave the car unprotected; we wait till it's loaded, then blank out the robots, seize the human guards, and drive away with the truck." Alan frowned thoughtfully. "Why am _I_ so indispensable to this business?" He had no desire to rob banks or anything else. "Because you're the only one of us who isn't registered on the central directory. You don't have any televector number. You can't be traced."