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toward her. Something that might have been a large animal.
Her death . . . how? Telzey swallowed uncomfortably. They might have been
involved with the ring which had catered to Robane's criminal
inclinations minds like that would have no objection to delivering one human
being to another, to be hunted down and killed for sport. But psis would have
recognized a special value in Robane. He was a precision instrument that could
provide them with machines to extend and amplify their powers. His inventive
genius had been at the disposal of a telepath who'd set him problems and left
him to work them out, not knowing why he did it, or for whose benefit, in the
solitude of Melna Park.
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- Chapter 11
She'd put an end to Robane's usefulness and might presently have come on clues
pointing to them in the unconscious recesses of his mind if they hadn't
discovered what had been done. They knew it was the work of another psi. She'd
sealed most of Robane's memories away but left them intact; and that told them
she planned to return to look for more information. They could have destroyed
Robane at once, but they wanted to dispose of the unidentified meddler. So
they'd set up the trap with Robane's mind as the bait. The psi who touched
that mind again would spring the trap. And, some twenty minutes ago, cautious
and light as her touch had been, she'd sprung it.
Immediately afterwards, she'd locked her screens. In doing it, she might have
escaped whatever was planned for her. But she had to accept the probability
that she still was in the trap and she didn't yet know what it was.
The Cloudsplitter went gliding at its thirty miles an hour across the upper
plateaus of the plain, a hundred feet above the ground. The southern forest
where the house had stood had sunk out of sight.
The flanks of the mountains curved away ahead. Telzey turned the car in
farther toward them. Another car slipped past at the edge of her vision, half
a mile to the left. She had an impulse to follow it, to remain near other
people. But she kept the Cloudsplitter on its course. The company of others
would bring her no safety, and mingling with them might distract her attention
dangerously.
She set the car on automatic control, sat gazing at the mountains through the
windshield. The other impression at the moment of touching Robane's mind the
shape like an animal's it might have been a hallucination, her own mind's
symbol of some death energy directed at her. Psi could kill swiftly, could be
used as a weapon by minds which understood its use for that purpose and could
handle the forces they turned on another. But if that had been the trap, it
seemed to her she would have interpreted it differently not as a moving
shadow, a half-glimpsed animal shape, an image darting toward her.
What else could it be? Telzey shook her bead. She didn't know, and she
couldn't guess. She could find out; eventually she'd have to find out. But not
yet.
She glanced at the car clock. Give it another hour. Evidently they hadn't
identified her physically; but it could do no harm to place more physical
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distance between herself and the area of Robane's house before she made any
revealing moves. Mentally, she should have seemed to vanish for them as her
shield closed. The difficulty was that the shield couldn't stay closed
indefinitely.
* * *
An hour later, the effects of having passed a night with very little sleep
were becoming noticeable. There were moments of reduced wakefulness and
physical lassitude of which she'd grow suddenly aware. The nearest ranger car
would have provided her with a stimulant if she'd put out a communicator call
for one, but her enemies might have means of monitoring events in the park she
didn't know about. It didn't seem at all advisable to draw attention to
herself in that way, or in any other way. She'd simply have to remain alert
long enough to get this situation worked out.
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The test she intended was a simple one. The psi shield would flash open,
instantly be closed again.
During that moment, her perceptions, fully extended, would be set to receive
two impressions: thought patterns of the telepath who'd laid a trap for her,
and the animal shape involved with the trap. If either was still in her mental
vicinity, some trace would he obtained, however faintly. If neither was there,
she could begin to believe she'd eluded them. Not indefinitely; psis could
determine who had destroyed
Robane's effectiveness if they put in enough work on it. But that would be
another problem. Unless they were as intently prepared as she was to detect
some sign from her now, the momentary exposure of her mind should pass
unnoticed.
The shield flicked open, flicked shut, as her sensitized perceptions made
their recording. Telzey sat still for a moment then, feeling the heavy
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