mind what a boring business a vocal interview must be
to them—very much as if a man, quite capable of speech,
should insist on using a pencil and paper to conduct a
conversation with you, with perhaps the -further proviso
,that you print your remarks stylishly. Your fourth sus-
pect, Jim?”
“Hrohrakak the Polarian centipedal. He reared up in a
great question-mark bend when I addressed him—looked
very much like a giant cobra covered with thick black fur.
Kept chattering to himself too, very low—interpreter said
he was saying over and over again, ‘Oh, All-father, when
will this burden be lifted from me?’ Halfway through, he
readies out a little black limb to Donovan to give him
what looks like a pretty pink billiard ball.”
“Oh, naughty, naughty,” the Old Leiutenant observed,
shaking his head while he smiled. “So these are your
four suspects, Jim? The four rather gaudy racehorses of
whom you must back one?”
“They are. Each of them had opportunity. Each of them
has a criminal reputation and might well have been hired
to do the murder—either by extremists in the Arcturian
war party or by some other alien organization hostile to
Earth—such as the League of the Beasts with its pseudo-
religious mumbo-jumbo.”
“I don’t agree with you about the League, but don’t for-
get our own bloody-minded extremists,” the Old Lieu-
tenant reminded him. “There are devils among us too,
Jim.”
“True, Sean. But whoever paid for this crime, any one
of the four might have been his agent. For to complete
the problem and tie it up in a Gordian knot a yard thick,
each one of my suspects has recently and untraceably
received a large sum of money—enough so that, in each
case, it might well have paid for murder.”
Leaning forward the Old Lieutenant said, “So? Tell me
about that, Jim.”
“Well, you know the saying that the price of a being’s
fife anywhere in the Galaxy is one thousand of whatever
happens to be the going unit of big money. And as you
know, it’s not too bad a rule of thumb. In this case, the
unit is gold martians, which are neither gold nor backed
by Mar’s bitter little bureaucracy, but—”
“I know! You’ve only minutes left, Jim. What were fee
exact amounts?” .
Hlilav the Antarean multibrach had received 1024 gold
martians, Hrohrakak the Polarian centipedal 1000 gold
martians, Fa the Rigelian composite 1728 gold martians.
TIik-‘Aa the Martian coleopteroid 666 gold martians.”
“Ah—” the Old Lieutenant said very soft. “The number
Of the beast.”
“Come again, Sean?”
” ‘Here is wisdom,'” quoted the Old Lieutenant, still
speaking very softly. “’Let him that hath understanding
count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a
man’; Revelation, Jim, the last book in the Bible.”
“I know that,” the Young Captain burst out excitedly.
“I also know the next words, if only because they’re a
favourite with numerology crackpots—of whom I see quite
a few at the station. The next words are: ‘and his number
is Six hundred threescore and six.’ Almighty, that’s Tlik-
Tcha’s—that’s the number of his gold martians! And
we’ve always known that the League of Beasts got some
of its mumbo-jumbo from Earth, so. why not from it’s
Bible? Sean, you clever old devil, I’m going to play your
hunch.” The Young Captain sprang up. ‘I’m going back
to the station and have the four of them in and accuse
Tlik-Tcha to his face.”
The Old Lieutenant lifted a hand. “One moment, Jim,”
he said sharply. “You’re to go back to the station, to be
sure, and have the four of them in, yes—but you’re to
accuse Fa the Rigelian.”
The Young Captain almost sat down again, involunta-
rily. “But that doesn’t make sense, Sean,” he protested.
“Fa’s number is 1728. That doesn’t fit your clue. It’s not
the number of the beast.”
“Beasts have all sorts of numbers, Jim,” the Old Lieu-
tenant said. “The one you want is 1728.”
“But your reason, Sean? Give me your reason.”
“No. There’s no time and you mightn’t believe’ me if
I did. You asked for my advice and I’ve given it to you.
Accuse Fa the Rigelian.”
“But—”
that’s all, Jim.”
Minutes later, the Young Captain was still feeling the
slow burn of his exasperation, though he was back at the
station and the moment of decision weighed sickeningly
upon him. What a foot he’d been, he told himself sav-
agely, to waste his time on such an old dodderer! The
serve of the man, giving out with advice—orders, prac-
tically!-—that he refused to justify, behaving with the
whimsicality, the stubbornness—yes, the insolence!—that
only the retired man can afford.
He scanned the four alien faces confronting him across
the station desk—Tlik-Tcha’s like a section of ebon bowl-
ing ball down to the three deeply recessed perceptors,
Hrohrakak’s a large black-floor mop faintly quivering, Fa’s
pale and humanoid, but oversize, like an emperor’s death
mask, Hlilav’s a cluster of serially blinking eyes and
greenish jowls. He wished he could toss them all in a bag
and reach in—wearing an armour-plated glove—and pick
one.
The room stank of disinfectants and unwashed alienity
—the familiar reek of the old-time police station greatly
diversified. The Young Captain felt the sweat trickling
down his flushed forehead. He opened wide the louver
behind him and the hum of the satellite’s central con-
course poured in. It didn’t help the atmosphere, but for a
moment he felt less .constricted.
Then he scanned the four faces once more and the dead-
line desperation was back upon him. Pick a number, he
thought, any number from one to two thousand. Grab a
face. Trust to luck. Sean’s a stubborn old fool, but the
boys always said he had the damnedest luck. . .
His finger stabbed out. “In the nexus of these assembled
minds,” he said loudly, “I publish the truth I share with
yours, Fa—”
, That was all he had time to get out. At his first move-
ment, the Rigelian sprang up, whipped off his head and
buried it straight toward the centre of the open louver.
But if the Young Captain had been unready for thought,
he was more than keyed up for action. He snagged the
head as it shot past, though he fell off his chair in doing
it. The teeth snapped once, futilely. Then a tiny voice
from the head spoke the words he’d been praying for;
“Let the truth that our minds share be published forth,
But first, please, take me back to my breath source . . .”
Next day, the Old Lieutenant and the Young Captain
talked it all over.
“So you didn’t nab Fa’s accomplices in the concourse?”
the Old Lieutenant asked.
“No, Sean, they got clean away—as they very likely
would have, with Fa’s head, if they’d managed to lay
their hands on it, Fa wouldn’t rat on them.”
“But otherwise our fancy-boy killer confessed in full?
Told the whole story, named his employers, and provided
the .necessary evidence to nail them and himself once and
for all?”
“He did indeed. When one of those telepath characters
does talk, it’s a positive pleasure to hear him. He makes it
artistic, like an oration from Shakespeare. But now, sir,
I want to ask the question you said you didn’t have time
to answer yesterday—though 111 admit I’m asking it with
a little different meaning than when I asked it first.
You gave me a. big shock then and 111 admit that I’d
Sever have gone along and followed your advice blind the
way I did, except that I had nothing else to go on, and
I was impressed with that Bible quotation you had so pat
—until you told me it didn’t mean what it seemed to!
“But I did follow your advice, and it got me out of one’
of the worst jams I’ve ever been in—with a pat on the
back from Earth-side to boot! So now let me ask you, Sean,
in the name of all that’s holy, how did you know so surely
which one of the four it was?”
“I didn’t know, Jim. It’s more accurate to say I
guessed.”
“You old four-flusher! Do you mean to say you just
played a lucky hunch?**
“Not quite, Jim, It was a guess, all right, but an edu-
cated guess. It all lay in the numbers, of course, the num-
bers of gold martians, the numbers of our four beasts.
Tlick-Tcha’s 666 did strongly indicate that he was in the
employ of the League of the Beasts, for I understand they
are great ones on symbolic actions and like to ring in
the number 666 whenever they can. But that gets us Just
nowhere—the League, though highly critical of most
Earthmen, has never shown itself desirous of fomenting
interstellar war.
“Hrohrakak’s 1000 would indicate that he was receiving
money from some organization of Earthmen, or from
some alien source that happens also to use the decimal