He riveted his attention on Sundberg’s door. This time he had no impressions whatever. Perhaps Sundberg wasn’t aboard. He stepped into’ the corridor. Discovery that one of the lander wells was empty brought a surge of hope. Moving softly to the doctor’s quarters, he turned file knob and entered. Sundberg was gone! He felt a quick relief.

  A search of the desk drawers and cupboards yielded nothing that pertained to him. A steel wall safe caught his eye. He regarded it musingly. Any papers of importance undoubtedly would be locked inside. The speculation disheartened him.

  Sundberg’s private quarters consisted of a small bedroom with an adjoining bath. One wall was lined with books; another held a niche filled with clothes. A porthole looked out into the vastness of the universe. Through it he saw the sweep of stars.

  The neat array of garments in the closet drew his attention. Crylon trousers and jackets from Eurasio, molded weaves from York, colorful capes that but recently had come into vogue—they held a sartorial splendor he couldn’t resist He selected a pair of pale green trousers, a tan jacket, and an olive-colored cape. Shoes, elegantly handcrafted from genuine synthetic leather, fitted quite nicely. Dressed, he surveyed himself in the mirror. Were it not for his scraggly gray beard, he’d look a good ten years younger— not a day over sixty-five, he reflected.

  A small chest caught his eye. He rummaged through it, found a stun gun, and dropped it into his pocket. The feel of the weapon brought a sense of security. He glanced around uncertainly. He’d found nothing that told him anything. All at once he desperately wanted to be back with Mura. This time, he thought proudly, he’d return with a name—one that was all his own.

  Suppose he couldn’t teleport at will? The thought made him jittery. But he could; he’d proved it. Concentration plus destination—that was the key. That and the magic trigger that lay somewhere in his brain.

  He went to the door and peered out into the corridor. The silence reassured him. For a moment he absorbed the clinic’s architecture, fixing it in mind for future use, then started toward the cubicle which he’d come to regard as his own.

  As he passed the attendant’s room, a buzzer sounded to warn of an approaching lander. Frightened, he darted through the nearest door. A glance disclosed a hospital bed, a chair—nothing else. He peered back into the corridor, saw a green light blinking above one of the lander wells. Struggling into a white jacket, Kelsey popped into view.

  Sundberg stepped out from the lander well. His thin 85

  face appeared harsh and tired. “The premier could be coming up at any time,” he snapped. “Prepare his quarters.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Wehl was horrified to see the attendant start toward him. He looked wildly around for a place to hide. Kelsey’s square figure loomed in the doorway; an instant later the room was flooded with light.

  The attendant stared open-mouthed at him, then swung back into the corridor. “Doctor, doctor!” he shouted. “Patient Seventeen-L is back!”

  “Where?” Sundberg screamed shrilly.

  “Room C, the one we …”

  “Get a narco needle, quick!”

  Wehl heard footsteps pound toward him. He leaped forward, slammed the door just as a body crashed against it. He gripped the knob to prevent it from being turned, closed his eyes, and tried to concentrate on Mura’s apartment “Open up!” Sundberg’s voice, tinged with panic, came through the thin partition.

  “Go away,” he shouted hoarsely. He discovered a latch, turned it and stepped back. I’ve got to teleport he thought desperately. The doctor rattled the door.

  “Mr. Wehl?” His voice suddenly was conciliatory. Wehl didn’t answer. Mura’s, he had to get to Mura’s. He was dimly aware of Kelsey’s footsteps returning.

  “Break it down!” Sundberg’s order came with a snarl. Someone hammered at the door. Wehl closed his ears to it. Fve got to teleport, teleport, teleport. Visions of Mura’s apartment danced in his mind. The hammering against the door became more remote.

  Mural Mura!

  He was shouting the name in his mind when he vanished.

  NINE

  Wehl’s eyes blinked open.

  Mura Breen, her face taut and frightened, was staring down at him. He struggled to a sitting position, aware of the ache in his arms and shoulders. His body felt drained. “How did you get here?” she whispered.

  “I was caught, taken to a sanitarium. Someone tried to km me.”

  “Kill you?” She stepped back, startled.

  “A scar-faced man. I escaped to Sundberg’s clinic.”

  “I must be crazy.”

  “No, no,” he said hastily. “It’s all quite logical.” “Logical?” She gazed disbelievingly at him. “Sundberg’s clinic is a satellite. How could you have gotten there?”

  He licked his lips drily and whispered, “I teleported.” “Teleported?” She recoiled another step.

  “Please, don’t be frightened,” he urged.

  She tried a smile. ‘I’m trying not to be.”

  “It’s the truth,” he said. “I’m a teleport.”

  “That’s how you … got here?” Some of the disbelief fled from her face, replaced with wonder. “But there are only a dozen, a score at most in the entire empire.”

  “I… don’t know.”

  “But all the teleports are known,” she whispered. “They’re all registered. It’s the law.”

  “Perhaps.” His eyes went slowly to her face. “I found out something else about myself. I’ve been mindblocked.” “Oh, that’s terrible!”

  “And I know who I am.”

  “You know?”

  He nodded reluctantly. “I’m Craxton Wehl.”

  “The former premier?” she gasped incredulously.

  He nodded.

  “I don’t believe it!”

  “It’s the truth,” he mumbled.

  “It can’t be. Someone is playing a monstrous joke on you.”

  “Why can’t it be?” he asked testily. “I have to be someone.”

  “Not Craxton Wehl,” she cried. “He was mean, power-mad, a tyrant. They say he went mad!”

  “I don’t feel that pray.”

  “Oh, you’re kind and gentle.”

  “Perhaps he wasn’t all those things,” he remonstrated. “Perhaps it was just talk.”

  “But it wasn’t,” she insisted. “Did you know he limited the supplies coming to Mars to keep us subservient? He did to all the OutSat worlds. He was afraid to let us grow, advance. His secret police infiltrated our domes. Every strong leader we ever had died in some strange accident or other. Oh, it was Craxton Wehl, all right. So you see, you couldn’t be him.”

  “But I am.”

  “Oh!” She threw her hands to her face.

  “I’m not mean or power-mad,” he denied.

  “Of course you’re not!”

  “Yet I’m Craxton Wehl.”

  “Something is terribly wrong.”

  “But what?”

  “I don’t know.” She dropped her hands, gazed at him. “You … look like him. I said at first you looked familiar.”

  “I remember.”

  “But who would believe it? Oh, I’m all mixed up.”

  “Don’t be,” he pleaded.

  “How did you learn who you were?”

  “From Felix Quigg.’’ He told her of what bad happened since last he had left her apartment, and how he had willed himself to teleport to and from Sundberg’s clinic. As he spoke, she appeared to regain her composure.

  When he finished, she asked, “With Bernard Rayburn dying, why did they mindblock you?”

  “If he’s dying,” he corrected. “I don’t know that he is; but I do know I’m mindblocked. It had to be Sundberg.” “And that other man, Quigg, what was he after?” “Whatever might be of value,” he answered drily.

  “And that scar-faced man—why would be try to kill you?”

  “To keep me from returning to power.“

  He said that.” “Then he must be working for someone who’s trying to get the power,” she declared.

  “That makes sense.”

  “But it still doesn’t explain the mindblock.”

  “I’ll find the reason,” he promised. He added reluctantly, “I think I might be telepathic.”

  “Oh!”

  “Not that I can read minds,” he added hurriedly. “It’s more a sense of impressions.” He told her how he’d sensed that the nurse was sleeping, that Kelsey was reading, that Sundberg’s office was deserted.

  She moistened her lips edgily. “That’s not exactly telepathy, is it?”

  “Not in the usual sense.” He considered it. “The impressions come in the form of images, so perhaps it’s clairvoyance. But it has to be one or the other; how else could I have known?”

  “It’s not so shocking—not if you can teleport.” Her face grew still. “Isn’t that frightening?”

  “The ability to teleport? It came as a shock, but the human mind’s quite adaptable.”

  “I’m still not convinced that you really are Craxton Wehl,” she said primly. “They might say you are and you look like him, but you don’t act like him at all. Not from the stories I’ve heard.”

  “Perhaps the operation changed me,” he suggested. “Possibly.” Her eyes reflected her doubt “Has any of your memory returned?”

  “With a mindblock?”

  “I thought perhaps seeing those people from your past might have awakened something.”

  “I catch glimpses, not what you’d call coherent ones.” He grimaced at the memory of the nightmares. “Yet, when I really concentrate, the images at times become quite clear.”

  “If you were Craxton Wehl, you would have lived in the official residence for over thirty years. Certainly you would have some recollection of that”

  He smiled at the test she was erecting for him, yet realized she was right: he had to know. He closed his eyes wearily, and forced himself to relax. Reluctantly he pushed her from his mind. For a while he was aware of the faint sounds of life from beyond the apartment; but they gradually faded from his senses. Once again he had the impression of floating in a vast, black sea.

  Mr. Krant’s face drifted through his mind, followed by the scent of hot chocolate. Aircars buzzed like angry wasps around the tower at the air terminal. The official residence—the Power House, they called it—sprawled in a manicured setting of lawn and stately trees. He wondered dimly how he’d known that name. He had a fleeting vision of a book-lined room, a three-view in one corner, steps that led to …

  He groaned aloud.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked anxiously.

  He shook his head, fighting to grasp recollections that danced like gnats around a night lamp. The stairs led to … a bedroom! He saw the big bed, resplendent carpeting, and drapes. A Guszaco painting adorned one wall. The painting vanished; the big bed disappeared; the carpeting and drapes faded into nothingness—he was gazing into nothing: nothing at all.

  He lifted his bead with a jerk and his eyes snapped open.

  “What was it?” she asked worriedly.

  “A library, a bedroom…”

  “In the official residence?” she interrupted.

  “I believe so.”

  “You’ve been there!” Her eyes held a touch of awe.

  “So have thousands of others,” he reminded.

  “You should see Madelyn Wehl.”

  “My daughter?”

  “Madelyn Wehl,” she repeated. “She’d certainly know her own father.”

  “You still have doubts.”

  “Yes,” she said gravely.

  “And if it turns out that I am her father?”

  “Then you are.” Her smile was strained. “But I hope you aren’t.”

  Later, lying in the darkness of the room, he tried to reconstruct the events as they had occurred, and to assess their meanings. Felix Quigg had been certain he was Craxton Wehl, just as he had been certain of the teleportation. And he was a teleport; he had proved that Aside from that, he looked like Craxton Wehl.

  But was he Craxton Wehl? The scar-faced man had been as certain as Quigg. Despite the mounting evidence, he couldn’t claim the same certainty. Because of Mura’s reaction? Possibly, but it went deeper. A man should react positively to his own name; it should spark his ego—set him apart as an individual different from all the rest of mankind. But he didn’t react that way. He felt about the name much as he’d felt about the name Gerald Sundberg. It was a name, a tag, an identifier, but nothing more.

  Why had Sundberg mindblocked him? The mindblock was the crux of the whole thing, he reflected. Was he really Craxton Wehl, former premier, or was he a pawn in some gigantic hoax? What secret had Quigg been trying to tear from behind the block?

  Sundberg would know. So, perhaps, would the nurse and the attendant. One other man would know: Bernard Rayburn. For whatever reason bis mind had been blocked, the order certainly had come from him. Bernard Rayburn was his sworn enemy! He clenched his fists. But Mura was right, he reflected. He had to see Madelyn Wehl. She would know; she would tell him the truth.

  He found solace in the thought

  “And to the left” the tour guide droned, “we see the Wehl House.”

  Conscious of the stir of interest that rose from his fellow sightseers, Craxton Wehl peered through the windows of the airbus. Terraced and gabled and spired, appearing like a magic doll house set on the broad greensward, the former premier’s house (his?) wheeled toward him. A swimming pool sparkled in the morning sun.

  “Will we pass directly over it?” a female voice asked breathlessly.

  “Private airspace,” the guide answered importantly. “We’ll skirt the southern border.”

  His ears closed to the hubbub. Wehl concentrated on the small landing pad set off to one side of the house. Rimmed by green lawn, its concrete expanse appeared an ideal target. Teleport! He let the word flame in his mind. He had to teleport, teleport. Vision of the rectangular landing pad danced crazily in his head. He had to …

  A blackness gripped him. The fish eye! For a dancing, fleeting second he had the impression of viewing the universe through a gigantic distorting lens. The stars thundered down. A monstrous bulk, gray and shadowy, plunged giddily into his visual field, blotting out the sky

  “Aaaugh!”

  The woman sitting next to Wehl glanced at him in alarm. Suddenly she screamed; his seat was empty.

  Pandemonium erupted on the bus.

  “Aaaugh!”

  The terrible sound ripped from his throat again, tearing away the veil of blackness.. His* eyes blinked open; he found himself staring upward into an azure sky. Off to one side, the receding airbus appeared small and far away.

  Aching and trembling, he pushed himself to a sitting position and looked around just as a guard erupted from the doorway of the air tower. Brandishing a blaster, the man sprinted toward him. Wehl struggled painfully to his feet.

  “Stand where you are,” the guard shouted. Wehl waited calmly. The guard skidded to a halt a few yards away. “How’d you get here?” he demanded. His jowly face held a perplexed look.

  “Put away that weapon and lower your voice,” Wehl commanded sternly. ‘Take me to my daughter.”

  “Daughter?” The guard gaped at him.

  "I'm Craxton Wehl.” He drew his thin body straighter.

  “Mr. Wehl?” The guard stared at him. “My God, you are!” He shoved the blaster from sight.

  “Now take me to my daughter.”

  “Yes, certainly.” The guard fumbled with his wrist radio and spoke haltingly into it, then stared worriedly toward the air tower. Wehl smiled, wishing he could read the man’s thoughts.

  A second guard popped hurriedly into view and came toward them. Golden sunbursts on his shoulder pads marked his senior position. His face, as he approached, held a quizzical, studied expression. He said in a strained voice, “Welcome, Mr. Wehl. Miss Wehl is being apprised of your, ah, arrival.”

  “Thank you,” he answered courteously.

  “We, ah, weren’t informed of your visit or we would have been outside to meet you.” The guard’s eyes were questioning.

  “I arrived rather unexpectedly,” he admitted. His tone closed the conversation.

  The guard shifted uncomfortably until his wrist radio pinged. He held it to his ear, listened, then dropped his arm and said, “If you would please follow me.”

  “Thank you,” Wehl acknowledged. He followed the other through a gardened patio past the blue pool he had seen from the air. Several sunbathers on the opposite side watched him indolently. He was led into an opulent room overfilled with objets d’art and invited to sit The guard hovered nearby as he dropped into a comfortable chair.

  Waiting, his eyes took in the costly statuary and the rare paintings that hung from the walls. A Refiner and a Krantz—the old twenty-third century masterpieces. How did he know that? He gazed at a Martian tapestry that depicted the domes of New Seattle rising from the stark red plain of Syrtis Major. Beyond, coppery against the black sky, rose the jagged Crojyk hills.

  The scene stirred his memory. Had he seen those domes before, or was he recalling the tapestry itself? The uncertainty left him baffled. Abruptly he turned, staring toward a gilded staircase. She was coming! His heart began to hammer.

  A moment later the guard snapped to rigid attention. A stately blonde woman came into view at the top of the stairs and started down. How had he known she was coming? The knowledge had come in the same way it had when he’d sensed the presence of the nurse and attendant in the sky clinic. Had his mind reached out and touched hers? He rose awkwardly.

  “Father!” She hurried her step. His quick glance took in her pale blue eyes, the narrow bridge of the nose, the set of her jaw—a certain tightness around the mouth. It was an imperious face, cold and artificial beneath the strained smile, yet the lines undeniably were those of his own face.

  “I’ve been so worried,” she exclaimed. Clasping his hands, she kissed his cheek lightly before stepping back to survey him.

  “It’s true, you’re my daughter?” he asked wonderingly.

  “Of course, you poor dear.”