“I’ll complete the picture with Powell’s head,” he told himself. “Stuffed and mounted on my wall. I’ll complete the picture with the D’Courtney Cartel stuffed into my pockets. By God give me time I’ll complete a picture with the Galaxy inside the frame!”

He passed through the steel portals of headquarters and stood for a moment on the steps gazing at the rain-swept streets… at the amusement center across the square, block after block blazing under a single mutual transparent dome… at the open shops lining the upper footways, all bustle and brilliance as the city’s night shopping began… the towering office buildings in the background great two-hundred story cubes… the lace tracery of skyways linking them together… the twinkling running lights of Jumpers bobbing up and down like a plague of crimson-eyed grasshoppers in a field…

“And I’ll own you!” he shouted, raising his arms to engulf the universe. “I’ll own you all! Bodies, passions, and souls!”

Then his eye caught the tall, ominous, familiar figure crossing the square, watching him covertly over its shoulder. A figure of black shadows sparkling with raindrop jewels… looking looming, silent, horrible… A Man With No Face.

There was a strangled cry. The fuses blew. Like a blighted tree, Reich fell to the ground.

At one minute to nine, ten of the fifteen members of the Esper Guild Council assembled in President T’sung’s office. Emergency business required their attention. At one minute after nine, the meeting was adjoumed with the business completed. Within those one hundred and twenty Esper seconds, the following took place:

A gavel pounding

A clock face

Hour hand at 9

Minute hand at 59

Second hand at 60

EMERGENCY MEETING

To examine a request for Mass Cathexis with Lincoln Powell as the human canal for the Capitalized energy.

(Consternation)

T’sung: You can’t be serious, Powell. How can you make such a request? What can possibly require such an extraordinary and dangerous measure?

Powell: An astonishing development in the D’Courtney Case which I would like you all to examine.

(Examination)

Powell: You all know that Reich is our most dangerous enemy. He is supporting the Anti-Esper smear campaign. Unless that is blocked we may suffer the usual history of minority groups.

@kins: True enough.

Powell: He is also supporting the League of Esper Patriots. Unless that organization is blocked we may be plunged into a civil war and be lost forever in a morass of internal chaos.

Franion: That’s true too.

Powell: But there is an additional development which you have all examined. Reich is about to become a Galactic focal point… A crucial link between the positive past and the probable future. He is on the verge of a powerful reorganization at this moment. Time is of the essence. If Reich can readjust and reorient before I can reach him, he will become immune to our reality, invulnerable to our attack, and the deadly enemy of Galactic reason and reality.

(Alarm)

@kins: Surely, you’re exaggerating, Powell.

Powell: Am I? Inspect the picture with me. Look at Reich’s position in time and space. Will not his beliefs become the world’s belief? Will not his reality become the world’s reality? Is he not, in his critical position of power, energy, and intellect, a sure road to utter destruction?