Powell said: “Good evening. Miss D’Courtney.”

Reich muttered: “Goodbye, Mr. Powell,” and tried to hold his trembling hand steady on Powell’s skull.

Powell said: “Are you all right. Miss D’Courtney?” When the girl failed to answer, be bent down and stared into her blank placid face. He touched her arm and repeated: “Are you all right, Miss D’Courtney? Miss D’Courtney! Do you need help?”

At the word “help” the girl whipped upright in the chair in a listening attitude. Then she thrust out her legs and leaped from the chair. She ran past Powell in a straight line, stopped abruptly and reached out as though grasping a doorknob. She turned the knob, thrust an imaginary door open and burst forward, yellow hair flying, dark eyes wide with alarm… A lightning flash of wild beauty.

“Father!” she screamed. “For God’s sake! Father!” She ran forward, then stopped short and backed away as though eluding someone. She darted to the left and ran in a half circle, screaming wildly, her eyes fixed.

“No!” she cried. “No! For the love of Christ! Father!”

She ran again, then stopped and struggled with imaginary arms that held her. She fought and screamed, her eyes still fixed, then stiffened and clapped her hands to her ears as though a violent sound had pierced them. She fell forward to her knees and crawled across the floor, moaning in pain. Then she stopped, snatched at something on the floor, and remained crouched on her knees, her face once again placid, doll-like and dead.

With sickening certainty, Reich knew what the girl had just done. She had relived the death of her father. She had relived it for Powell. And if he had peeped her…

Powell went to the girl and raised her from the floor. She arose as gracefully as a dancer, as serenely as a somnambulist. The peeper put his arm around her and took her to the door. Reich followed him all the way with the muzzle of the scrambler, waiting for the best shooting angle. He was invisible. His unsuspecting enemies were below him, easy targets for the death-notch. He could win safety with a shot. Powell opened the door, then suddenly swung the girl around, held her close to him and looked up. Reich caught his breath.

“Go ahead,” Powell called. “Here we are. An easy shot. One for the both of us. Go ahead!” His lean face was suffused with anger. The heavy jet brows scowled over the dark eyes. For half a minute he stared up at the invisible Reich, waiting, hating, daring. At last Reich lowered his eyes and turned his face away from the man who could not see him.

Then Powell took the docile girl through the door and closed it quietly behind him, and Reich knew he had permitted safety to slip through his fingers. He was halfway to Demolition.

10

CONCEIVE OF A CAMERA WITH a lens distorted into wild astigmatism so that it can only photograph the same picture over and over — the scene that twisted it into shock. Conceive of a bit of recording crystal, traumatically warped so that it can only reproduce the same fragment of music over and over, the one terrifying phrase it cannot forget.