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"But notice, Your Excellency, that Schwartz was kept hidden in the Institute for Nuclear Research for six days And then he escaped Isn&039;t that strange? The door, suddenly, wasn&039;t locked The corridor, suddenly, wasn&039;t guarded What queer negligence And on what day was it that he escaped? Why, on the same day that Arvardan arrived at Chica A second peculiar coincidence"

"You think, then" said the High Minister tensely

"I think that Schwartz is the Outsider agent on Earth, that Shekt is the contactus, and that Arvardan is the contactbetween Schwartz and Arvardan was arranged Schwartz is allowed to escape, and after an appropriate interval his nurse-Shekt&039;s daughter, by a not-too-surprising additional coincidence-is out after hi with their split-second timetable, it is obvious that she would have found him suddenly; that he would have become a poor, sick patient for the benefit of anyone&039;s curiosity; that he would have been brought back to safety for another attempt later In fact, two overcurious cabbies were told that he was a sick h, backfired upon them

"Follow it closely, now Schwartz and Arvardan meet first in a Foodomat They are, apparently, unaware of each other&039;s existence It is a prelione well so far and that the next step may be takenAt least they don&039;t underesti

"Then Schwartz leaves; a few irla little part for the benefit of the afore-mentioned cabbies, they head for the Dunhaether Where else but a depart place It has a secrecy no cave in the mountains could duplicate Too open to be suspected Too crowded to be stalked Wonderful-wonderful-I give credit to h Minister writhed in his chair "If our opponent deserves too much credit, he in"

"Impossible He is already defeated And in that respect we ive credit to the excellent Natter"

"And who is Natter?"

"An insignificant agent who must be used to the limit after this His actions yesterday could not have been inment has been to watch Shekt For the purpose, he keeps a fruit stand across the street from the Institute For the last week he has been specifically instructed to watch the development of the Schwartz affair

"He was on hand when the liht to the Institute, escaped, He observed every action, himself unobserved, and it is his report that details yesterday&039;s events With incredible intuition, he decided that the entire purpose of the &039;escape&039; was to arrange awith Arvardan He felt hile-handed, to exploit that , so he decided to prevent it The cabbies, to who sick, speculated on Radiation Fever Natter seized on that with the swiftness of genius As soon as he observed thein the department store, he reported the case of fever and the local authorities at Chica were, praised be Earth, intelligent enough to co-operate quickly

"The store was ee which they counted upon to hide their conversation was stripped from them They were alone and very conspicuous in the store Natter went further He approached the hireed What could they do?So that the day ended without a single word passing between Arvardan and Schwartz

"Nor did he conorance of their detection and will yet lead us to bigger game

"And Natter went further still He notified the Iarrison, and that is beyond praise It presented Arvardan with a situation he could not possibly have counted upon He must either reveal himself to be an Outsider and destroy his usefulness, which apparently depends upon conducting hih he were an Earthman, or he must keep the fact secret and subject hiht result He took the more heroic alternative, and even broke the arm of an officer of the Empire, in his passion for realism That, at least, nificant that his actions were as they were Why should he, an Outsider, expose hiirl if the matter at stake was not supreh Minister were on the desk before hi, smooth lines of his face cruer details, to construct the spider web you do It is skillfully done, and I feel that it is as you say Logic leaves us no other alternativeBut it means that they are too close, Balkis They are too closeAnd they will have no ed "They cannot be too close, or, in a case of such potential destructiveness for all the Empire, they would have already struckAnd their ti short Arvardanis to be accomplished, and so I can predict for you the future"

"Do so-do so"

"Schwartz must be sent away now and events allowed to quiet down froh pitch"

"But where will he be sent?"

"We know that too Schwartz was brought to the Institute by a man, obviously a farmer Descriptions reached us froh the registration data of every farmer within sixty miles of Chica, and Natter identified one Arbin Maren as the man The technician supported that decision independently We investigated thea father-in-law, a helpless cripple in evasion of the Sixty"

The High Minister pounded the table "Such cases are entirely too frequent, Balkis The laws htened-"

"It is not now the point, Your Excellency What is i the customs, he can be blackmailed"

"Oh"

"Shekt, and his Outsider allies, need a tool for just such a case-that is, where Schwartz er period than he can safely stay hidden in the Institute This farmer, probably helpless and innocent, is perfect&039; for the purpose Well, he will be watched Schwartz will never be out of sightNow, eventually another ed, and that ti now?"

"I do"

"Well, praise Earth Then I will leave you now" And, with a sardonic smile, he added, "With your perh Minister, completely oblivious to the sarcasm, waved a hand in dismissal

The Secretary, on his way to his own shts sometimes escaped from beneath his firm control and disported themselves in the secrecy of his mind

They concerned themselves very little with Dr Shekt, Schwartz, Arvardan-least of all with the High Minister

Instead there was the picture of a planet, Trantor-froe, planet-wide metropolis all the Galaxy was ruled And there was the picture of a palace whose spires and sweeping arches he had never seen in reality; that no other Earthht of the invisible lines of power and glory that swept fros, ropes, and cables to that central palace and to that abstraction, the Emperor, as, after all, ht fixedly-the thought of that pohich could alone bestow a divinity during life-concentrated in one as merely human

Merely human! Like himself!

He could be