"Didn't learn anything from Avery, eh?" Lansberg asked.

"Not a thing." Karnes lapsed into silence. He didn't feel it necessary to mention the mind impressor just yet.

Lansberg stuck a cigarette into his mouth and talked around it as he lit it.

"We've got something you'll be getting in on, now that Avery is taken care of. We've got a fellow named Brittain, real name Bretinov, who is holed up in a little apartment in Brooklyn. He's the sector head for that section, and we know who his informers are, and who he gives orders to. What we don't know is who gives orders to him.

"Now we have it set up for Brittain to get his hands on some very honest-looking, but strictly phony stuff for him to pass on to the next echelon. Then we just sit around and watch until he does pass it."

Karnes found he was listening to Lansberg with only half an ear. His brain was still buzzing with things he'd never heard of, trying to fit things he had always known in with things he knew now but had never known before. Damn that "cigarette case"!

"Sounds like fun," he answered Lansberg.

"Yeah. Great. Well, here we are." They had driven to the Long Island Spaceways Building which also housed the local office.

They got out and went into the building, up the elevator, down a corridor, and into an office suite.

Lansberg said: "I'll wait for you here. We'll get some coffee afterwards."

The redhead behind the front desk smiled up at Karnes.

"Go on in; he's expecting you."

"I don't know whether I ought to leave you out here with Georgie or not," Karnes grinned. "I think he has designs."

"Oh, goodie!" she grinned back.

My, my aren't we clever! His thought was bitter, but his face didn't show it.

Before he went in, he straightened his collar before the wall mirror. He noticed that his plain, slightly tanned face still looked the same as ever. Same ordinary gray-green eyes, same ordinary nose.

Chum, you look perfectly sane. You are perfectly sane. But who in hell would 

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