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something up. I suppose you have a lawyer for them to get in touch with?" He snapped his fingers.
Death stepped brightly forward with a silver pencil and Chlorophyll with a pad.
"G-G-Good," said Dunlop, terribly eager. "My l-lawyer is P. George Metzger, and he's in
the Empire State Building, forty-first fi-"
"Fool!" roared the Martian with terrible glee. LaFitte wrote quickly and folded the paper
into a neat square. He handed it to the man who smelled of chlorophyll chewing gum.
Dunlop said desperately: "That's not the s-same lawyer."
LaFitte waited politely. "Not what lawyer?"
"My other lawyer is the one that has the p-p-papers."
LaFitte shook his head and smiled.
Dunlop sobbed. He couldn't help it. Before his eyes a billion dollars had vanished, and
the premium on his life-insurance policy had run out. They had Metzger's name. They knew where to
find the fat manila envelope that contained the sum of eight years' work.
Chlorophyll, or Death, or any of LaFitte's hundreds of confidential helpers, would go to
Metzger's office, and perhaps present phony court orders or bull a way through, a handkerchief
over the face and a gun in the hand. One way or another they would find the papers. The sort of
organization that LaFitte owned would surely not be baffled by the office safe of a recent ex-law
clerk, now in his first practice.
Dunlop sobbed again, wishing he had not economized on lawyers; but it really made no
difference. LaFitte knew where the papers were kept and he would get them. It remained only for
him to erase the last copy of the information-that is, the copy in the head of Hector Dunlop.
Chlorophyll tucked the note in his pocket and left. Death patted the bulge under his arm
and looked at LaFitte.
"Not here," said LaFitte.
Dunlop took a deep breath.
"G-Good-bye, Martian," he said sadly, and turned toward the door. Behind him the thick,
hateful voice laughed.
"You're taking this very well," LaFitte said in surprise.
Dunlop shrugged and stepped aside to let LaFitte precede him through the doorway.
"What else can I d-do?" he said. "You have me cold. Only-" The Death man was through the
door, and so was LaFitte, half-turned politely to listen to Dunlop. Dunlop caught the edge of the
door, hesitated, smiled and leaped back, slamming it. He found a lock and turned it. "Only you
have to c-catch me first!" he yelled through the door.
Behind him the Martian laughed like a wounded whale.
"You were very good," complimented the thick, tolling voice.
"It was a matter of s-simple s-self-defense," said Dunlop.
He could hear noises in the corridor, but there was time. "N-Now! Come, Martian! We're
going to get away from LaFitte. You're coming w-with me, because he won't dare shoot you and-and
certainly you, with your great mind, can find a way for us both to escape."
The Martian said in a thick sulky voice: "I've tried."
"But I can help! Isn't that the k-k-key?"
He clawed the bright bit of metal off the wall. There was a lock on the door of steel
bars, but the key opened it. The Martian was just inside, ropy arms waving.
"V-r-r-room," it rumbled, eyes like snake's eyes staring at Dunlop.
"Speak more c-clearly," Dunlop requested impatiently, twisting the key out of the lock.
"I said," repeated the thick drawl, "I've been waiting for you."
"Of course. What a t-terrible life you've led!"
Crash went the door behind him; Dunlop didn't dare look. And this key insisted on sticking
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in its lock! But he freed it and leaped to the Martian's side-at least there they would not dare
fire, for fear of destroying their meal-ticket!
"You c-can get us out of here," Dunlop panted, fumbling for the lock on the Martian's
ankle cuff and gagging. (It was true. They did smell like rotting fish.) "B-but you must be
strong! LaFitte has been a father to you, but what a f-false f-father! Feel no loyalty to him,
Martian. He made you his slave, even if he d-did keep you healthy and s-sane."
And behind him LaFitte cleared his throat. "But I didn't," he observed. "I didn't keep him
sane."
"No," rumbled the thick, slow Martian voice. "No, he didn't."
The ropes that smelled like rotting fish closed lovingly and lethally around Dunlop.
The Census Takers
IT GETS TO BE A MADHOUSE around here along about the end of the first week. Thank heaven we only
do this once a year, that's what I say! Six weeks on, and forty-six weeks off-that's pretty good
hours, most people think. But they don't know what those six weeks are like.
It's bad enough for the field crews, but when you get to be an Area Boss like me it's
frantic. You work your way up through the ranks, and then they give you a whole C.A. of your own;
and you think you've got it made. Fifty three-man crews go out, covering the whole Census Area; a
hundred and fifty men in the field, and twenty or thirty more in Area Command-and you boss them
all. And everything looks great, until Census Period starts and you've got to work those hundred
and fifty men; and six weeks is too unbearably long to live through, and too impossibly short to
get the work done; and you begin living on black coffee and thiamin shots and dreaming about the
vacation hostel on Point Loma.
Anybody can panic, when the pressure is on like that. Your best field men begin to crack
up. But you can't afford to, because you're the Area Boss. .
Take Witeck. We were Enumerators together, and he was as good a man as you ever saw,
absolutely nerveless when it came to processing the Overs. I counted on that man the way I counted
on my own right arm; I always bracketed him with the greenest, shakiest new cadet Enumerators, and
he never gave me a moment's trouble for years. Maybe it was too good to last; maybe I should have
figured he would crack.
I set up my Area Command in a plush penthouse apartment. The people who lived there were
pretty well off, you know, and they naturally raised the dickens about being shoved out. "Blow
it," I told them. "Get out of here in five minutes, and we'll count you first." Well, that took
care of that; they were practically kissing my feet on the way out. Of course, it wasn't strictly
by the book, but you have to be a little flexible; that's why some men become Area Bosses, and
others stay Enumerators.
Like Witeck.
Along about Day Eight things were really hotting up. I was up to my neck in hurry-ups from
Regional Control-we were running a little slow-when Witeck called up. "Chief," he said, "I've got
an In."
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