Thlasoval, the boss of Chickladoria, had been under full mental surveillance every minute of every day. The scheme had worked perfectly. As the club closed, Thlasoval had sent the expected message; not by ordinary communications channels, of course, but via long-distance beamer. It was beamed three ways; to Tominga, Vegia, and Palmer III. That proved that Fairchild wasn’t on Chickladoria; if he had been, Thlasoval would have used a broadcaster, not a beamer.
Shows had been staged simultaneously on all four of Fairchild’s planets, and only on Vegia had the planetary manager’s message been broadcast. Fairchild was on Vegia, and he wouldn’t leave it: a screen had been thrown around the planet that a microbe couldn’t squirm through and it wouldn’t be relaxed until Fairchild was caught.
“Simultaneous shows?” Cloud interrupted the flow of information. “On four planets? He won’t connect the Vortex Blaster with it, at all, then.”
“We think he will,” the Lensman thought, narrowing down. “We’re dealing with a very shrewd operator. We hope he does, anyway, because a snooper put on you or any one of your key people would be manna from heaven for us.”
“But how could he suspect us?” Cloud demanded. “We couldn’t have been on four planets at once.”
“You will have been on three of them, though; and I can tell you now that routing was not exactly coincidence.”
“Oh . . . and I wasn’t informed?”
“No. Top Brass didn’t want to disturb you too much, especially since we hoped to catch him before things got this far along. But you’re in it now, clear to the neck. You and your people will be under surveillance every second, from here on in, and you’ll be covered as no chief of state was ever covered in all history.”
| [3] | A few months later, Joan did send him the full game, which white of course won. Thlasoval studied it in secret for over five years; and then, deciding correctly that he never would be able to understand its terrifically complex strategy, he destroyed the tape. It is perhaps superfluous to all that this game was never published. E.E.S. |