Thorn? That was a whole problem in itself, only a few hours old, but full of the most nerve-racking possibilities. He took from his pouch and nervously fingered the fragment of tape with its scrawlingly recorded message which he had found earlier today on Thorn's desk at their office—that message which no one had seen Thorn leave.
A matter of the greatest importance has arisen. I must handle it alone. Will be back in a few days. Cancel or postpone all activities until my return.
Thorn.
Although the general style of recording was characteristically Thorn's, it had a subtly different swing to it, an alien undercurrent, as if some other mind were using Thorn's habitual patterns of muscular action. And the message itself, which might refer to anything, was alarmingly suggestive of a cryptic amnesiac's play for time.
On the other hand, it would be just like Thorn to play the lone wolf if he saw fit.
If he followed his simplest impulses, Clawly would resume the search for Thorn he had begun on finding the message. But he had already put that search into the hands of agencies more competent than any single individual could possibly be. They would find Thorn if anyone could, and for him to try to help them would merely be a concession to his anxiety.
His heels beat a sharper tattoo.
The research program? But that was crippled by the Committee's adverse decision, and by Thorn's absence. He couldn't do much there. Besides he had the feeling that any research program was becoming too slow and remote a measure for dealing with the present situation.
The Committee itself? But what single, definite thing could he tell them that he had not told them last night?
His own mind, then? How about that as an avenue of attack? Stronger than ever before, the conviction came that there were dark avenues leading down from his consciousness—one of them to a frighteningly devilish, chaos-loving version of himself—and that if he concentrated his mind in a certain peculiar way he might be able to slip down one of them.