And Gerd Lel Rayne's answer would be a ringing, clear, and damning "Yes!"
This, which takes time to record; to read, passed through Wanniston's mind in no flash of staccato continuity, but as a pattern-plan. It was like thinking of a scotch plaid, or a linoleum pattern to the ordinary mortal; it came instantaneously to the energized intellect of John Wanniston, and he knew the whole futile thing from upper left to lower right before Lieutenant Alfred's voice had ceased to echo through Gerd Lel Rayne's workshop.
He was framed.
He was IT.
And as nicely a nasty bit of connivery as ever hit the sight.
HE was IT.
Wanniston moved with rattlesnake swiftness. He hit the light cord, pulled and twisted. A splurt of sparks came with blackness and Wanniston faded back and down to run, stooped, across the workshop floor avoiding the clutter of machinery and furniture by the faculty of eidetic memory.
By sensitivity of mind, he knew where Gerd Lel Rayne kept his spacecraft, and he went there immediately. A whoosh! of passing air and Wanniston was in the stratosphere, free and away. He dropped back again a few minutes later to his office where he bundled his mind machine into the spacecraft before he left Terra forever.
