"... now ... okay ... valve, gas ... kills in a split second ... then get out...."
I stabbed out, pushed through the obscuring veil of masonry, sensed a man in the computer room, dressed in gray coveralls, a grotesque shield over his head and shoulders. He reached for a red-painted valve—
I struck at his mind, felt him stagger back, fall. I fumbled in his brain, stimulated the sleep center. He sank deep into unconsciousness. I leaned against the table, weak with the reaction. Kayle had almost tricked me that time.
I reached out again, swept the area with desperate urgency. Far away, I sensed the hazy clutter of many minds, out of range. There was nothing more. The poisonous gas had been the only threat—except the bomb itself. But I had to move fast, before my time ran out, to transmit the bomb to a desert area....
I paused, stood frozen in mid-move. A desert. What desert?
The transmitter operated in accordance with as rigid a set of laws as did the planets swinging in their orbits; strange laws, but laws of nature none the less. No receiver was required. The destination of the mass under transmission was determined by the operator, holding in his mind the five-dimensional conceptualization of the target, guiding the action of the machine.
And I had no target.
I could no more direct the bomb to a desert without a five-fold grasp of its multi-ordinal spatial, temporal, and entropic co-ordinates than I could fire a rifle at a target in the dark.
I was like a man with a grenade in his hand, pin pulled—and locked in a cell.