The lawyer’s blue eyes gazed at him steadily and he stopped laughing. In the bated hush of the courtroom he said softly, “What a pity I’m not an alien too. You could have the fungoids destroy me!”
He laughed again helplessly, the tears running down his cheeks.
The Chief Justice adjourned the Court then and the prisoner sauntered to his comfortable quarters in front of his frightened guards.
That night, in his own living room, the Chief Justice danced an agonized fandango in front of his horror-stricken wife and the anonymous lawyer sat in his apartment, staring at the blank wall. He was glad the aliens had not made the traitor telepathic too.
He had found the chink in his armor.
The neural paralysis, the murders by remote control, were acts of a conscious will. He had himself admitted that if his mind was destroyed his powers would be destroyed with it. The aliens had not sought revenge because their minds were totally occupied with saving themselves. The stricken ones had simply lost the power.
The knowledge was useless to him. There was no way they could attack his mind without his knowing it.
Possibly they could steal away his consciousness by drugging or bludgeoning, but it would be racial suicide to attempt it. In the split moment of realization he would kill every human being on Earth. There would be nobody left to operate on his brain, to make him a mindless, powerless idiot for the rest of time. For any period of time, he corrected himself. His brain would heal again.
It was useless to think about it. There was nothing they could use against his invincibility. The only hope was to attack him unawares ... and if that hope was a fraction less than a certainty it could only mean final and absolute catastrophe.
The lawyer looked at his watch. It was four in the morning.