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Hunter flung open the door. The light was bright and gay. On the floor, a fat old man sat hunched over the remote control console of a toy monorail system. Toy space liners and fighting ships buzzed in the air.

“Werner von Rausch?” Hunter whispered.

“You’ve come to play with me!” The fat, old man flashed the cherubic smile of a child. “And you brought me a blaster. Oh, let me see it! Let me see it!”

He clapped his hands eagerly.

Hunter turned and fled. The scream of the sirens still seemed no closer, but without assessing his chances Hunter sprang into the private lift. It dropped downward toward its unknown destination. What that was, Hunter didn’t care. Anything to escape from so hideous a madhouse.

The Von Rausch clan: an old lady who lived with ghosts; a scholar of demonology; a patriarch lost in an eternal childhood. All of them running away into their own private fantasies.

But this Was the family which ruled a cartel and directed the conquest of half the galaxy; these were the most powerful human beings who had ever lived. And they were escaping into insanity. Escaping what? Responsibility? The jungle of the cartels?

“Two alternatives,” Dawn had said. “Pull down the world or run away from it.” The Von Rausches had made this mess and then fled in horror from their own brutal and destructive creation.

The lift cage jerked to a stop. The door opened on a warmly lighted executive office where a white-haired man sat at a desk which had been cut from a single slab of Venusian crystal. A much enlarged projection of the United Researchers’ emblem glowed from the Wall. Hunter raised his weapon.

The old man gestured imperiously. “Don’t be a fool, Captain. I wouldn’t be here unless I had adequate protection. There are blasters in the wall, which I can trigger with a single spoken word.”

“You want to finish the job your men bungled this afternoon?”

“Not our men, Captain. We got in on this deal a little late. We knew nothing about this psychiatric patent until the strikes started today.”

“But Ann Saymer–“

“Unfortunately, we do not have her. It’s Consolidated. We sent our men out to bring you in, Captain. We wanted your help. When you got away, it didn’t occur to me that you would go to the top level. Not until we heard the report of the destruction of the power distributor. It was easy enough to anticipate your moves after that.

“If you hadn’t used the private Von Rausch lift, you would have gone out again through the gate, where my men were waiting. Naturally we couldn’t send them inside. You can understand why, of course.”

Hunter heard only vaguely what the man was saying, for abruptly the pattern fell into place. Neither Consolidated nor United had Ann or the Exorciser. Each cartel suspected the other because they hadn’t yet adjusted to the idea that a third cartel existed: Eric Young’s union.

Ann’s micropic had told the literal truth. She had taken her commission-job with the biggest private clinic, operated by the U.F.W. It was a dead giveaway when Young struck both cartels simultaneously, if Hunter had read the data correctly.

Hunter moved toward the crystal desk. “I know where Ann is, sir,” he said. “I can–“

“You can stay where you are,” the old man interrupted. “One hour ago, my friend, I was ready to offer you a deal. Since then you’ve seen–” He raised his eyes toward the ceiling. “You’ve seen what’s up there. Only four of us know that secret. We don’t relish sharing it with a fifth.”

“Unless you destroy Ann’s patent, you’re finished anyway.”

“Destroy, Captain?” The senile voice turned silky. “No, we want that machine intact.”

“If you’ll guarantee Ann’s safety and mine–“

“You have an exaggerated idea of your own importance. You would have been useful to us, particularly since you have been a Consolidated employee. But this thing you blundered into up there destroys your value entirely. It makes you potentially as dangerous as the Saymer patent. That’s my opinion.