modus operandi file, and so forth. Any of the data in these files could be checked, conversely, against the names.

Kronski walked over to where letter sized cards were flipping from a slot into a small bin. He said, "Didn't even have to dial in Central Data for these. Seems we got a lot of Supremist members right in our own little collection."

Pell picked up one of the cards and examined it idly. Vertical columns were inscribed along the card, each with a heading, and with further sub-headed columns. Under the column marked Modus Operandi, for instance, there were subcolumns titled Person Attacked, Property Attacked, How Attacked, Means of Attack, Object of Attack, and Trademark. Columns of digits, one to nine, were under each item. If the digits 3 and 2 were punched under Trademark the number 32 could be fed into the Operational Data machine and this machine would then give back the information on a printed slip that number 32 stood for the trademark of leaving cigar butts at the scene of the crime.

"Got five hundred now," said Kronski. "I'll let a few more run in case we need alternates."

"Okay," said Pell. "I'll start this batch through the analyzer."

He took the cards across the room to a machine about twenty feet long and dropped them into the feeder at one end. Channels and rollers ran along the top of this machine and under them were a series of vertical slots into which the selected cards could drop. He cleared the previous setting and ran the pointer to Constants. He set the qualitative dial to 85%. This meant that on the first run the punch hole combinations in the cards would be scanned and any item common to 85% of the total would be registered in a relay. Upon the second run the machine would select the cards with this constant and drop them into a slot corresponding with that heading. Further scanning, within the slot itself, would pick out the constant number.

Pell started the rollers whirring.

Kronski came over. He rubbed his battered nose. "Hope we get outside on this case. I'm gettin' sick o' the office. Haven't been out in weeks."

Pell nodded. Oh, for the life of a C.I.B. man. In teleplays they cornered desperate criminals in the dark ruins of the ancient cities topside, and fought it out with freezers. The fact was, although regulations called for them to carry freezers in their shoulder holsters, one in a thousand ever got a chance to use them.

Pell said, "Maybe you need a vacation."

"Maybe. Only I keep putting my vacation off. Got a whole month saved up now."

"Me, too." Pell sighed. Ciel would probably be pacing the floor back home now, trying to make up her mind. To break it up, or not to break it up? There would be no difficulty, really: she had been a pretty good commercial artist before they were married and she wouldn't have any trouble finding a job again somewhere in World City.

The rollers kept whirring and the cards flipping along with a whispering sound.

"Wonder what we're looking into these Supremists for?" asked Kronski. "I always thought they were some kind of harmless crackpots."

"The Chief doesn't think so. Neither does Theodor Rysland." He told Kronski more about the interview last night.

Presently the machine stopped, clicked several times and began rolling the other way.

"Well, it found something," said Kronski.

They kept watching. Oh, for the life of a C.I.B. man. Cards began to drop into one of the slots. The main heading was Physical and the sub-heading Medical History. Pell frowned and said, "Certainly didn't expect to find a constant in this department." He picked up a few of the first cards and looked at them, hoping to catch the constant by eye. He caught it. "What's 445 under this heading?"

Kronski said, "I'll find out," and stepped over to the Operational Data board. He worked it, took the printed slip that came out and called back: "Record of inoculation."

"That's a funny one."

"Yup. Sure is." Kronski stared at the slip and scratched his neck. "It must be just any old kind inoculation. If it was special—like typhoid or tetanus or something—it'd have another digit."

"There must be some other boil-downs, if we could think of them." Pell was frowning heavily. Some of the other men, used to the machines, could grab a boil-down out of thin air, run the cards again and get another significant constant. The machine, however, inhibited Pell. It made him feel uneasy and stupid whenever he was around it.

"How about location?" suggested Kronski.

Pell shook his head. "I checked a few by eye. All different numbers under location. Some of 'em come from World City, some from Mars Landing, some from way out in the sticks. Nothing significant there."

"Maybe what we need is a cup of coffee."

Pell grinned. "Best idea all morning. Come on."

Some minutes later they sat across from each other at a table in the big cafeteria on the seventy-third level. It was beginning to be crowded now with personnel from other departments and bureaus. The coffee urge came for nearly everybody in the government offices at about the same time. Pell was studying by eye a handful of spare data cards he'd brought along and Kronski was reading faxpaper clippings from a large manila envelope marked Supremist Party. Just on a vague hunch Pell had viewplated Central Public Relations and had them send the envelope down by tube.

"Prominent Educator Addresses Supremist Rally," Kronski muttered. "Three Spaceport Cargomen Arrested at Supremist Riot. Young Supremists Form Rocket Club. Looks like anybody and everybody can be a Supremist. And his grandmother. Wonder how they do it?"

"Don't know." Pell wasn't really listening.

"And here's a whole town went over to the Supremists. On the moon."

"Uh-huh," said Pell.

Kronski sipped his coffee loudly. A few slender, graceful young men from World Commerce looked at him distastefully. "Happened just this year. New Year they all went over. Augea, in the Hercules Mountains. Big celebration."

Pell looked up and said, "Wait a minute...."

"Wait for what? I'm not goin' anywhere. Not on this swivel-chair of a job, damn it."

"New Year they all become Supremists. And the last week of December everybody on the moon gets his inoculations, right?"

"Search me."

"But I know that. I found that out when I was tailing those two gamblers who had a place on the moon, remember?"

"So it may be a connection." Kronski shrugged.

"It may be the place where we can study a bunch of these cases in a batch instead of picking 'em one by one."

"You mean we oughta take a trip to the moon?"

"Might not hurt for a few days."

Kronski was grinning at him.

"What are you grinning at?"

"First you got to stay over on your vacation, so you can't go to the moon with your wife. Now all of a sudden you decide duty has got to take you to the moon, huh?"

Pell grinned back then. "What are you squawking about? You said you wanted to get out on this case."

Kronski, still grinning, got up. "I'm not complaining. I'm just demonstrating my powers of deduction, as they say in teleplays. Come on, let's go make rocket reservations."

Chapter III

The big tourist rocket let them down at the Endymion Crater Landing, and they went through the usual immigration and customs formalities in the underground city there. They stayed in a hotel overnight, Pell and Ciel looking very much like tourists, Kronski tagging along and looking faintly out of place. In the morning—morning according to the 24 hour earth clock, that is—they took the jitney rocket to the resort town of Augea, in the Hercules Mountains. The town was really a cliff dwelling, built into the side of a great precipice with quartz windows overlooking a tremendous, stark valley.