Astounding Science Fiction, British Edition — page 41: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

HUMPTY DUMPTY 39 learn the method of Operation Apoca- lypse and the nature of the deadly selective virus from the calculator. That secret had to be kept from Jasper Horne and his fellow paranoids. For their approach was: Why not kill all the humans? Why not, before they kill us? Why not strike first, and save ourselves? These were hard questions to an- swer, and Jasper Horne was very adept at putting it to the test. If you could say the group of paranoid tele- paths had any leader, then Horne was that leader. How much the man knew of the Caves was uncertain. He knew they existed, but not where. He knew some of the things that were going on in it, in spite of the frequency- scrambling Mute helmets every Cave Baldy wore. If he knew about the Inductor, he would—if he could— have dropped an Egg on it with the greatest joy in life and watched the smoke-cloud arise. Certainly he knew that Operation Apocalypse had been planned, for he was doing his best to force the Baldies to release the virus that would destroy all nontelepathic human life. <¢ And he knew the way to force this decision. If—when—a total pogrom started, then the virus and the Apoca- lypse would be loosed upon the world. Then there would be no choice. When your life depends on killing your enemy, you don’t hesitate. But when the enemy is your brother... That was the difference. To the normal Baldies, the race of nontele- pathic humans was a close kin. To the paranoids they were hairy sub-men fit only for extermination. So Jasper Horne worked in every way he knew to force trouble to the surface. To precipitate a pogrom. To make sure the Baldies released the virus and ‘destroyed the hairy men. And Horne worked in a decentral- - ized post-Blowup society founded on fear, a fear that had been very real once. Today, no further move seemed possible. The society wavered between re-contraction and further expansion, and each man, each town, was on guard against all others. For how can you trust another when you do not know his thoughts? American Gun and Sweetwater, Jensen’s Crossing and Santaclare and all the rest, clear across the curve of the continent. Men and women in the towns going about their business, rearing their children, tending their gardens and their stores and their factories. Most of them were normal human beings. Yet in every town the Baldies lived too, rearing their chil- dren, tending their stores. Amicably enough for the most part. But not always—not always. And for weeks now, over most of the nation, had lain a humid, oppres- sive heat wave, in which aggressions rose steadily higher. Yet, outside of a few knife-duels, no one dared strike the first blow. Other men were armed too, and every town possessed a cache of atomic Eggs, and could strike back with deadly precision. : The time was more than ripe for a pogrom. So far, no mob had formed. No potential lynchers had agreed on a target. But the Baldies were a minority. All that was needed was a precipi- tating factor—and the paranoids were doing their best to provide that. Cody glanced up at. the cavern’s gray stone sky and reached with his key, for the lock of his wife’s apart- ment door. With the key already in place, he hesitated, not from indecision this time but because he knew what probably waited inside. There was a furrow between his brows, and all the little lines of his face were pulled tense and held that way by the per- petual tension that held every Baldy Conmiclooolkks.c© im