Astounding Science Fiction, British Edition — page 55: what you’re looking at

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

HUMPTY he can solve the problem of the Inductor. Hurry ! He ran toward a group of long, low buildings. He knew the way; he had seen it in Horne’s mind. He ran toward one of the buildings, thrust open the door, and was in the laboratory. A gaunt, gray-haired man in a stained smock turned to stare at him. It was Pomerance; no telepath can ever be mistaken on a question of identity. It was Pomerance—and as Cody realized that, he also realized that two blocks away, in the Copter Vane Eatery, Jasper Horne had stirred, wakened, and reached out in sudden panic to touch Pomerance’s mind. Instantly Cody was racing down the length of the long laboratory. Beyond Pomerance were floor-length windows opening on hot sunlight, blue sky, and parched brown grass. If they could reach the windows— It seemed to Cody that he crossed the room in no time at all. No time, and yet another kind of time seemed to draw out endlessly as, in the distant mind of the paranoid, he saw the triggering equation building up that would set off the bomb’s mechanism. Now the equation was complete. Now time would stop in one bursting moment of death. Yet there was time. Cody sent out ' a wordless call, a summons that rang like a great alarm bell in the minds of every Baldy in American Gun. At the same moment he reached Pomerance and used his own momentum to lift the other man bodily as he plunged toward the windows. Then the floor rose underfoot and the air rushed outward before the first soundless compression wave that moved in front of the explosion. The window loomed before them, bright, high, patterned with small panes. Cody’s shoulder struck, he felt wood and glass shatter without a DUMPTY | 53 sound because of the great, white, bursting roar of the explosion, louder than any sound could be. The blast exploded in a _ white blindness all around him and beyond shattering glass the void opened up under him. He was falling with Pomerance through hot, dry outdoor air and darkness, darkness in the full heat of the sun, falling and turning while glass rained down around them and the noise of the explosion went on and on forever. In front of the Copter Vane Eatery two transients scuffled. Jasper Horne, in the crowd, said something under his breath. Another man:repeated it, louder. One of the transients flushed darkly. (It was a trigger-phrase as certain to rouse this man’s aggressions as the equation that had exploded the bomb.) In a moment a dagger was pulled from its sheath, and a full- fledged duel was in progress in the middle of a noisy circle. The winner was a hairy-faced, hairy-chested man with a partially bald head. His knife- work had been very deft and sure. Too sure, Jasper Horne said in a loud whisper. The whispers flew around the circle. Anybody could win a duel if he could read the other man’s mind. If They could grow fingers, maybe they could grow hair. Jasper Horne said something, exactly the right something, to the potential mob-leader beside him. The potential mob-leader scowled, swore, and took a step forward. Deftly he tripped the winner from behind as he was sheathing his dagger. The knife flew spinning across the pavement. Three men were on the falling bald- head as he went down. Two of them held him while the third tugged at his tonsure-fringe of hair. It held. The victim bellowed with rage and resisted conniclooolkks.c© =