Starblood

something so intriguing as the assassination device: SOURCE OF WEAPON: WEAPONS PSIONIC… ADDRESS UNKNOWN… NO MEANS OF CONTACTING WP; MAKES OWN CONTACTS WITH PROSPECTIVE CUSTOMERS… NO OFFICES… NO FILES… NO EMPLOYEES… WEAPONS CANNOT BE TRACED TO PURCHASER IN ANY KNOWN MANNER… WEAPONS CANNOT BE TRACED TO POINT OF PRODUCTION… PARTS OF WEAPONS CANNOT BE TRACED TO POINT OF PRODUCTION.
    This was all very interesting, but it put him no further ahead. Someone had been contacted by Weapons Psionic and had agreed to purchase the killer. But who? And if it was the Brethren—why? He would have to answer that before he went to the police, if he went to them at all. And to get his answers, he would need to know more about this device. He went to the comscreen and called George Creel's home number. When the screen lit, after a long wait, Creel looked like something that had climbed out of the paleozoic swamps a little behind schedule and had lain all day on the mud banks trying to decide whether it could grow legs fast enough to survive.
    "Remind me not to call you in the middle of the night," Timothy said. "I just ruined my breakfast."
    Creel grinned His features firmed up when he saw who was phoning, and he looked halfway human again. "What is it?" he asked, the words distorted by a yawn he could not quite stifle.
    "Have you ever heard of a company called Weapons Psionic?"
    "Bad," Creel said, making a face. "What about them?"
    "We have a story concerning them tomorrow. You heard the name Wallengrine?"
    "Sounds familiar."
    "Herbert Wallengrine was heir to the Wallengrine plastics fortune, twenty-seven years old. His father died eight months ago, and the will was settled four months later. Seven hundred million involved. Herbert Wallengrine was killed by one of these robotic assassins—attacked his grav-car while it was in flight, destroyed the engine. But when it couldn't get at the grav-plates through the heavy armoring, it smashed through the windscreen, slammed into his chest, and self-destructed. They've arrested his wife on suspicion, but she knows as well as they do that—even if it was her—they'll never prove it. She stood to inherit every dime of the seven hundred million. Besides that, it was well known she had taken on a lover and that Wallengrine was planning a divorce on grounds of unsanctioned adultery, cutting her off without a penny." He paused. "We're using it on page two."
    "Do we have any contacts who could dismantle one of these machines?"
    Creel examined Timothy's image carefully. "You have one?"
    "Let's say my question is academic. Do we know a good electronics man who might be able to handle it?"
    "Lambertson," Creel said. "We've used him on a few things before, to take apart bombs so we could get an exclusive on the story."
    "Can you get in touch with him now?"
    Creel shrugged. "I will. Whether hell come or not is up to him, of course. But with the money we can offer and the word that this is a SAM he has at his disposal, hell probably jump at the chance."
    "SAM?" Timothy asked. It was the first time he had heard its name.
    "Selective Assassination Module," Creel said. "You didn't buy it, then?"
    "No, George."
    "It didn't get sent to you, did it?" he asked, his dark face growing even darker.
    "Yes."
    "That's bad," Creel said. "My, that
is
bad."
    They said goodnight and broke the connection almost simultaneously.
    Walter Lambertson was a huge, heavily muscled man with a lumbering walk and a face flushed by too many years of drinking. He carried a large toolbox and met Timothy by the patio doors after laboriously climbing out of the grav-car which seemed half again too small for him. "That's where it got in, eh?" he asked, his voice a gruff rumble. He did not even bother with introductions but proceeded right to business. Timothy decided the world could not be totally insane if heroically proportioned men like Lambertson still strode the earth.
    Timothy took him into the library, where the big man expressed surprise at the size of the killer. "You've got one of the biggest I've ever seen," he said. "Must have one hell of a lot of guts to it." He listened to Timothy's story while he unpacked his tools. There were dozens of pieces of equipment in the box, most of them no larger than a man's hand with working ends so minute that the purpose of them was un-fathomable. I'm afraid you'll have to leave," Lambertson said when he had everything arranged on squares of white felt. "It's damn hard work,