Time Thieves

watched.
        
        He walked half a dozen blocks west, along tree shrouded residential streets, then turned south toward the business district where he hoped he might find other people about. None of the stores were open at that hour, though Halberstrom's Restaurant was moderately busy, as it was twenty-four hours a day. He walked across the street to a small park that faced the restaurant and sat down on a slat bench to think.
        
        He could not hope to handle the situation until he knew more about those behind it-which meant that, if possible, he was going to have to try to probe through the mind of that eyeless beast who had plagued his nightmares for these last few weeks. The dark stranger now seemed to be a machine; that would explain the false face, the steel beneath, the lack of mental processes in its own “brain". Opening his psionic curtain, he allowed the minds of those around him to gush in upon him. He sorted them out swiftly, searching for a string of mental images that originated in the alien creature who had controlled the mechanical man.
        
        After several minutes, he found a white, spherical mind approaching his own. It wormed through the layers of his consciousness, looking for a grip. As before, the eyeless creature behind it began to radiate images of rest and sleep.
        
        Frightened, Pete shoved the others out of his consciousness and looked about the small square. Coming down the walk to his right, two identical strangers, dressed in dark clothes and stamped from the same mold as the first one he had incapacitated, waved at him, as if in greeting.
        
        He got up and stepped toward the curb.
        
        Across the street, another of the robots stood before the restaurant, hands in overcoat pockets, watching him. When it knew that it had been seen, it stepped off the curb and started across the road.
        
        Pete rounded the bench and walked briskly into the small park, heading for a windbreak of lilac bushes. When he reached these, he risked a glance backwards. All three of the things had entered the park. In the shelter of the trees, away from the streetlamps, they gave up their pretense of a casual stroll. They ran now, covering the ground between them and their victim.
        
        He ran along the lilac wall until he found a break in it, pushed through, scratching himself on a few scraggly branches, and continued his flight. Now and again he felt them probing along the shell of his mind, trying to determine his destination and what he might do next. He found that he could effectively seal them out behind an imaginary obsidian wall that rose to touch the sky of his mental landscape. At least he had that edge on them.
        
        The east end of the park fell away into a macadamed parking lot behind Gridd's Department Store. He crossed the smooth plain, listening to his feet crack too loudly on the pavement. He was certain they were still behind him; he did not take the time to look.
        
        The pedestrian walkways between Gridd's and the office building next door was only wide enough for two people to pass. When he broke out of the confining walls of the two buildings, he was on a deserted thoroughfare. He paused just long enough to hear them enter the far end of the walkway, then he angled across the four-lane highway as fast as he could move, into the dark mouth of yet another back street.
        
        He could still feel their probing fingers sliding along the shield he had erected to contain his thoughts. Even if they could not gain access to his mind, they could track him merely by maintaining this minimal contact. Unless he could put a great deal of distance between himself and them-or in some other manner break that mental hold-he would never be able to elude them for good.
        
        He followed the alleyway for four blocks until he came out in a small, brick-floored courtyard which was fronted by three warehouses forming the better part of a circle. Three other alleyways lead off in darkness. He chose the one on his right and ran half a block along the green, corrugated metal wall of the warehouse, then up the stairs he found leading to the second floor of the building.
        
        At the top of the iron steps, set in the warehouse wall, was a metal fire door with a nine-inch-square glass window embedded in its center. The glass was double thickness and surely