Like a pair of ghosts Krakovitch and Gulharov faced each other, both of them panting, 
white as sheets and round-eyed. Then Krakovitch snarled, reached out and slapped the 
other's face. "Bodyguard?" he shouted. "Bloody bodyguard?" He slapped him again, hard. 
"Bloody hell!
  "I... I'm sorry. I didn't know what to..." Gulharov was trembling like a leaf, looked 
like he was going to faint.
  Krakovitch calmed down. He could hardly blame him. "It's all right," he said. "It's all 
right. Now listen: we'll burn the head up here. We'll do that first, right now. Go 
quickly, fetch Avgas."
  Staggering a little, Gulharov went.
  He was back in record time, carrying a jerrycan. They slid the shelving over the drawer 
open a crack, poured Avgas. There was no movement from inside the drawer. "Enough!" said 
Krakovitch. "Any more and there'll be one hell of an explosion. Now then, help me drag 
the cabinet through into the other room." In a moment they were back, and Krakovitch 
tipped out the drawers of Borowitz's desk. He found what he was looking for: a small ball 
of string. He snapped off a ten foot length, soaked it in Avgas, carefully dangled one 
end through the crack into the drawer. Then he laid the string out on the floor in a 
straight line towards the door and took out Gulharov's matches. They shielded their eyes 
as he lit the fuse.
  Blue fire raced across the floor, leaped into the drawer. There was a dull thump and 
shelving, ledgers and all hit the ceiling, then fell back to the floor. The metal drawer 
was an inferno, in which the flat snake-head danced and skittered-but not for long. As 
the drawer began to buckle under the heat and the carpet about it blackened and burst 
into flames, so the thing in the drawer puffed up, and split open and quickly became 
liquescent. And then it, too, burned. But Krakovitch and Gulharov waited a full minute 
more before they put out the fire.
  Krakovitch gave a curt nod. "Well, at least we know the thing burns!" he said. "It was 
probably dead anyway, but by my books when a thing's dead it lies still!"
  They bumped the cabinet downstairs, two flights to the ground floor, then out through 
the battle-torn building into the grounds. Krakovitch stood guard on it while Gulharov 
went back for the Avgas. When he returned, Krakovitch said, This will be the tricky bit. 
First we pour some of this stuff around the cabinet. That way, when we open it, if what's 
inside is-active-we just jump back out of range and toss a match. Until it's quiet. And 
so on....
  Gulharov seemed uncertain, but he was far more alert now.
  They poured Avgas on to and around the cabinet, and then Gulharov got well back out of 
it. Krakovitch slid back the bolt, threw the door clangingly open. Inside, Dragosani 
stared into the sky. His chest stirred a little, but that was all. As Krakovitch began to 
pour Avgas carefully into the cabinet near Dragosani's feet, Gulharov came forward. 
"Don't use too much," it was the Sergeant's turn to caution. "Or it will go off like a 
bomb!"When the fuel swirled almost an inch deep around Dragosani's prone form, 
evaporating furiously, the dead man's chest gave another sudden lurch. Krakovitch stopped 
pouring, stared, backed off a little. Outside the circle of danger, Gulharov stood with a 
match ready to strike. A slickly shining, grey-green tendril sprouted upwards from 
Dragosani's chest. Its tip formed a knob as big as a fist, which in turn formed an eye. 
Just seeing that orb, Krakovitch knew there was no thought behind it, no sentience. It 
was vacant, staring, made no connections and carried no emotions. Krakovitch doubted if 
it even saw. Certainly there was no longer any brain for it to relay its message to. The 
eye melted back into protoflesh, was replaced by small jaws which clashed mindlessly. 
Then it sank down again out of sight.
  "Felix, get out of there!" Gulharov was nervous.
  Krakovitch backed out of the circle; Gulharov struck a match, tossed it; in a moment 
the cabinet was an inferno. Like the oblong mouth of a jet engine on test, the cabinet 
hurled a pale blue sheet of fire roaring into the cold air, a shimmering column of 
intense heat. And then Dragosani sat up!
  Gulharov clutched Krakovitch, clung to him. "Oh God! Oh, mother-he's alive!" he croaked.
  "No," Krakovitch denied, tearing himself free. "The thing in him is alive, but 
mindless. It's all instinct with no brain to govern it. It would flee but doesn't know 
how to, or even what it's fleeing from. If you spear a sea-cucumber it reacts, spills out 
its guts. No mind, just reaction. Look, look! It's melting!"
  And indeed it seemed that Dragosani was melting. Smoke curled upward from his blackened 
shell; layers of skin peeled away, bursting into flame; the fats of his body ran like 
candle wax, and were consumed by the fire. The thing inside him felt the heat, reacted. 
Dragosani's trunk shuddered, vibrated, convulsed. His arms shot out straight, then fell 
to dangle over the sides of the blazing cabinet, where all the while they jerked and 
twitched. His clothing was completely burned away by now, and as Krakovitch and Gulharov 
watched and shuddered, so his crisped flesh burst open here and there, putting out 
frantic, whipping tendrils that melted and slopped down into the furnace.
  In a very little while he fell back and was still, and the two men stood in the snow 
and watched the fire until it burned itself out. It took all of twenty minutes, but they 
stood there anyway...
  
  3.00 P.M., 27 August 1977.
  The big London hotel, within easy walking distance of Whitehall, contained rather more 
than its exterior might suggest. In fact the entire top floor was given over to a company 
of "international financial entrepreneurs", which was the sum total of the hotel 
manager's knowledge about it. The company had its own elevator at the rear of the 
building, private stairs, even its own fire escape. Indeed the company owned the top 
floor, which was therefore entirely outside the hotel's sphere of control and operation.
  In short, the top floor was the headquarters of the most secret of all British secret 
services: namely INTESP, the British equivalent of that Russian organisation housed just 
outside Moscow at the Chateau Bronnitsy. But the hotel was only the headquarters; there 
were also two "factories", one in Dorset and the other in Norfolk, direct-linked to each 
other and to the HQ by telephone, radiotelephone and computer. Such links, though 
top-security screened, were open to sophisticated abuse, of course; a clever hacker might 
get in one day. Hopefully before that happened the branch would have developed its 
telepaths to such an extent that all of this technological junk would be unnecessary. 
Radio waves travel at a mere 186,000 miles per second, but human thought is instantaneous 
and carries a far more vivid and finished picture.
  Such were Alec Kyle's own thoughts as he sat at his desk and formulated Security 
Standing Orders for the six Special Branch officers whose sole task in life was the 
personal security of an infant boy just one month old, a child called Harry Keogh. Harry 
Jnr-the future head of INTESP.
  "Harry," said Kyle out loud, to no one in particular, "you can have the job right now, 
if you still want it."
  No, came the answer at once, startlingly clear in Kyle's mind. Not now, maybe not ever!
  Kyle's mouth fell open and he started upright in his swivel chair. He knew what this 
was, had known some-thing very much similar at a time some eight months ago.
  It was telepathy, yes, but it was more than telepathy. It was the "infant" he'd just 
been thinking about, the child whose mind housed all that was left of the greatest ESP