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crumbled the ashes before dropping them in a disposal hole, the Computer might be able to reconstruct the combination.”
    Burton said that they would have to make hoods to put over them when they reset the combination. They could make sure that the hoods did not contain detectors by using their bedsheets.
    “We can’t trust the mass detectors,” he added. “The Computer will make them for us, but the unknown might hide turn-off devices in them.”
    “True,” Frigate said. “He may have installed a turn-off in your burglar alarm, too.”
    “Then anything the Computer makes for us could betray us?”
    “Sure. Including the food. The unknown could order poison put in it.”
    “By God! There must be something we can do to fight this devil!”
    Nur, who had been standing near them and smiling slightly, spoke.
    “If the unknown had planned to kill us, he would have done it before now. I suggest that if the unknown can override even Loga’s commands, then he or she must be an Ethical. If so, why hasn’t he resurrected Monat and the others? That would be his first thought and his first duty, after he’s immobilized us, of course. Which, I don’t have to point out, he’s accomplished. The only thing is…”
    He hesitated so long that Burton said, “Yes? What is it?”
    “Would any Ethical erase Loga’s body-recording? I think not. So … the unknown can’t be an Ethical. Unless…”
    “Unless what?”
    “Patience, my friend. We are not on a schedule. Unless … it is Loga who’s behind all this.”
    Burton exploded. “We’ve been through that line of reasoning! Why would he do this?”
    Nur shrugged skinny shoulders and raised the palms of his long hands.
    “I don’t know. I doubt that it is Loga. Would Loga erase his own body-recording? Of course not.”
    “But he could have a secret resurrection chamber some place in the tower,” Frigate said.
    “Just what I was going to say,” Nur said. “We still don’t have an explanation for such irrational conduct. But I keep thinking of the footfalls Frigate heard, or thought he heard, in the corridor outside the room where we were celebrating our victory over the malfunctioning Computer. Loga was disturbed when Pete told him about it. He ran out into the corridor and down to the intersecting hall, and he looked up and down the lift shaft. Then he asked the Computer some questions, but these were in his language, and he talked so fast we did not understand them.”
    “I asked him what he was so upset about,” Burton said. “He replied that he wasn’t anymore and that Pete’s experiences had made Pete so paranoiac that he was hearing sounds that did not exist. Pete’s suspicions were infectious. So Loga said.”
    “That’s like throwing a stone through your own window!” Frigate said. “There was nobody more paranoiac than Loga!”
    “If he was, then we’ve been on the wrong side,” Nur said calmly. “Those who follow a crazy man are as crazy as he. However, talking about that is useless. What do we do now? ”
    Frigate’s sarcastic suggestion that they pile furniture by the door was, realistically, the best offered. It was an inconvenient arrangement if they were to use the door much, but, at the moment, they planned to stay within the suite.
    Moreover, there now seemed little chance that the unknown could poison their food and water. Frigate and Nur got simplified schematics of the e-m converters and studied them. The unknown could cut off the power to the converters and so starve them. But the food was produced by e-m conversion via pre-programmed circuits that the unknown could not change. He had no way of introducing poison into them. But their drinking and bathwater came through pipes, and the unknown could put toxic substances into them.
    Frigate and Nur made arrangements whereby the water would be produced from the converters in the rooms. The Computer did not balk at producing the necessary plumbing for them to connect the water