murderous thoughts from any peepers present at the scene of the planned crime. Reich bribes Dr. Augustus ("Gus") Tate, a prominent peeper psychiatrist, and uses him to mentally steal information about D'Courtney's planned attendance at a party. To further conceal his intentions from telepaths, Reich visits a songwriter, Duffy Wygand, to teach him a jingle that makes his real thoughts hard to read. From Monarch's research facility, Reich secures a small flash grenade which can disrupt a victim's perception of time by destroying the eyes' rhodopsin. He acquires an antique (20th-century) handgun from a pawn shop, making sure to have the bullets removed from the cartridges when he buys it. He knows how to replace the bullet in the handgun's ammunition with a gelatin capsule filled with water in order to eliminate ballistics evidence. At the party, he influences the host to play a game of Sardines in total darkness. Reich executes his plan during the game but there is an unforeseen hitch: the moment he shoots D'Courtney, D'Courtney's daughter Barbara, witnesses the murder, struggles with Reich, grabs the gun and runs away. She is later found suffering severe psychological shock that renders her catatonic and mute. Nobody but Maria knew she was with her father. Reich recovers his composure, returns to the party and pretends to be lost. Just as he is about to leave, completing his getaway, a drop of blood from D'Courtney's body in the room above lands on him, and the party ends in chaos as the police are called. A telepathic police detective is assigned to the case. As telepathically gathered evidence is legally inadmissible in court, but can be used to guide an investigation, the detective is obliged to assemble the murder case with traditional police procedures and to establish motive, opportunity and method. The detective manages to read Reich's thoughts seeing that he is the murderer and asks him to surrender. Reich refuses, relishing the thrill of the hunt to come. Both sides center on finding and questioning (or, in Reich's case, silencing) Barbara D'Courtney. Although Reich finds her first he is unable to kill her before Powell rescues her. The pursuit traverses the Solar System as Reich escapes the police and a series of mysterious assassination attempts. Others are attacked also: during Powell's attempt to interrogate the pawnbroker from whom Reich bought the gun, an unknown person attacks the pawnshop with a