Free Troublemakers by Harlan Ellison

the soldier had received medical attention, grew curious about the strangely shaped weapon.
        As he put the things into security, he tested the Brandelmeier-hardly realizing what knob or stud controlled its power, never realizing what it could do-and melted away one wall of the safe room. Three inch plate steel, and it melted bluely, fused solidly.
        He called the Captain, and the Captain called the F.B.I., and the F.B.I. called Internal Security, and Internal Security said, “Preposterous!” and checked back. When the Brandelmeier had been thoroughly tested-as much as could be tested, since the rifle had no seams, no apparent power source, and fantastic range-they were willing to believe. They had the soldier removed from his cell, transported along with the pouch, and a philologist named Soames, to the I.S. general headquarters in Washington, D.C. The Brandelmeier came by jet courier, and the soldier was flown in by helicopter, under sedation. The philologist named Soames, whose hair was long and rusty, whose face was that of a starving artist, whose temperament was that of a saint, came in by specially chartered lane from Columbia University. The pouch was sent by sealed Brinks truck to the airport, where it was delivered under heaviest guard to a mail plane. They all arrived in Washington within ten minutes of one another and, without seeing anything of the surrounding countryside, were whisked away to the subsurface levels of the I.S. Buildings.
        When Qarlo came back to consciousness, he found himself again in a cell, this time quite unlike the first. No bars, but just as solid to hold him in, with padded walls. Qarlo paced around the cell a few times, seeking breaks in the walls, and found what was obviously a door, in one corner. But he could not work his fingers between the pads, to try and open it.
        He sat down on the padded floor, and rubbed the bristled top of his head in wonder. Was he never to find out what had happened to himself? And when was he going to shake this strange feeling that he was being watched?

    Overhead, through a pane of one-way glass that looked like a ventilator grille, the soldier was being watched.
        Lyle Sims and his secretary knelt before the window in the floor, along with the philologist named Soames. Where Soames was shaggy, ill-kept, hungry-looking and placid... Lyle Sims was lean, collegiate-seeming, brusque and brisk. He had been special advisor to an unnamed branch office of Internal Security, for five years, dealing with every strange or offbeat problem too outré for regulation inquiry. Those years had hardened him in an odd way: he was quick to recognize authenticity, even quicker to recognize fakery.
        As he watched, his trained instincts took over completely, and he knew in a moment of spying, that the man in the cell below was out of the ordinary. Not so in any fashion that could be labeled-”drunkard,” “foreigner,” “psychotic”-but so markedly different, so other, he was taken aback.
        “Six feet three inches,” he recited to the girl kneeling beside him. She made the notation on her pad, and he went on calling out characteristics of the soldier below. “Brown hair, clipped so short you can see the scalp. Brown...no, black eyes. Scars. Above the left eye, running down to center of left cheek; bridge of nose; three parallel scars on the right side of chin; tiny one over right eyebrow; last one I can see, runs from back of left ear, into hairline.
        “He seems to be wearing an all-over, skintight suit something like, oh, I suppose it’s like a pair of what do you call those pajamas kids wear...the kind with the back door, the kind that enclosed the feet?”
        The girl inserted softly, “You mean snuggies?”
        The man nodded, slightly embarrassed for no good reason, continued, “Mmm. Yes, that’s right. Like those. The suit encloses his feet, seems to be joined to the cape, and comes up to his