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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Occasion for Disaster, by
+Gordon Randall Garrett and Laurence Mark Janifer
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Occasion for Disaster
+
+Author: Gordon Randall Garrett
+        Laurence Mark Janifer
+
+Illustrator: van Dongen
+
+Release Date: November 9, 2009 [EBook #30434]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OCCASION FOR DISASTER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                         Transcriber's Note:
+
+  This etext was produced from Analog Science Fact & Fiction November 1960,
+  December 1960, January 1961, February 1961. Extensive research did not
+  uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was
+  renewed.
+
+
+
+                      OCCASION ... for DISASTER
+
+
+                           By MARK PHILLIPS
+
+
+                      Illustrated by van Dongen
+
+
+     _A very small slip, at just the wrong place, can devastate
+      any enterprise. One tiny transistor can go wrong ... and
+      ruin a multi-million dollar missile. Which would be one way
+      to stop the missiles...._
+
+
+
+     "_We must remember not to judge any public servant by any
+       one act, and especially should we beware of attacking the
+       men who are merely the occasions and not the causes of
+       disaster._"
+
+                                            Theodore Roosevelt
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+In 1914, it was enemy aliens.
+
+In 1930, it was Wobblies.
+
+In 1957, it was fellow-travelers.
+
+In 1971, it was insane telepaths.
+
+And, in 1973:
+
+"We don't know _what_ it is," said Andrew J. Burris, Director of the
+FBI. He threw his hands in the air and looked baffled and confused.
+
+Kenneth J. Malone tried to appear sympathetic. "What what is?"
+
+Burris frowned and drummed his fingers on his big desk. "Malone," he
+said, "make sense. And don't stutter."
+
+"Stutter?" Malone said. "You said you didn't know what it was. And I
+wanted to know what it was."
+
+"That's just it," Burris said. "I don't know."
+
+Malone sighed and repressed an impulse to scream. "Now, wait a minute,
+Chief--" he started.
+
+Burris frowned again. "Don't call me Chief," he said.
+
+Malone nodded, "O.K.," he said. "But--if you don't know what it is,
+you must have some idea of what you don't know. I mean, is it larger
+than a breadbox? Does it perform helpful tasks? Is it self-employed?"
+
+"Malone," Burris sighed, "you ought to be on television."
+
+"But--"
+
+"Let me explain," Burris said. His voice was calmer now, and he spoke
+as if he were enunciating nothing but the most obvious and eternal
+truths. "The country," he said, "is going to Hell in a handbasket."
+
+Malone nodded again. "Well, after all, Chief--" he started.
+
+"Don't call me Chief," Burris said wearily.
+
+"Anything you say," Malone agreed peacefully. He eyed the Director of
+the FBI warily. "After all, it isn't anything new," he went on. "The
+country's always been going to Hell in a handbasket, one way or
+another. Look at Rome."
+
+"Rome?" Burris said.
+
+"Sure," Malone said. "Rome was always going to Hell in a handbasket,
+and finally it--" He paused. "Finally it did, I guess," he said.
+
+"Exactly," Burris said. "And so are we. Finally." He passed a hand
+over his forehead and stared past Malone at a spot on the wall. Malone
+turned and looked at the spot, but saw nothing of interest. "Malone,"
+Burris said, and the FBI Agent whirled around again.
+
+"Yes, Ch--Yes?" he said.
+
+"This time," Burris said, "it isn't the same old story at all. This
+time it's different."
+
+"Different?" Malone said.
+
+Burris nodded. "Look at it this way," he said. His eyes returned to
+the FBI Agent. "Suppose you're a congressman," he went on, "and you
+find evidence of inefficiency in the government."
+
+"All right," Malone said agreeably. He had the feeling that if he
+waited around a little while everything would make sense, and he was
+willing to wait. After all, he wasn't on assignment at the moment, and
+there was nothing pressing waiting for him. He was even between
+romances.
+
+If he waited long enough, he told himself, Andrew J. Burris might say
+something worth hearing. He looked attentive and eager. He considered
+leaning over the desk a little, to look even more eager, but decided
+against it; Burris might think he looked threatening. There was no
+telling.
+
+"You're a congressman," Burris said, "and the government is
+inefficient. You find evidence of it. What do you do?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Malone blinked and thought for a second. It didn't take any longer
+than that to come up with the old, old answer. "I start an
+investigation," he said. "I get a committee and I talk to a lot of
+newspaper editors and magazine editors and maybe I go on television
+and talk some more, and my committee has a lot of meetings--"
+
+"Exactly," Burris said.
+
+"And we talk a lot at the meetings," Malone went on, carried away,
+"and get a lot of publicity, and we subpoena famous people, just as
+famous as we can get, except governors or presidents, because you
+can't--they tried that back in the '50s, and it didn't work very
+well--and that gives us some more publicity, and then when we have all
+the publicity we can possibly get--"
+
+"You stop," Burris said hurriedly.
+
+"That's right," Malone said. "We stop. And that's what I'd do."
+
+"Of course, the problem of inefficiency is left exactly where it
+always was," Burris said. "Nothing's been done about it."
+
+"Naturally," Malone said. "But think of all the lovely publicity. And
+all the nice talk. And the subpoenas and committees and everything."
+
+"Sure," Burris said wearily. "It's happened a thousand times. But,
+Malone, that's the difference. It isn't happening this time."
+
+There was a short pause. "What do you mean?" Malone said at last.
+
+"This time," Burris said, in a tone that sounded almost awed, "they
+want to keep it a secret."
+
+"A secret?" Malone said, blinking. "But that's ... that's not the
+American way."
+
+Burris shrugged. "It's un-congressman-like, anyhow," he said. "But
+that's what they've done. Tiptoed over to me and whispered softly that
+the thing has to be investigated quietly. Naturally, they didn't give
+me any orders--but only because they know they can't make one stick.
+They suggested it pretty strongly."
+
+"Any reasons?" Malone said. The whole idea interested him strangely.
+It was odd--and he found himself almost liking odd cases, lately. That
+is, he amended hurriedly, if they didn't get _too_ odd.
+
+"Oh, they had reasons, all right," Burris said. "It took a little
+coaxing, but I managed to pry some loose. You see, every one of them
+found inefficiency in his own department. And every one knows that
+other men are investigating inefficiency."
+
+"Oh," Malone said.
+
+"That's right," Burris said. "Every one of them came to me to get me
+to prove that the goof-ups in his particular department weren't his
+fault. That covers them in case one of the others happens to light
+into the department."
+
+"Well, it must be _somebody's_ fault," Malone said.
+
+"It isn't theirs," Burris said wearily. "I ought to know. They told
+me. At great length, Malone."
+
+Malone felt a stab of honest pity. "How many so far?" he said.
+
+"Six," Burris said. "Four representatives, and two senators."
+
+"Only two?" Malone said.
+
+"Well," Burris said, "the Senate is so much smaller. And, besides, we
+may get more. As a matter of fact, Senator Lefferts is worth any six
+representatives all by himself."
+
+"He is?" Malone said, puzzled. Senator Lefferts was not one of his
+favorite people. Nor, as far as he knew, did the somewhat excitable
+senator hold any place of honor in the heart of Andrew J. Burris.
+
+"I mean his story," Burris said. "I've never heard anything like
+it--at least, not since the Bilbo days. And I've only heard about
+those," he added hurriedly.
+
+"What story?" Malone said. "He talked about inefficiency--"
+
+"Not exactly," Burris said carefully. "He said that somebody was out
+to get him--him, personally. He said somebody was trying to discredit
+him by sabotaging all his legislative plans."
+
+"Well," Malone said, feeling that some comment was called for, "three
+cheers."
+
+"That isn't the point," Burris snapped. "No matter how we felt about
+Senator Lefferts or his legislative plans, we're sworn to protect him.
+And he says 'they' are out to get him."
+
+"They?" Malone said.
+
+"You know," Burris said, shrugging. "The great 'they.' The invisible
+enemies all around, working against him."
+
+"Oh," Malone said. "Paranoid?" He had always thought Senator Lefferts
+was slightly on the batty side, and the idea of real paranoia didn't
+come as too much of a surprise. After all, when a man was batty to
+start out with ... and he even _looked_ like a vampire, Malone thought
+confusedly.
+
+"As far as paranoia is concerned," Burris said, "I checked with one of
+our own psych men, and he'll back it up. Lefferts has definite
+paranoid tendencies, he says."
+
+Malone said, "That's that."
+
+Burris shook his head. "It isn't that simple," he said. "You see,
+Malone, there's some evidence that somebody _is_ working against him."
+
+"The American public, with any luck at all," Malone said.
+
+"No," Burris said. "An enemy. Somebody sabotaging his plans. Really."
+
+Malone shook his head. "You're crazy," he said.
+
+Burris looked shocked. "Malone, I'm the Director of the FBI," he said.
+"And if you insist on being disrespectful--"
+
+"Sorry," Malone murmured. "But--"
+
+"I am perfectly sane," Burris said slowly. "It's Senator Lefferts
+who's crazy. The only trouble is, he has evidence to show he's not."
+
+Malone thought about odd cases, and suddenly wished he were somewhere
+else. Anywhere else. This one showed sudden signs of developing into
+something positively bizarre. "I see," he said, wondering if he did.
+
+"After all," Burris said, in a voice that attempted to sound
+reasonable, "a paranoid has just as much right to be persecuted as
+anybody else, doesn't he?"
+
+"Sure," Malone said. "Everybody has rights. But what do you want me to
+do about that?"
+
+"About their rights?" Burris said. "Nothing, Malone. Nothing."
+
+"I mean," Malone said patiently, "about whatever it is that's going
+on."
+
+Burris took a deep breath. His hands clasped behind his head, and he
+looked up at the ceiling. He seemed perfectly relaxed. That, Malone
+knew, was a bad sign. It meant that there was a dirty job coming, a
+job nobody wanted to do, and one Burris was determined to pass off on
+him. He sighed and tried to feel resigned.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Well," the FBI Director said, "the only actual trouble we can
+pinpoint is that there seem to be a great many errors occurring in the
+paperwork--more than usual."
+
+"People get tired," Malone said tentatively.
+
+"But computer-secretary calculating machines don't," Burris said. "And
+that's where the errors are--in the computer-secretaries down in the
+Senate Office Building. I think you'd better start out there."
+
+"Sure," Malone said sadly.
+
+"See if there's any mechanical or electrical defect in any of those
+computers," Burris said. "Talk to the computer technicians. Find out
+what's causing all these errors."
+
+"Yes, sir," Malone said. He was still trying to feel resigned, but he
+wasn't succeeding very well.
+
+"And if you don't find anything--" Burris began.
+
+"I'll come right back," Malone said instantly.
+
+"No," Burris said. "You keep on looking."
+
+"I do?"
+
+"You do," Burris said. "After all, there has to be _something_ wrong."
+
+"Sure," Malone said, "if you say so. But--"
+
+"There are the interview tapes," Burris said, "and the reports the
+congressmen brought in. You can go through those."
+
+Malone sighed. "I guess so," he said.
+
+"And there must be thousands of other things to do," Burris said.
+
+"Well--" Malone began cautiously.
+
+"You'll be able to think of them," Burris said heartily. "I know you
+will. I have confidence in you, Malone. Confidence."
+
+"Thanks," Malone said sadly.
+
+"You just keep me posted from time to time on what you're doing, and
+what ideas you get," Burris said. "I'm leaving the whole thing in your
+hands, Malone, and I'm sure you won't disappoint me."
+
+"I'll try," Malone said.
+
+"I know you will," Burris said warmly. "And no matter how long it
+takes--I know you'll succeed."
+
+"No matter how long it takes?" Malone said hesitantly.
+
+"That's right!" Burris said. "You can do it, Malone! You can do it."
+
+Malone nodded slowly. "I hope so," he said. "Well, I ... well, I'll
+start out right away, then."
+
+He turned. Before he could make another move Burris said: "Wait!"
+
+Malone turned again, hope in his eyes. "Yes, sir?" he said.
+
+"When you leave--" Burris began, and the hope disappeared "please do
+one little favor for me. Just one little favor, because I'm an old,
+tired man and I'm not used to things any more."
+
+"Sure," Malone said. "Anything, Chief."
+
+"Don't call me--"
+
+"Sorry," Malone said.
+
+Burris breathed heavily. "When you leave," he said, "please, please
+use the door."
+
+"But--"
+
+"Malone," Burris said, "I've tried. I've really tried. Believe me.
+I've tried to get used to the fact that you can teleport. But--"
+
+"It's useful," Malone said, "in my work."
+
+"I can see that," Burris said. "And I don't want you to ... well, to
+stop doing it. By no means. It's just that it sort of unnerves me, if
+you see what I mean. No matter how useful it is for the FBI to have an
+agent who can go instantaneously from one place to another, it
+unnerves me." He sighed. "I can't get used to seeing you disappear
+like an over-dried soap bubble, Malone. It does something to
+me--here." He placed a hand directly over his sternum and sighed
+again.
+
+"I can understand that," Malone said. "It unnerved me, too, the first
+time I saw it. I thought I was going crazy, when that kid--Mike
+Fueyo--winked out like a light. But then we got him, and some FBI
+agents besides me have learned the trick." He stopped there, wondering
+if he'd been tactful. After all, it took a latent ability to learn
+teleportation, and some people had it, while others didn't. Malone,
+along with a few other agents, did. Burris evidently didn't--so he
+couldn't teleport, no matter how hard he tried or how many lessons he
+took.
+
+"Well," Burris said, "I'm still unnerved. So ... please, Malone ...
+when you come in here, or go out, use the door. All right?"
+
+"Yes, sir," Malone said. He turned and went out. As he opened the
+door, he could almost hear Burris' sigh of relief. Then he banged it
+shut behind him and, feeling that he might as well continue with his
+spacebound existence, walked all the way to the elevator, and rode it
+downstairs to the FBI laboratories.
+
+The labs, highly efficient and divided into dozens of departments,
+covered several floors. Malone passed through the Fingerprint section,
+filled with technicians doing strange things to great charts and
+slides, and frowning over tiny pieces of material and photographs.
+Then came Forgery Detection, involving many more technicians, many
+more slides and charts and tiny pieces of things and photographs, and
+even a witness or two sitting on the white bench at one side and
+looking lost and somehow civilian. Identification Classified was next,
+a great barn of a room filled with index files. The real indexes were
+in the sub-basement; here, on microfilm, were only the basic division.
+A man was standing in front of one of the files, frowning at it.
+Malone went on by without stopping.
+
+Cosmetic Surgery Classification came next. Here there were more indexes,
+and there were also charts and slides. There was an FBI agent sitting on a
+bench looking bored while two female technicians--classified as O&U for
+Old and Ugly in Malone's mind--fluttered around him, deciding what
+disguises were possible, and which of those was indicated for the
+particular job on hand. Malone waved to the agent, whom he knew very
+slightly, and went on. He felt vaguely regretful that the FBI couldn't
+hire prettier girls for the Cosmetic Surgery Division, but the trouble was
+that pretty girls fell for the agents--and vice versa--and this led to an
+unfortunate tendency toward only handsome and virile-looking disguises.
+The O&U Division was unfortunate, he decided, but a necessity.
+
+Chemical Analysis (III) was next. The Chemical Analysis section was
+scattered over several floors, with the first stages up above.
+Division III, Malone remembered, was devoted to non-poisonous
+substances--like clay or sand found in boots or trouser cuffs, cigar
+ashes and such. They were placed on the same floor as Fingerprints to
+allow free and frequent passage between the sections on the problems
+of plastic prints--made in putty or like substances--and visible
+prints, made when the hand is covered with a visible substance like
+blood, ketchup or glue.
+
+Malone found what he was looking for at the very end of the floor. It
+was the Computer Section, a large room filled with humming, clacking
+and buzzing machines of an ancient vintage, muttering to themselves as
+they worked, and newer machines which were smaller and more silent.
+Lights were lighting and bells were ringing softly, relays were
+relaying and the whole room was a gigantic maze of calculating and
+control machines. What space wasn't filled by the machines themselves
+was filled by workbenches, all littered with an assortment of gears,
+tubes, spare relays, transistors, wires, rods, bolts, resistors and
+all the other paraphernalia used in building the machines and
+repairing them. Beyond the basic room were other, smaller rooms, each
+assigned to a particular kind of computer work.
+
+The narrow aisles were choked here and there with men who looked up as
+Malone passed by, but most of them gave him one quick glance and went
+back to work. A few didn't even do that, but went right on
+concentrating on their jobs. Malone headed for a man working all alone
+in front of a workbench, frowning down at a complicated-looking
+mechanism that seemed to have neither head nor tail, and prodding at
+it with a long, thin screwdriver. The man was thin, too, but not very
+long; he was a little under average height, and he had straight black
+hair, thick-lensed glasses and a studious expression, even when he was
+frowning. He looked as if the mechanism were a student who had cut too
+many classes, and he was being kindly but firm with it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Malone managed to get to the man's side, and coughed discreetly. There
+was no response.
+
+"Fred?" he said.
+
+The screwdriver waggled a little. Malone wasn't quite sure that the
+man was breathing.
+
+"Fred Mitchell," he said.
+
+Mitchell didn't look up. Another second passed.
+
+"Hey," Malone said. Then he closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
+"Fred," he said in a loud, reasonable-sounding voice, "the State
+Department's translator has started to talk pig-Latin."
+
+Mitchell straightened up as if somebody had jabbed him with a pin. The
+screwdriver waved wildly in the air for a second, and then pointed at
+Malone. "That's impossible," Mitchell said in a flat, precise voice.
+"Simply impossible. It doesn't have a pig-Latin circuit. It can't
+possibly--" He blinked and seemed to see Malone for the first time.
+"Oh," he said. "Hello, Malone. What can I do for you?"
+
+Malone smiled, feeling a little victorious at having got through the
+Mitchell armor, which was almost impregnable when there was a job in
+hand. "I've been standing here talking to you for some time."
+
+"Oh, have you?" Mitchell said. "I was busy." That, obviously,
+explained that. Malone shrugged.
+
+"I want you to help me check over some calculators, Fred," he said.
+"We've had some reports that some of the government machines are out
+of kilter, and I'd like you to go over them for me."
+
+"Out of kilter?" Fred Mitchell said. "No, you can forget about it.
+It's absolutely unnecessary to make a check--believe me. Absolutely.
+Forget it." He smiled suddenly. "I suppose it's some kind of a joke,
+isn't it?" he said, just a trifle uncertainly. Fred Mitchell's world,
+while pleasant, did not include much humor, Malone knew. "It's
+supposed to be funny," he said in the same flat, precise voice.
+
+"It isn't funny," Malone said.
+
+Fred sighed. "Then they're obviously lying," he said, "and that's all
+there is to it. Why bother me with it?"
+
+"Certainly," Fred said. He looked at the machinery with longing.
+
+Malone took a breath. "How do you know?" he said.
+
+Fred sighed. "It's perfectly obvious," he said in a patient tone.
+"Since the State Department translator has no pig-Latin circuit, it
+can't possibly be talking pig-Latin. I will admit that such a circuit
+would be relatively easy to build, though it would have no utility as
+far as I can see. Except, of course, for a joke." He paused. "Joke?"
+he said, in a slightly uneasy tone.
+
+"Sure," Malone said. "Joke."
+
+Mitchell looked relieved. "Very well, then," he began. "Since--"
+
+"Wait a minute," Malone said. "The pig-Latin is a joke. That's right.
+But I'm not talking about the pig-Latin."
+
+"You're not?" Mitchell asked, surprised.
+
+"No," Malone said.
+
+Mitchell frowned. "But you said--" he began.
+
+"A joke," Malone said. "You were perfectly right. The pig-Latin is a
+joke." He waited for Fred's expression to clear, and then added: "But
+what I want to talk to you about isn't."
+
+"It sounds very confused," Fred said after a pause. "Not at all the
+sort of thing that ... that usually goes on."
+
+"You have no idea," Malone said. "It's about the political machines,
+all right, but it isn't anything as simple as pig-Latin." He
+explained, taking his time over it.
+
+When he had finished, Fred was nodding his head slowly. "I see," he
+said. "I understand just what you want me to do."
+
+"Good," Malone said.
+
+"I'll take a team over to the Senate Office Building," Fred said, "and
+check the computer-secretaries there. That way, you see, I'll be able
+to do a full running check on them without taking any one machine out
+of operation for too long."
+
+"Sure," Malone said.
+
+"And it shouldn't take long," Fred went on, "to find out just what the
+trouble is." He looked very confident.
+
+"How long?" Malone asked.
+
+Fred shrugged. "Oh," he said, "five or six days."
+
+Malone repressed an impulse to scream. "Days?" he said. "I mean ...
+well, look, Fred, it's important. Very important. Can't you do the job
+any faster?"
+
+Fred gave a little sigh. "Checking and repairing all those machines,"
+he said, "is an extremely complex job. Sometimes, Malone, I don't
+think you realize quite how complex, and how delicate a job it is to
+deal with such a high-order machine. Why--"
+
+"Wait a minute," Malone said. "Check and repair them?"
+
+"Of course," Fred said.
+
+"But I don't want them repaired," Malone said. Seeing the look of
+horror on Fred's face, he added hastily: "I only want a report from
+you on what's wrong, whether they are actually making errors or not.
+And if they are making errors, just what's making them do it. And just
+what kind of errors. See?"
+
+Fred nodded very slowly. "But I can't just ... just leave them there,"
+he said piteously. "In ... pieces and everything. It isn't right,
+Malone. It just isn't right."
+
+"Well, then," Malone said with energy, "you go right ahead and repair
+them, if you want to. Fix 'em all up. But you can do that _after_ you
+make the report to me, can't you?"
+
+"I--" Fred hesitated. "I had planned to check and repair each machine
+on an individual basis--"
+
+"The Congress can allow for a short suspension," Malone said. "Anyhow,
+they can now--or as soon as I get the word to them. Suppose you check
+all the machines first, and then get around to the repair work."
+
+"It's not the best way," Fred demurred.
+
+Malone discovered that it was his turn to sigh. "Is it the fastest?"
+he said.
+
+Fred nodded.
+
+"Then it's the best," Malone said. "How long?"
+
+Fred rolled his eyes to the ceiling and calculated silently for a
+second. "Tomorrow morning," he announced, returning his gaze to
+Malone.
+
+"Fine," Malone said. "Fine."
+
+"But--"
+
+"Never mind the buts," Malone said hurriedly. "I'll count on hearing
+from you tomorrow morning."
+
+"Oh--" Fred said. "All right."
+
+"And if it looks like sabotage," Malone added, "if the errors aren't
+caused by normal wear and tear on the machines--you let me know right
+away. Phone me. Don't waste an instant."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"I'll ... I'll start right away," Fred said heavily. He looked sadly
+at the mechanism he had been working on, and put his screwdriver down
+next to it. It looked to Malone as if he were putting flowers on the
+grave of a dear departed. "I'll get a team together," Fred added. He
+gave the mechanism and screwdriver one last fond parting look.
+
+Malone looked after him for a second, thinking of nothing in
+particular, and then turned in the opposite direction and headed back
+toward the elevator. As he walked, he began to feel more and more
+pleased with himself. After all, he'd gotten the investigation
+started, hadn't he?
+
+And now all he had to do was go back to his office and read some
+reports and listen to some interview tapes, and then he could go home.
+
+The reports and the interview tapes didn't exactly sound like fun,
+Malone thought, but at the same time they seemed fairly innocent. He
+would work his way through them grimly, and maybe he would even
+indulge his most secret vice and smoke a cigar or two to make the work
+pass more pleasantly. Soon enough, he told himself, they would be
+finished with.
+
+Sometimes, though, he regretted the reputation he'd gotten. It had
+been bad enough in the old days--the pre-1971 days when Malone had
+thought he was just lucky. Burris had called him a Boy Wonder then,
+when he'd cracked three difficult cases in a row. Being just lucky had
+made it a little tough to live with the Boy Wonder label--after all,
+Malone thought, it wasn't actually as if he'd done anything.
+
+But since 1971 and the case of the Telepathic Spy, things had gotten
+worse. Much worse. Now Malone wasn't just lucky any more. Instead, he
+could teleport and he could even foretell the future a little, in a
+dim sort of way. He'd caught the Telepathic Spy that way, and when the
+case of the Teleporting Juvenile Delinquents had come up he'd been
+assigned to that one too, and he'd cracked it. Now Burris seemed to
+think of him as a kind of god, and gave him all the tough dirty jobs.
+
+And if he wasn't just lucky any more, Malone couldn't think of himself
+as a Fearless, Heroic FBI Agent, either. He just wasn't the type. He
+was--well, talented. That was the word, he told himself: talented. He
+had all these talents and they made him look like something
+spectacular to Burris and the other FBI men. But he wasn't, really. He
+hadn't done anything really tough to get his talents; they'd just
+happened to him.
+
+Nobody, though, seemed to believe that. He heaved a little sigh and
+stepped into the waiting elevator.
+
+There were, after all, he thought, compensations. He'd had some good
+times, and the talents did come in handy. And he did have his pick of
+the vacation schedule lately. And he'd met some lovely girls--
+
+And besides, he told himself savagely as the elevator shot upward, he
+wasn't going to do anything except return to his office and read some
+reports and listen to some tapes. And then he was going to go home and
+sleep all night, peacefully. And in the morning Mitchell was going to
+call him up and tell him that the computer-secretaries needed nothing
+more than a little repair. He'd say they were getting old, and he'd be
+a little pathetic about it; but it wouldn't be anything serious.
+Malone would send out orders to get the machines repaired, and that
+would be that. And then the next case would be something both normal
+and exciting, like a bank robbery or a kidnapping involving a gorgeous
+blonde who would be so grateful to Malone that--
+
+He had stepped out of the elevator and gone down the corridor without
+noticing it. He pushed at his own office door and walked into the
+outer room. The train of thought he had been following was very nice,
+and sounded very attractive indeed, he told himself.
+
+Unfortunately, he didn't believe it. His prescient ability,
+functioning with its usual efficient aplomb, told Malone that things
+would not be better, or simpler, in the morning. They would be worse,
+and more complicated.
+
+They would be quite a lot worse.
+
+And, as usual, that prescience was perfectly accurate.
+
+
+II
+
+The telephone, Malone realized belatedly, had had a particularly
+nasty-sounding ring. He might have known it would be bad news.
+
+As a matter of fact, he told himself sadly, he had known.
+
+"Nothing at all wrong?" he said into the mouthpiece. "Not with any of
+the computers?" He blinked. "Not even one of them?"
+
+"Not a thing," Mitchell said. "I'll be sending a report up to you in a
+little while. You read it; we put them through every test, and it's
+all detailed there."
+
+"I'm sure you were very thorough," Malone said helplessly.
+
+"Of course we were," Mitchell said. "Of course. And the machines
+passed every single test. Every one. Malone, it was beautiful."
+
+"Goody," Malone said at random. "But there's got to be something--"
+
+"There is, Malone," Fred said. "There is. I think there's definitely
+something odd going on. Something funny. I mean peculiar, not
+humorous."
+
+"I thought so," Malone put in.
+
+"Right," Fred said. "Malone, try and relax. This is a hard thing to
+say, and it must be even harder to hear. But--"
+
+"Tell me," Malone said. "Who's dead? Who's been killed?"
+
+"I know it's tough, Malone," Fred went on.
+
+"Is everybody dead?" Malone said. "It can't be just one person, not
+from that tone in your voice. Has somebody assassinated the entire
+Senate? Or the President and his Cabinet? Or--"
+
+"It's nothing like that, Malone," Fred said, in a tone that implied
+that such occurrences were really rather minor. "It's the machines."
+
+"The machines?"
+
+"That's right," Fred said grimly. "After we checked them over and
+found they were in good shape, I asked for samples of both the input
+and the output of each machine. I wanted to do a thorough job."
+
+"Congratulations," Malone said. "What happened?"
+
+Fred took a deep breath. "They don't agree," he said.
+
+"They don't?" Malone said. The phrase sounded as if it meant something
+momentous, but he couldn't quite figure out what. In a minute, he
+thought confusedly, it would come to him. But did he want it to?
+
+"They definitely do not agree," Fred was saying. "The correlation is
+erratic; it makes no statistical sense. Malone, there are two
+possibilities."
+
+"Tell me about them," Malone said. He was beginning to feel relieved.
+To Fred, the malfunction of a machine was more serious than the murder
+of the entire Congress. But Malone couldn't quite bring himself to
+feel that way about things.
+
+"First," Fred said in a tense tone, "it's possible that the
+technicians feeding information to the machines are making all kinds
+of mistakes."
+
+Malone nodded at the phone. "That sounds possible," he said. "Which
+ones?"
+
+"All of them," Fred said. "They're all making errors--and they're all
+making about the same number of errors. There don't seem to be any
+real peaks or valleys, Malone; everybody's doing it."
+
+Malone thought of the Varsity Drag and repressed the thought. "A bunch
+of fumblebums," he said. "All fumbling alike. It does sound unlikely,
+but I guess it's possible. We'll get after them right away, and--"
+
+"Wait," Fred said. "There is a second possibility."
+
+"Oh," Malone said.
+
+"Maybe they aren't mistakes," Fred said. "Maybe the technicians are
+deliberately feeding the machine with wrong answers."
+
+Malone hated to admit, even to himself, but that answer sounded a lot
+more probable. Machine technicians weren't exactly picked off the
+streets at random; they were highly trained for their work, and the
+idea of a whole crew of them starting to fumble at once, in a big way,
+was a little hard to swallow.
+
+The idea of all of them sabotaging the machines they worked on, Malone
+thought, was a tough one to take, too. But it had the advantage of
+making some sense. People, he told himself dully, will do nutty things
+deliberately. It's harder to think of them doing the same nutty things
+without knowing it.
+
+"Well," he said at last, "however it turns out, we'll get to the
+bottom of it. Frankly, I think it's being done on purpose."
+
+"So do I," Fred said. "And when you find out just who's making the
+technicians do such things--when you find out who gives them their
+orders--you let me know."
+
+"Let you know?" Malone said. "But--"
+
+"Any man who would give false data to a perfectly innocent computer,"
+Fred said savagely, "would ... would--" For a second he was apparently
+lost for comparisons. Then he finished: "Would kill his own mother."
+He paused a second and added, in an even more savage voice: "And then
+lie about it!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The image on the screen snapped off, and Malone sat back in his chair
+and sighed. He spent a few minutes regretting that he hadn't chosen,
+early in life, to be a missionary to the Fiji Islanders, or possibly
+simply a drunken bum without any trouble, and then the report Mitchell
+had mentioned arrived. Malone picked it up without much eagerness, and
+began going through it carefully.
+
+It was beautifully typed and arranged; somebody on Mitchell's team had
+obviously been up all night at the job. Malone admired the work,
+without being able to get enthusiastic about the contents. Like all
+technical reports, it tended to be boring and just a trifle obscure to
+someone who wasn't completely familiar with the field involved. Malone
+and cybernetics were not exactly bosom buddies, and by the time he
+finished reading through the report he was suffering from an extreme
+case of _ennui_.
+
+There were no new clues in the report, either; Mitchell's phone
+conversation had covered all of the main points. Malone put the sheaf
+of papers down on his desk and looked at them for a minute as if he
+expected an answer to leap out from the pile and greet him with a glad
+cry, but nothing happened. Unfortunately, he had to do some more work.
+
+The obvious next step was to start checking on the technicians who
+were working on the machines. Malone determined privately that he
+would give none of his reports to Fred Mitchell; he didn't like the
+idea of being responsible for murder, and that was the least Fred
+would do to someone who confused his precious calculators.
+
+He picked up the phone, punched for the Records Division, and waited
+until a bald, middle-aged face appeared. He asked the face to send up
+the dossiers of the technicians concerned to his office. The face
+nodded.
+
+"You want them right away?" it said in a mild, slightly scratchy
+voice.
+
+"Sooner than right away," Malone said.
+
+"They're coming up by messenger," the voice said.
+
+Malone nodded and broke the connection. The technicians had, of
+course, been investigated by the FBI before they'd been hired, but it
+wouldn't do any harm to check them out again. He felt grateful that he
+wouldn't have to do all that work himself; he would just go through
+the dossiers and assign field agents to the actual checking when he
+had a picture of what might need to be checked.
+
+He sighed again and leaned back in his chair. He put his feet up on
+the desk, remembered that he was entirely alone, and swung them down
+again. He fished in a private compartment in his top desk drawer, drew
+out a cigar and unwrapped it. Putting his feet back on the desk, he
+lit the cigar, drew in a cloud of smoke, and lapsed into deep thought.
+
+Cigar smoke billowed around him, making strange, fantastic shapes in
+the air of the office. Malone puffed away, frowning slightly and
+trying to force the puzzle he was working on to make some sense.
+
+It certainly looked as though something were going on, he thought.
+But, for the life of him, he couldn't figure out just what it was.
+After all, what could be anybody's purpose in goofing up a bunch of
+calculators the way they had? Of course, the whole thing could be a
+series of accidents, but the series was a pretty long one, and made
+Malone suspicious to start with. It was easier to assume that the
+goof-ups were being done deliberately.
+
+Unfortunately, they didn't make much sense as sabotage, either.
+
+Senator Deeds, for instance, had sent out a ten-thousand-copy form
+letter to his constituents, blasting an Administration power bill in
+extremely strong language, and asking for some comments on the
+Deeds-Hartshorn Air Ownership Bill, a pending piece of legislation
+that provided for private, personal ownership, based on land title, to
+the upper stratosphere--with a strong hint that rights of passage no
+longer applied without some recompense to the owner of the air.
+Naturally, Deeds had filed the original with a computer-secretary to
+turn out ten thousand duplicate copies, and the machine had done so,
+folding the copies, slipping them into addressed envelopes and sending
+them out under the senator's franking stamp.
+
+The addresses on the envelopes, however, had not been those of the
+senator's supporters. The letter had been sent to ten thousand
+stockholders in major airline companies, and the senator's head was
+still ringing from the force of the denunciatory letters, telegrams
+and telephone calls he'd been getting.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And then there was Representative Follansbee of South Dakota. A set of
+news releases on the proposed Follansbee Waterworks Bill contained the
+statement that the artificial lake which Follansbee proposed in the
+Black Hills country "be formed by controlled atomic power blasts, and
+filled with water obtained from collecting the tears of widows and
+orphans."
+
+Newsmen who saw this release immediately checked the bill. The wording
+was exactly the same. Follansbee claimed that the "widows and orphans"
+phrase had appeared in his speech on the bill, and not in the proposed
+bill itself. "It's completely absurd," he said, with commendable calm,
+"to consider this method of filling an artificial lake."
+Unfortunately, the absurdity was now contained in the bill, which
+would have to go back to committee for redefinition, and probably
+wouldn't come up again in the present session of Congress. Judging
+from the amount of laughter that had greeted the error when it had
+come to light, Malone privately doubted whether any amount of
+redefinition was going to save it from a landslide defeat.
+
+Representative Keller of Idaho had made a speech which contained so
+many errors in fact that newspaper editorials, and his enemies on the
+floor of Congress, cut him to pieces with ease and pleasure. Keller
+complained of his innocence and said he'd gotten his facts from a
+computer-secretary, but this didn't save him. His re-election was a
+matter for grave concern in his own party, and the opposition was,
+naturally, tickled. They would not, Malone thought, dare to be tickled
+pink.
+
+And these were not the only casualties. They were the most blatant
+foul-ups, but there were others, such as the mistake in numbering of a
+House Bill that resulted in a two-month delay during which the
+opposition to the bill raised enough votes to defeat it on the floor.
+Communications were diverted or lost or scrambled in small ways that
+made for confusion--including, Malone recalled the perfectly horrible
+mixup that resulted when a freshman senator, thinking he was talking
+to his girlfriend on a blanked-vision circuit, discovered he was
+talking to his wife.
+
+The flow of information was being blocked by bottlenecks that suddenly
+existed where there had never been bottlenecks before.
+
+And it wasn't only the computers, Malone knew. He remembered the
+reports the senators and representatives had made. Someone forgot to
+send an important message here, or sent one too soon over there. Both
+courses were equally disturbing, and both resulted in more snarl-ups.
+Reports that should have been sent in weeks before arrived too late;
+reports meant for the eyes of only one man were turned out in
+triplicate and passed all over the offices of Congress.
+
+Each snarl-up was a little one. But, together, they added up to
+inefficiency of a kind and extent that hadn't been seen, Malone told
+himself with some wonder, since the Harding administration fifty years
+before.
+
+And there didn't seem to be anyone to blame anything on.
+
+Malone thought hopefully of sabotage, infiltration and mass treason,
+but it didn't make him feel much better. He puffed out some more smoke
+and frowned at nothing.
+
+There was a knock at the door of his office.
+
+Speedily and guiltily, he swung his feet off the desk and snatched the
+cigar out of his mouth. He jammed it into a deep ashtray and put the
+ashtray back into his desk drawer. He locked the drawer, waved
+ineffectively at the clouds of smoke that surrounded him, and said in
+a resigned voice: "Come in."
+
+The door opened. A tall, solidly built man stood there, wearing a
+fringe of beard and a cheerful expression. The man had an enormous
+amount of muscle distributed more or less evenly over his chunky body,
+and a potbelly that looked as if he had swallowed a globe of the
+world. In addition, he was smoking a cigarette and letting out little
+puffs of smoke, rather like a toy locomotive.
+
+"Well, well," Malone said, brushing feebly at the smoke that still
+wreathed him faintly. "If it isn't Thomas Boyd, the FBI's answer to
+Nero Wolfe."
+
+"And if the physique holds true, you're Sherlock Holmes, I suppose,"
+Boyd said.
+
+Malone shook his head, thinking sadly of his father and the cigar.
+"Not exactly," he said. "Not ex--" And then it came to him. It wasn't
+that he was ashamed of smoking cigars like his father, exactly--but
+cigars just weren't right for a fearless, dedicated FBI agent. And he
+had just thought of a way to keep Boyd from knowing what he'd been
+doing. "That's a hell of a cigarette you're smoking, by the way," he
+said.
+
+Boyd looked at it. "It is?" he said.
+
+"Sure is," Malone said, hoping he sounded sufficiently innocent.
+"Smells like a cigar or something."
+
+Boyd sniffed the air for a second, his face wrinkled. Then he looked
+down at his cigarette again. "You're right, Ken. It _does_ smell like
+a cigar." He came over to Malone's desk, looked around for an ashtray
+and didn't find one, and finally went to the window and tossed the
+cigarette out into the Washington breeze. "How are things, anyhow,
+Ken?" he said.
+
+"Things are confused," Malone said. "Aren't they always?"
+
+Boyd came back to the desk and sat down in a chair at one side of it.
+He put his elbow on the desk. "Sure they are," he said. "I'm confused
+myself, as a matter of fact. Only I think I know where I can get some
+help."
+
+"Really?" Malone said.
+
+Boyd nodded. "Burris told me I might be able to get some information
+from a certain famous and highly respected person," he said.
+
+"Well, well," Malone said. "Who?"
+
+"You," Boyd said.
+
+"Oh," Malone said, trying to look disappointed, flattered and modest
+all at the same time. "Well," he went on after a second, "anything I
+can do--"
+
+"Burris thought you might have some answers," Boyd said.
+
+"Burris is getting optimistic in his old age," Malone said. "I don't
+even have many questions."
+
+Boyd nodded. "Well," he said, "you know this California thing?"
+
+"Sure I do," Malone said. "You're looking into the resignation out
+there, aren't you?"
+
+"Senator Burley," Boyd said. "That's right. But Senator Burley's
+resignation isn't all of it, by any means."
+
+"It isn't?" Malone said, trying to sound interested.
+
+"Not at all," Boyd said. "It goes a lot deeper than it looks on the
+surface. In the past year, Ken, five senators have announced their
+resignations from the Senate of the United States. It isn't exactly a
+record--"
+
+"It sounds like a record," Malone said.
+
+"Well," Boyd said, "there was 1860 and the Civil War, when a whole lot
+of senators and representatives resigned all at once."
+
+"Oh," Malone said. "But there isn't any Civil War going on now. At
+least," he added, "I haven't heard of any."
+
+"That's what makes it so funny," Boyd said. "Of course, Senator Burley
+said it was ill health, and so did two others, while Senator Davidson
+said it was old age."
+
+"Well," Malone said, "people do get old. And sick."
+
+"Sure," Boyd said. "The only trouble is--" He paused. "Ken," he said,
+"do you mind if I smoke? I mean, do you mind the smell of cigars?"
+
+"Mind?" Malone said. "Not at all. Not at all." He blinked. "Besides,"
+he added, "maybe this one won't smell like a cigar."
+
+"Well, the last one did," Boyd said. He took a cigarette out of a pack
+in his pocket, and lit it. He sniffed. "You know," he said, "You're
+right. This one doesn't."
+
+"I told you," Malone said. "Must have been a bad cigarette. Spoiled or
+something."
+
+"I guess so," Boyd said vaguely. "But about these retirements--the FBI
+wanted me to look into it because of Burley's being mixed up with the
+space program scandal last year. Remember?
+
+"Vaguely," Malone said. "I was busy last year."
+
+"Sure you were," Boyd said. "We were both busy getting famous and
+well-known."
+
+Malone grinned. "Go on with the story," he said.
+
+Boyd puffed at his cigarette. "Anyhow, we couldn't find anything
+really wrong," he said. "Three senators retiring because of ill
+health, one because of old age. And Farnsworth, the youngest. He had a
+nervous breakdown."
+
+"I didn't hear about it," Malone said.
+
+Boyd shrugged. "We hushed it up," he said. "But Farnsworth's got
+delusions of persecution. He apparently thinks somebody's out to get
+him. As a matter of fact, he thinks _everybody's_ out to get him."
+
+"Now that," Malone said, "sounds familiar."
+
+Boyd leaned back a little more in his chair. "Here's the funny thing,
+though," he said. "The others all act as if they're suspicious of
+everybody who talks to them. Not anything obvious, you understand.
+Just--worried. Apprehensive. Always looking at you out of the corners
+of their eyes. That kind of thing."
+
+Malone thought of Senator Lefferts, who was also suffering from
+delusions of persecution--delusions that had real evidence to back
+them up. "It does sound funny," he said cautiously.
+
+"Well, I reported everything to Burris," Boyd went on. "And he said
+you were working on something similar, and we might as well pool our
+resources."
+
+"Here we go again," Malone said. He took a deep breath, filling his
+nostrils with what remained of the cigar odor in the room, and felt
+more peaceful. Quickly, he told Boyd about what had been happening in
+Congress. "It seems pretty obvious," he finished, "that there is some
+kind of a tie-up between the two cases."
+
+"Maybe it's obvious," Boyd said, "But it is just a little bit odd. Fun
+and games. You know, Ken, Burris was right."
+
+"How?" Malone said.
+
+"He said everything was all mixed up," Boyd went on. "He told me the
+country was going to Rome in a handbasket, or something like that."
+
+Wondering vaguely if Burris had really been predicting mass religious
+conversions, Malone nodded silently.
+
+"And he's right," Boyd said. "Look at the newspapers. Everything's
+screwy lately."
+
+"Everything always is screwy," Malone said.
+
+"Not like now," Boyd said. "So many big-shot gangsters have been
+killed lately we might as well bring back Prohibition. And the labor
+unions are so busy with internal battles that they haven't had time to
+go on strike for over a year."
+
+"Is that bad?" Malone said.
+
+Boyd shrugged. "God knows," he said. "But it's sure confusing as all
+hell."
+
+"And now," Malone said, "with all that going on--"
+
+"The Congress of the United States decides to go off its collective
+rocker," Boyd finished. "Exactly." He stared down at his cigarette for
+a minute with a morose and pensive expression on his face. He looked,
+Malone thought, like Henry VIII trying to decide what to do about all
+these here wives.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Then he looked up at Malone. "Ken," he said in a strained voice,
+"there seem to be a lot of nutty cases lately."
+
+Malone considered. "No," he said at last. "It's just that when a nutty
+one comes along, we get it."
+
+"That's what I mean," Boyd said. "I wonder why that is."
+
+Malone shrugged. "It takes a thief to catch a thief," he said.
+
+"But these aren't thieves," Boyd said. "I mean--they're just nutty."
+He paused. "Oh," he said.
+
+"And, two thieves are better than one," Malone said.
+
+"Anyhow," Boyd said with a small, gusty sigh, "it's company."
+
+"Sure," Malone said.
+
+Boyd looked for an ashtray, failed again to find one, and walked over
+to flip a second cigarette out onto Washington. He came back to his
+chair, sat down, and said: "What's our next step, Ken?"
+
+Malone considered carefully. "First," he said finally, "we'll start
+assuming something. We'll start assuming that there is some kind of
+organization behind all this--behind all the senators' resignations
+and everything like that."
+
+"It sounds like a big assumption," Boyd said.
+
+Malone shook his head. "It isn't really," he said. "After all, we
+can't figure it's the work of one person: it's too widespread for
+that. And it's silly to assume that everything's accidental."
+
+"All right," Boyd said equably. "It's an organization."
+
+"Trying to subvert the United States," Malone went on. "Reducing
+everything to chaos. And that brings in everything else, Tom. That
+brings in the unions and the gang wars and everything."
+
+Boyd blinked. "How?" he said.
+
+"Obvious," Malone said. "Strife brought on by internal
+confusion--that's what's going on all over. It's the same pattern. And
+if we assume an organization trying to jam up the United States, it
+even makes sense." He leaned back and beamed.
+
+"Sure it makes sense," Boyd said. "But who's the organization?"
+
+Malone shrugged.
+
+"If I were doing the picking," Boyd said, "I'd pick the Russians. Or
+the Chinese. Or both. Probably both."
+
+"It's a possibility," Malone said. "Anyhow, if it's sabotage, who else
+would be interested in sabotaging the United States? There's some
+Russian or Chinese organization fouling up Congress, and the unions,
+and the gangs. Come to think of it, why the gangs? It seems to me that
+if you left the professional gangsters strong, it would do even more
+to foul things up."
+
+"Who knows?" Boyd said. "Maybe they're trying to get rid of American
+gangsters so they can import some of their own."
+
+"That doesn't make any sense," Malone said, "but I'll think about it.
+In the meantime, we have one more interesting question."
+
+"We do?" Boyd said.
+
+"Sure we do," Malone said. "The question is: How?"
+
+Boyd said: "Hm-m-m." Then there was silence for a little while.
+
+"How are the saboteurs doing all this?" Malone said. "It just doesn't
+seem very probable that _all_ the technicians in the Senate Office
+Building, for instance, are spies. It makes even less sense that the
+labor unions are composed mostly of spies. Or, for that matter, the
+Mafia and the organizations like it. What would spies be doing in the
+Mafia?"
+
+"Learning Italian," Boyd said instantly.
+
+"Don't be silly," Malone said. "If there were that many spies in this
+country, the Russians wouldn't have to fight at all. They could _vote_
+the Communists into power--and by a nice big landslide, too."
+
+"Wait a minute," Boyd said. "If there aren't so many spies, then how
+is all this getting done?"
+
+Malone beamed. "That's the question," he said. "And I think I have the
+answer."
+
+"You do?" Boyd said. After a second he said: "Oh, no."
+
+"Suppose you tell me," Malone said.
+
+Boyd opened his mouth. Nothing emerged. He shut it. A second passed
+and he opened it again. "Magic?" he said weakly.
+
+"Not exactly," Malone said cheerfully. "But you're getting warm."
+
+Boyd shut his eyes. "I'm not going to stand for it," he announced.
+"I'm not going to take any more."
+
+"Any more what?" Malone said. "Tell me what you have in mind."
+
+"I won't even consider it," Boyd said. "It haunts me. It gets into my
+dreams. Now, look, Ken: I can't even see a pitchfork any more without
+thinking of Greek letters."
+
+Malone took a breath. "Which Greek letter?" he said.
+
+"You know very well," Boyd said. "What a pitchfork looks like. _Psi_.
+And I'm not even going to think about it."
+
+"Well," Malone said equably, "you won't have to. If you'd rather start
+with the Russian spy end of things, you can do that."
+
+"What I'd rather do," Boyd said, "is resign."
+
+"Next year," Malone said instantly. "For now, you can wait around
+until the dossiers come up--they're for the Senate Office Building
+technicians, and they're on the way. You can go over them, and start
+checking on any known Russian agents in the country for contacts. You
+can also start checking on the dossiers, and in general for any
+hanky-panky."
+
+Boyd blinked. "Hanky-panky?" he said.
+
+"It's a perfectly good word," Malone said, offended. "Or two words.
+Anyhow, you can start on that end, and not worry about anything else."
+
+"It's going to haunt me," Boyd said.
+
+"Well," Malone said, "eat lots of ectoplasm and get enough sleep, and
+everything will be fine. After all, I'm going to have to do the real
+end of the work--the psionics end. I may be wrong, but--"
+
+He was interrupted by the phone. He flicked the switch and Andrew J.
+Burris' face appeared on the screen.
+
+"Malone," Burris said instantly, "I just got a complaint from the
+State Department that ties in with your work. Their translator has
+been acting up."
+
+Malone couldn't say anything for a minute.
+
+"Malone," Burris went on. "I said--"
+
+"I heard you," Malone said. "And it doesn't have one."
+
+"It doesn't have one what?" Burris said.
+
+"A pig-Latin circuit," Malone said. "What else?"
+
+Burris' voice was very calm. "Malone," he said, "what does pig-Latin
+have to do with anything?"
+
+"You said--"
+
+"I said one of the State Department translators was acting up," Burris
+said. "If you want details--"
+
+"I don't think I can stand them," Malone said.
+
+"Some of the Russian and Chinese releases have come through with the
+meaning slightly altered," Burris went on doggedly. "And I want you to
+check on it right away. I--"
+
+"Thank God," Malone said.
+
+Burris blinked. "What?"
+
+"Never mind," Malone said. "Never mind. I'm glad you told me, Chief.
+I'll get to work on it right away, and--"
+
+"You do that, Malone," Burris said. "And stop calling me Chief! Do I
+look like an Indian? Do I have feathers in my hair?"
+
+"Anything," Malone said grandly, "is possible." He broke the
+connection in a hurry.
+
+
+III
+
+The summer sun beat down on the white city of Washington, D. C. as if
+it had mistaken its instructions slightly, and was convinced that the
+city had been put down somewhere in the Sahara. The sun seemed
+confused, Malone thought. If this were the Sahara, obviously there was
+no reason whatever for the Potomac to be running through it. The sun
+was doing its best to correct this small error, however, by exerting
+even more heat in a valiant attempt to dry up the river.
+
+Its attempt was succeeding, at least partially. The Potomac was still
+there, but quite a lot of it was not in the river bed any more.
+Instead, it had gone into the air, which was so humid by now that
+Malone was willing to swear that it was splashing into his lungs at
+every inhalation. Resisting an impulse to try the breast-stroke, he
+stood in the full glare of the straining sun, just outside the Senate
+Office Building. He looked across at the Capitol, squinting his eyes
+manfully against the glare of its dome in the brightness.
+
+The Capitol was, at any rate, some relief from the sight of Thomas
+Boyd and a group of agents busily grilling two technicians. That was
+going on in the Senate Office Building, and Malone had come over to
+watch the proceedings. Everything had been set up in what Malone
+considered the most complicated fashion possible. A big room had been
+turned into a projection chamber, and films were being run off over
+and over. The films, taken by hidden cameras watching the
+computer-secretaries, had caught two technicians red-handed punching
+errors into the machines. Boyd had leaped on this evidence, and he and
+his crew were showing the movies to the technicians and questioning
+them under bright lights in an effort to break down their resistance.
+
+But it didn't look as though they were going to have any more success
+than the sun was having, turning Washington into the Sahara. After
+all, Malone told himself, wiping his streaming brow, there were no
+Pyramids in Washington. He tried to discover whether that made any
+sense, but it was too much work. He went back to thinking about Boyd.
+
+The technicians were sticking to their original stories, that the
+mistakes had been honest ones. It sounded like a sensible idea to
+Malone; after all, people did make mistakes. And the FBI didn't have a
+single shred of evidence to prove that the technicians were engaged in
+deliberate sabotage. But Boyd wasn't giving up. Over and over he got
+the technicians to repeat their stories, looking for discrepancies or
+slips. Over and over he ran off the films of their mistakes, looking
+for some clue, some shred of evidence.
+
+Even the sight of the Capitol, Malone told himself sadly, was better
+than any more of Boyd's massive investigation techniques.
+
+He had come out to do some thinking. He believed, in spite of a good
+deal of evidence to the contrary, that his best ideas came to him
+while walking. At any rate, it was a way of getting away from four
+walls and from the prying eyes and anxious looks of superiors. He
+sighed gently, crammed his hat onto his head and started out.
+
+Only a maniac, he reflected, would wear a hat on a day like the one he
+was swimming through. But the people who passed him as he trudged
+onward to no particular destination didn't seem to notice; they gave
+him a fairly wide berth, and seemed very polite, but that wasn't
+because they thought he was nuts, Malone knew. It was because they
+knew he was an FBI man.
+
+That was the result of an FBI regulation. All agents had to wear hats.
+Malone wasn't sure why, and his thinking on the matter had only
+dredged up the idea that you had to have a hat in case somebody asked
+you to keep something under it. But the FBI was firm about its
+rulings. No matter what the weather, an agent wore a hat. Malone
+thought bitterly that he might just as well wear a red, white and blue
+luminous sign that said _FBI_ in great winking letters, and maybe a
+hooting siren, too. Still, the Federal Bureau of Investigation was not
+supposed to be a secret organization--no matter what occasional
+critics might say. And the hats, at least as long as the weather
+remained broiling, were enough proof of that for anybody.
+
+Malone could feel water collecting under his hat and soaking his head.
+He removed the hat quickly, wiped his head with a handkerchief and
+replaced the hat, feeling as if he had become incognito for a few
+seconds. The hat was back on now, feeling official but terrible, and
+about the same was true of the fully-loaded Smith & Wesson .44 Magnum
+revolver which hung in his shoulder holster. The harness chafed at his
+shoulder and chest and the weight of the gun itself was an added and
+unwelcome burden.
+
+But even without the gun and the hat, Malone did not feel exactly
+chipper. His shirt and undershirt were no longer two garments, but
+one, welded together by seamless sweat and plastered heavily and not
+too skillfully to his skin. His trouser legs clung damply to calves
+and thighs, rubbing as he walked, and at the knees each trouser leg
+attached and detached itself with the unpleasant regularity of a wet
+bastinado. Inside Malone's shoes, his socks were completely awash, and
+he seemed to squish as he walked. It was hard to tell, but there
+seemed to be a small fish in his left shoe. It might, he told himself,
+be no more than a pebble or a wrinkle in his sock. But he was willing
+to swear that it was swimming upstream.
+
+And the forecast, he told himself bitterly, was for continued warm.
+
+He forced himself to take his mind off his own troubles and get back
+to the troubles of the FBI in general, such as the problem at hand. It
+was an effort, but he frowned and kept walking, and within a block he
+was concentrating again on the _psi_ powers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Psi_, he told himself, was behind the whole mess. In spite of Boyd's
+horrified refusal to believe such a thing, Malone was sure of it.
+Three years ago, of course, he wouldn't have considered the notion
+either. But since then a great many things had happened, and his
+horizons had widened. After all, capturing a double handful of totally
+insane, if perfectly genuine telepaths, from asylums all over the
+country, was enough by itself to widen quite a few stunned horizons.
+And then, later, there had been the gang of juvenile delinquents. They
+had been perfectly normal juvenile delinquents, stealing cars and
+bopping a stray policeman or two. It just happened, though, that they
+had solved the secret of instantaneous teleportation, too. This made
+them just a trifle unusual.
+
+In capturing them, Malone, too, had learned the teleportation secret.
+Unlike Boyd, he thought, or Burris, the idea of psionic power didn't
+bother him much. After all, the psionic spectrum--if it was a spectrum
+at all--was just as much a natural phenomenon as gravity, or
+magnetism.
+
+It was just a little hard for some people to get used to.
+
+And, of course, he didn't fully understand _how_ it worked, or _why_.
+This put him in the position, he told himself, of an Australian
+aborigine. He tried to imagine an Australian aborigine in a hat on a
+hot day, decided the aborigine would have too much sense, and got back
+off the subject again.
+
+However, he thought grimly, there was this Australian aborigine. And
+he had a magnifying glass, which he'd picked up from the wreck of some
+ship. Using that--assuming that experience, or a friendly missionary,
+taught him how--he could manage to light a fire, using the sun's
+thermonuclear processes to do the job. Malone doubted that the
+aborigine knew anything about thermonuclear processes, but he could
+start a fire with them.
+
+As a matter of fact, he told himself, the aborigine didn't understand
+oxidation, either. But he could use that fire, when he got it going.
+In spite of his lack of knowledge, the aborigine could use that nice,
+hot, burning fire ...
+
+Hurriedly, Malone pried his thoughts away from aborigines and heat,
+and tried to focus his mind elsewhere. He didn't understand psionic
+processes, he thought; but then, nobody did, really, as far as he
+knew. But he could use them.
+
+And, obviously, somebody else could use them, too.
+
+Only what kind of force was being used? What kind of psionic force
+would it take to make so many people in the United States goof up the
+way they were doing?
+
+That, Malone told himself, was a good question, a basic and an
+important question. He was proud of himself for thinking of it.
+
+Unfortunately, he didn't have the answer.
+
+But he thought he knew a way of getting one.
+
+It was perfectly true that nobody knew much about how psionics worked.
+For that matter, nobody knew very much about how gravity worked. But
+there was still some information--and, in the case of psionics, Malone
+knew where it was to be found.
+
+It was to be found in Yucca Flats, Nevada.
+
+It was, of course, true that Nevada would probably be even hotter than
+Washington, D. C. But there was no help for that, Malone told himself
+sadly; and, besides, the cold chill of the expert himself would
+probably cool things off quite rapidly. Malone thought of Dr. Thomas
+O'Connor, the Westinghouse psionics expert and frowned. O'Connor was
+not exactly what might be called a friendly man.
+
+But he did know more about psionics than anyone else Malone could
+think of. And his help had been invaluable in solving the two previous
+psionic cases Malone had worked on.
+
+For a second he thought of calling O'Connor, but he brushed that
+thought aside bravely. In spite of the heat of Yucca Flats, he would
+have to talk to the man personally. He thought again of O'Connor's
+congealed personality, and wondered if it would really be effective in
+combating the heat. If it were, he told himself, he would take the man
+right back to Washington with him, and plug him into the
+air-conditioning lines.
+
+He sighed deeply, thought about a cigar and decided regretfully
+against it, here on the public street where he would be visible to
+anyone. Instead, he looked around him, discovered that he was only a
+block from a large, neon-lit drugstore and headed for it. Less than a
+minute later he was in a phone booth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The operators throughout the country seemed to suffer from heat
+prostration, and Malone was hardly inclined to blame them. But, all
+the same, it took several minutes for him to get through to Dr.
+O'Connor's office, and a minute or so more before he could convince a
+security-addled secretary that, after all, he would hardly blow
+O'Connor to bits over the long-distance phone.
+
+Finally the secretary, with a sigh of reluctance, said she would see
+if Dr. O'Connor were available. Malone waited in the phone booth,
+opening the door every few seconds to breathe. The booth was
+air-conditioned, but remained for some mystical reason an even ten
+degrees above the boiling point of Malone's temper.
+
+Finally Dr. O'Connor's lean, pallid face appeared on the screen. He
+had not changed since Malone had last seen him. He still looked, and
+acted, like one of Malone's more disliked law professors.
+
+"Ah," the scientist said in a cold, precise voice. "Mr. Malone. I am
+sorry for our precautions, but you understand that security must be
+served."
+
+"Sure," Malone said.
+
+"Being an FBI man, of course you would," Dr. O'Connor went on, his
+face changing slightly and his voice warming almost to the boiling
+point of nitrogen. It was obvious that the phrase was Dr. O'Connor's
+idea of a little joke, and Malone smiled politely and nodded. The
+scientist seemed to feel some friendliness toward Malone, though it
+was hard to tell for sure. But Malone had brought him some fine
+specimens to work with--telepaths and teleports, though human, being
+no more than specimens to such a very precise scientific mind--and he
+seemed grateful for Malone's diligence and effort in finding such
+fascinating objects of study.
+
+That Malone certainly hadn't started out to find them made, it
+appeared, very little difference.
+
+"Well, then," O'Connor said, returning to his normal, serious tone,
+"what can I do for you, Mr. Malone?"
+
+"If you have the time, doctor," Malone said respectfully, "I'd like to
+talk to you for a few minutes." He had the absurd feeling that
+O'Connor was going to tell him to stop by after class, but the
+scientist only nodded.
+
+"Your call is timed very well," he said. "As it happens, Mr. Malone, I
+do have a few seconds to spare just now."
+
+"Fine," Malone said.
+
+"I should be glad to talk with you," O'Connor said, without looking
+any more glad than ever.
+
+"I'll be right there," Malone said. O'Connor nodded again, and blanked
+out. Malone switched off and took a deep, superheated breath of phone
+booth air. For a second he considered starting his trip from outside
+the phone booth, but that was dangerous--if not to Malone, then to
+innocent spectators. Psionics was by no means a household word, and
+the sight of Malone leaving for Nevada might send several citizens
+straight to the wagon. Which was not a place, he thought judiciously,
+for anybody to be on such a hot day.
+
+He closed his eyes for a fraction of a second. In that time he
+reconstructed from memory a detailed, three-dimensional, full-color
+image of Dr. O'Connor's office in his mind. It was perfect in detail;
+he checked it over mentally and then, by a special effort of will, he
+gave himself the psychic push that made the transition possible.
+
+When he opened his eyes, he was in O'Connor's office, standing in
+front of the scientist's wide desk. He hoped nobody had been looking
+into the phone booth at the instant he had disappeared; but he was
+reasonably sure he'd been unobserved. People didn't go around peering
+into phone booths, after all, and he had seen no one.
+
+O'Connor looked up without surprise. "Ah," he said. "Sit down, Mr.
+Malone." Malone looked around for the chair, which was an
+uncomfortably straight-backed affair, and sat down in it gingerly.
+Remembering past visits to O'Connor, he was grateful for even the
+small amount of relaxation the hard wood afforded him. O'Connor had
+only recently unbent to the point of supplying a spare chair in his
+office for visitors, and, apparently, especially for Malone. Perhaps,
+Malone thought, it was more gratitude for the lovely specimens.
+
+Malone still felt uncomfortable, but tried bravely not to show it. He
+felt slightly guilty, too, as he always did when he popped into
+O'Connor's office without bothering to stay spacebound. By law, after
+all, he knew he should check in and out at the main gate of the huge,
+ultra-top-secret government reservation whenever he visited Yucca
+Flats. But that meant wasting a lot of time and going through a lot of
+trouble. Malone had rationalized it out for himself that way, and had
+got just far enough to do things the quick and easy way, and not quite
+far enough to feel undisturbed about it. After all, he told himself
+grimly, anything that saved time and trouble increased the efficiency
+of the FBI, so it was all to the good.
+
+He swallowed hard. "Dr. O'Connor--" he began.
+
+O'Connor looked up again. "Yes?" he said. He'd had plenty of practice
+in watching people appear and disappear, between Malone and the
+specimens Malone had brought him; he was beyond surprise or shock by
+now.
+
+"I came here to talk to you," Malone began again.
+
+O'Connor nodded, a trifle impatiently. "Yes," he said. "I know that."
+
+"Well--" Malone thought fast. Presenting the case to O'Connor was
+impossible; it was too complicated, and it might violate governmental
+secrecy somewhere along the line. He decided to wrap it up in a
+hypothetical situation. "Doctor," he said, "I know that all the
+various manifestations of the _psi_ powers were investigated and named
+long before responsible scientists became interested in the subject."
+
+"That," O'Connor said with some reluctance, "is true." He looked sad,
+as if he wished they'd waited on naming some of the psionic
+manifestations until he'd been born and started investigating them.
+Malone tried to imagine a person doing something called O'Connorizing,
+and decided he was grateful for history.
+
+"Well, then--" he said.
+
+"At least," O'Connor cut in, "it is true in a rather vague and general
+way. You see, Mr. Malone, any precise description of a psionic
+manifestation must wait until a metalanguage has grown up to encompass
+it; that is, until understanding and knowledge have reached the point
+where careful and accurate description can take place."
+
+"Oh," Malone said helplessly. "Sure." He wondered if what O'Connor had
+said meant anything, and decided that it probably did, but he didn't
+want to know about it.
+
+"While we have not yet reached that point," O'Connor said, "we are
+approaching it in our experiments. I am hopeful that, in the near
+future--"
+
+"Well," Malone cut in desperately, "sure. Of course. Naturally."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dr. O'Connor looked miffed. The temperature of the room seemed to
+drop several degrees, and Malone swallowed hard and tried to look
+ingratiating and helpful, like a student with nothing but A's on his
+record.
+
+Before O'Connor could pick up the thread of his sentence, Malone went
+on: "What I mean is something like this. Picking up the mental
+activity of another person is called telepathy. Floating in the air is
+called levitation. Moving objects around is psychokinesis. Going from
+one place to another instantaneously is teleportation. And so on."
+
+"The language you use," O'Connor said, still miffed, "is extremely
+loose. I might go so far as to say that the statements you have made
+are, essentially, meaningless as a result of their lack of rigor."
+
+Malone took a deep breath. "Dr. O'Connor," he said, "you know what I
+mean, don't you?"
+
+"I believe so," O'Connor said, with the air of a king granting a
+pardon to a particularly repulsive-looking subject in the lowest
+income brackets.
+
+"Well, then," Malone said. "Yes or no?"
+
+O'Connor frowned. "Yes or no what?" he said.
+
+"I" Malone blinked. "I meant, the things have names," he said at last.
+"All the various psionic manifestations have names."
+
+"Ah," O'Connor said. "Well. I should say." He put his fingertips
+together and stared at a point on the white ceiling for a second.
+"Yes," he said at last.
+
+Malone breathed a sigh of relief. "Good," he said. "That's what I
+wanted to know." He leaned forward. "And if they all do have names,"
+he went on, "what is it called, when a large group of people are
+forced to act in a certain manner?"
+
+O'Connor shrugged. "Forced?" he said.
+
+"Forced by mental power," Malone said.
+
+There was a second of silence.
+
+"At first," O'Connor said, "I might think of various examples: the
+actions of a mob, for example, or the demonstrations of the Indian
+Rope Trick, or perhaps the sale of a useless product through
+television or through other advertising." Again his face moved, ever
+so slightly, in what he obviously believed to be a smile. "The usual
+name for such a phenomenon is 'mass hypnotism,' Mr. Malone," he said.
+"But that is not, strictly speaking, a _psi_ phenomenon at all.
+Studies in that area belong to the field of mob psychology; they are
+not properly in my scope." He looked vastly superior to anything and
+everything that was outside his scope. Malone concentrated on looking
+receptive and understanding.
+
+"Yes?" he said.
+
+O'Connor gave him a look that made Malone feel he'd been caught
+cribbing during an exam, but the scientist said nothing to back up the
+look. Instead, he went on: "I will grant that there may be an
+amplification of the telepathic faculty in the normal individual in
+such cases."
+
+"Good," Malone said doubtfully.
+
+"Such an amplification," O'Connor went on, as if he hadn't heard,
+"would account for the apparent ... ah ... mental linkage that makes a
+mob appear to act as a single organism during certain periods of ...
+ah ... stress." He looked judicious for a second, and then nodded.
+"However," he said, "other than that, I would doubt that there is any
+psionic force involved."
+
+Malone spent a second or two digesting O'Connor's reply. "Well," he
+said at last, "I'm not sure that's what I meant. I mean, I'm not sure
+I meant to ask that question." He took a breath and decided to start
+all over. "It's not like a mob," he said, "with everybody all doing
+the same thing at the same time. It's more like a group of men, all
+separated, without any apparent connections between any of the men.
+And they're all working toward a common goal. All doing different
+things, but all with the same objective. See?"
+
+"Of course I do," O'Connor said flatly. "But what you're suggesting--"
+He looked straight at Malone. "Have you had any experience of this ...
+phenomenon?"
+
+"Experience?" Malone said.
+
+"I believe you have had," O'Connor said. "Such a concept could not
+have come to you in a theoretical manner. You must be involved with an
+actual situation very much like the one you describe."
+
+Malone swallowed. "Me?" he said.
+
+"Mr. Malone," O'Connor said. "May I remind you that this is Yucca
+Flats? That the security checks here are as careful as anywhere in the
+world? That I, myself, have top-security clearance for my special
+projects? You do not need to watch your words here."
+
+"It's not security," Malone said. "Anyhow, it's not only security. But
+things are pretty complicated."
+
+"I assure you," O'Connor said, "that I will be able to understand even
+events which you feel are complex."
+
+Malone swallowed again, hard. "I didn't mean--" he started.
+
+"Please, Mr. Malone," O'Connor said. His voice was colder than usual.
+Malone had the feeling that he was about to take the extra chair away.
+"Go on," O'Connor said. "Explain yourself."
+
+Malone took a deep breath. He started with the facts he'd been told by
+Burris, and went straight through to the interviews of the two
+computer-secretary technicians by Boyd and Company.
+
+It took quite a while. By the time he had finished, O'Connor wasn't
+looking frozen any more; he'd apparently forgotten to keep the freezer
+coils running. Instead, his face showed frank bewilderment, and great
+interest. "I never heard of such a thing," he said. "Never. Not at any
+time."
+
+"But--"
+
+O'Connor shook his head. "I have never heard of a psionic
+manifestation on that order," he said. It seemed to be a painful
+admission. "Something that would make a random group of men co-operate
+in that manner--why, it's completely new."
+
+"It is?" Malone said, wondering if, when it was all investigated and
+described, it might be called O'Connorizing. Then he wondered how
+anybody was going to go about investigating it and describing it, and
+sank even deeper into gloom.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"Completely new," O'Connor said. "You may take my word." Then, slowly,
+he began to brighten again, with all the glitter of newly-formed ice.
+"As a matter of fact," he said, in a tone more like his usual one,
+"Mr. Malone, I don't think it's possible."
+
+"But it happened," Malone said. "It's still happening. All over."
+
+O'Connor's lips tightened. "I have given my opinion," he said. "I do
+not believe that such a thing is possible. There must be some other
+explanation."
+
+"All right," Malone said agreeably. "I'll bite. What is it?"
+
+O'Connor frowned. "Your levity," he said, "is uncalled-for."
+
+Malone shrugged. "I didn't mean to be--" he paused. "Anyhow, I didn't
+mean to be funny," he went on. "But I would like to have another idea
+of what's causing all this."
+
+"Scientific theories," O'Connor said sternly, "are not invented on the
+spur of the moment. Only after long, careful thought--"
+
+"You mean you can't think of anything," Malone said.
+
+"There must be some other explanation," O'Connor said. "Naturally,
+since the facts have only now been presented to me, it is impossible
+for me to display at once a fully constructed theory."
+
+Malone nodded slowly. "O.K.," he said. "Have you got any hints, then?
+Any ideas at all?"
+
+O'Connor shook his head. "I have not," he said. "But I strongly
+suggest, Mr. Malone, that you recheck your data. The fault may very
+well lie in your own interpretations of the actual facts."
+
+"I don't think so," Malone said.
+
+O'Connor grimaced. "I do," he said firmly.
+
+Malone sighed, very faintly. He shifted in the chair and began to
+realize, for the first time, just how uncomfortable it really was. He
+also felt a little chilly, and the chill was growing. That, he told
+himself, was the effect of Dr. O'Connor. He no longer regretted
+wearing his hat. As a matter of fact, he thought wistfully for a
+second of a small, light overcoat.
+
+O'Connor, he told himself, was definitely not the warm, friendly type.
+
+"Well, then," he said, conquering the chilly feeling for a second,
+"maybe there's somebody else. Somebody who knows something more about
+psionics, and who might have some other ideas about--"
+
+"Please, Mr. Malone," O'Connor said. "The United States Government
+would hardly have chosen me had I not been uniquely qualified in my
+field."
+
+Malone sighed again. "I mean ... maybe there are some books on the
+subject," he said quietly, hoping he sounded tactful. "Maybe there's
+something I could look up."
+
+"Mr. Malone." The temperature of the office, Malone realized, was
+definitely lowering. O'Connor's built-in freezer coils were working
+overtime, he told himself. "The field of psionics is so young that I
+can say, without qualification, that I am acquainted with everything
+written on the subject. By that, of course, I mean scientific works. I
+do not doubt that the American Society for Psychical Research, for
+instance, has hundreds of crackpot books which I have never read, or
+even heard of. But in the strictly scientific field, I must say
+that--"
+
+He broke off, looking narrowly at Malone with what might have been
+concern, but looked more like discouragement and boredom.
+
+"Mr. Malone," he said, "are you ill?"
+
+Malone thought about it. He wasn't quite sure, he discovered. The
+chill in the office was bothering him more and more, and as it grew he
+began to doubt that it was all due to the O'Connor influence. Suddenly
+a distinct shudder started somewhere in the vicinity of his shoulders
+and rippled its way down his body.
+
+Another one followed it, and then a third.
+
+"Me?" Malone said. "I'm ... I'm all right."
+
+"You seem to have contracted a chill," O'Connor said.
+
+A fourth shudder followed the other three.
+
+"I ... guess so," Malone said. "I d-d ... I do s-seem to be r-r-rather
+chilly."
+
+O'Connor nodded. "Ah," he said. "I thought so. Although a chill is
+certainly odd at seventy-two degrees Fahrenheit." He looked at the
+thermometer just outside the window of his office, then turned back to
+Malone. "Pardon me," he said. "Seventy-one point six."
+
+"Is ... is that all it is?" Malone said. Seventy-one point six
+degrees, or even seventy-two, hardly sounded like the broiling Nevada
+desert he'd expected.
+
+"Of course," O'Connor said. "At nine o'clock in the morning, one would
+hardly expect great temperatures. The desert becomes quite hot during
+the day, but cools off rapidly; I assume you are familiar with the
+laws covering the system."
+
+"Sure," Malone said. "S-sure."
+
+The chills were not getting any better. They continued to travel up
+and down his body with the dignified regularity of Pennsylvania
+Railroad commuter trains.
+
+O'Connor frowned for a second. It was obvious that his keen scientific
+eye was sizing up the phenomenon, and reporting events to his keen
+scientific brain. In a second or less, the keen scientific brain had
+come up with an answer, and Dr. O'Connor spoke in his very keenest
+scientific voice.
+
+"I should have warned you," he said, without an audible trace of
+regret. "The answer is childishly simple, Mr. Malone. You left
+Washington at noon."
+
+"Just a little before noon," Malone said. Remembering the burning sun,
+he added: "High noon. Very high."
+
+"Just so," O'Connor said. "And not only the heat was intense; the
+humidity, I assume, was also high."
+
+"Very," Malone said, thinking back. He shivered again.
+
+"In Washington," O'Connor said, "it was noon. Here it is nine o'clock,
+and hardly as warm. The atmosphere is quite arid, and about twenty
+degrees below that obtaining in Washington."
+
+Malone thought about it, trying to ignore the chills. "Oh," he said at
+last. "And all the time I thought it was you."
+
+"What?" O'Connor leaned forward.
+
+"Nothing," Malone said hastily.
+
+"My suggestion," O'Connor said, putting his fingertips together again,
+"is that you take off your clothes, which are undoubtedly damp, and--"
+
+Naturally, Malone had not brought any clothes to Yucca Flats to change
+into. And when he tried to picture himself in a spare suit of Dr.
+O'Connor's, the picture just wouldn't come. Besides, the idea of doing
+a modified strip-tease in, or near, the O'Connor office was thoroughly
+unattractive.
+
+"Well," he said slowly, "thanks a lot, doctor, but no thanks. I really
+have a better idea."
+
+"Better?" O'Connor said.
+
+"Well, I--" Malone took a deep breath and shut his eyes.
+
+He heard Dr. O'Connor say: "Well, Mr. Malone--good-by. And good luck."
+
+Then the office in Yucca Flats was gone, and Malone was standing in
+the bedroom of his own apartment, on the fringes of Washington, D. C.
+
+
+IV
+
+He walked over to the wall control and shut off the air-conditioning
+in a hurry. He threw open a window and breathed great gulps of the
+hot, humid air from the streets. In a small corner at the back of his
+mind, he wondered why he was grateful for the air he had suffered
+under only a few minutes before. But that, he reflected, was life. And
+a very silly kind of life, too, he told himself without rancor.
+
+In a few minutes he left the window, somewhat restored, and headed for
+the shower. When it was running nicely and he was under it, he started
+to sing. But his voice didn't sound as much like the voice of Lauritz
+Melchior as it usually did, not even when he made a brave, if
+foolhardy stab at the Melchior accent. Slowly, he began to realize
+that he was bothered.
+
+He climbed out of the shower and started drying himself. Up to now, he
+thought, he had depended on Dr. Thomas O'Connor for edifying,
+trustworthy and reasonably complete information about psionics and
+_psi_ phenomena in general. He had looked on O'Connor as a sort of
+living version of an extremely good edition of the _Britannica_,
+always available for reference.
+
+And now O'Connor had failed him. That, Malone thought, was hardly
+fair. O'Connor had no business failing him--particularly when there
+was no place else to go.
+
+The scientist had been right, of course, Malone knew. There was no
+other scientist who knew as much about psionics as O'Connor, and if
+O'Connor said there were no books, then that was that: there were no
+books.
+
+He reached for a drawer in his dresser, opened it and pulled out some
+underclothes, humming tunelessly under his breath as he dressed. If
+there was no one to ask, he thought, and if there were no books--
+
+He stopped with a sock in his hand, and stared at it in wonder.
+O'Connor hadn't said there were no books. As a matter of fact, Malone
+realized, he'd said exactly the opposite.
+
+There were books. But they were "crackpot" books. O'Connor had never
+read them. He had, he said, probably never even heard of many of them.
+
+"Crackpot" was a fighting word to O'Connor. But to Malone it had all
+the sweetness of flattery. After all, he'd found telepaths in insane
+asylums, and teleports among the juvenile delinquents of New York.
+"Crackpot" was a word that was rapidly ceasing to have any meaning at
+all in Malone's mind.
+
+He realized that he was still staring at the sock, which was black
+with a gold clock. Hurriedly, he put it on, and finished dressing. He
+reached for the phone and made a few fast calls, and then teleported
+himself to his locked office in FBI Headquarters, on East Sixty-ninth
+Street in New York. He let himself out, and strolled down the
+corridor. The agent-in-charge looked up from his desk as Malone
+passed, blinked, and said: "Hello, Malone. What's up now?"
+
+"I'm going prowling," Malone said. "But there won't be any work for
+you, as far as I can see."
+
+"Oh?"
+
+"Just relax," Malone said. "Breathe easy."
+
+"I'll try to," the agent-in-charge said, a little sadly. "But every
+time you show up, I think about that wave of red Cadillacs you
+started. I'll never feel really secure again."
+
+"Relax," Malone said. "Next time it won't be Cadillacs. But it might
+be spirits, blowing on ear-trumpets. Or whatever it is they do."
+
+"Spirits, Malone?" the agent-in-charge said.
+
+"No, thanks," Malone said sternly. "I never drink on duty." He gave
+the agent a cheery wave of his hand and went out to the street.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Psychical Research Society had offices in the Ravell Building, a
+large structure composed mostly of plate glass and anodized aluminum
+that looked just a little like a bright blue, partially transparent
+crackerbox that had been stood on end for purposes unknown. Having
+walked all the way down to this box on Fifty-sixth Street, Malone had
+recovered his former sensitivity range to temperature and felt
+pathetically grateful for the coolish sea breeze that made New York
+somewhat less of an unbearable Summer Festival than was normal.
+
+The lobby of the building was glittering and polished, as if human
+beings could not possibly exist in it. Malone took an elevator to the
+sixth floor, stepped out into a small, equally polished hall, and
+hurriedly looked off to his right. A small door stood there, with a
+legend engraved in elegantly small letters. It said:
+
+          _The Psychical Research Society_
+                      _Push_
+
+Malone obeyed instructions. The door swung noiselessly open, and then
+closed behind him.
+
+He was in a large square-looking room which had a couch and chair set
+at one corner, and a desk at the far end. Behind the desk was a brass
+plate, on which was engraved:
+
+            _The Psychical Research Society_
+                     _Main Offices_
+
+To Malone's left was a hall that angled off into invisibility, and to
+the left of the desk was another one, going straight back past doors
+and two radiators until it ran into a right-angled turn and also
+disappeared.
+
+Malone took in the details of his surroundings almost automatically,
+filing them in his memory just in case he ever needed to use them.
+
+One detail, however, required more than automatic attention. Sitting
+behind the desk, her head just below the brass plaque, was a redhead.
+She was, Malone thought, positively beautiful. Of course, he could not
+see the lower two-thirds of her body, but if they were half as
+interesting as the upper third and the face and head, he was willing
+to spend days, weeks or even months on their investigation. Some jobs,
+he told himself, feeling a strong sense of duty, were definitely worth
+taking time over.
+
+She was turned slightly away from Malone, and had obviously not heard
+him come in. Malone wondered how best to announce himself, and
+regretfully gave up the idea of tiptoeing up to the girl, placing his
+hands over her eyes, kissing the back of her neck and crying:
+"Surprise!" It was elegant, he felt, but it just wasn't right.
+
+He compromised at last on the old established method of
+throat-clearing to attract her attention. He was sure he could take it
+from there, to an eminently satisfying conclusion.
+
+He tiptoed on the deep-pile rug right up to her desk.
+
+And the expected happened.
+
+He sneezed.
+
+The sneeze was loud and long, and it echoed through the room and
+throughout the corridors. It sounded to Malone like the blast of a
+small bomb, or possibly a grenade. Startled himself by the volume of
+sound he had managed to generate, he jumped back.
+
+The girl had jumped, too--but her leap had been straight upward, about
+an inch and a half. She came down on her chair and reached up a hand.
+The hand wiped the back of her neck with a slow, lingering motion of
+complete loathing. Then, equally slowly, she turned.
+
+"That," she said in a low, sweet voice, "was a dirty trick."
+
+"It was an accident," Malone said.
+
+She regarded Malone darkly. "Do you always do that to strangers? Is it
+some new sort of perversion?"
+
+"I have never done such a thing before," Malone said sternly.
+
+"Oh," the girl said. "An experimenter. Avid for new sensations.
+Probably a jaded scion of a rich New York family." She paused. "Tell
+me," she said. "Is it fun?"
+
+Malone opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He shut it, thought for
+a second and then tried again. He got as far as: "I--" before Nemesis
+overtook him. The second sneeze was even louder and more powerful than
+the first had been.
+
+"It must be fun," the girl said acidly, producing a handkerchief from
+somewhere and going to work on her face. "You just can't seem to wait
+to do it again. Would it do any good to tell you that the fascination
+with this form of greeting is not universal? Or don't you care?"
+
+Malone said, goaded, "I've got a cold."
+
+"And you feel you should share it with the world," the girl said. "I
+quite understand. Tell me, is there anything I can do for you? Or has
+your mission been accomplished?"
+
+"My mission?" Malone said.
+
+"Having sneezed twice at me," the girl said, "do you now feel
+satisfied? Will you vanish softly and silently away? Or do you want to
+sneeze at somebody else?"
+
+"I want the President of the Society," Malone said. "According to my
+information, his name is Sir Lewis Carter."
+
+"And if you sneeze at him," the girl said, "yours is going to be mud.
+He isn't much on novelty."
+
+"I--"
+
+"Besides which," she said, "he's extremely busy. And I don't think
+he'll see you at all. Why don't you go and sneeze at somebody else?
+There must be lots of people who would consider themselves honored to
+be noticed, especially in such a startling way. Why don't you try and
+find one somewhere? Somewhere very far away?"
+
+Malone was beyond speech. He fumbled for his wallet, flipped it open
+and showed the girl his identification.
+
+"My, my," she said. "And hasn't the FBI anything better to do? I mean,
+can't you go and sneeze at counterfeiters in their lairs, or wherever
+they might be?"
+
+"I want to see Sir Lewis Carter," Malone said doggedly.
+
+The girl shrugged and picked up the phone on her desk. It was a
+blank-vision device, of course; many office intercoms were. She
+dialed, waited and then said: "Sir Lewis, please." Another second went
+by. Then she spoke again. "Sir Lewis," she said, "this is Lou, at the
+front desk. There's a man here named Malone, who wants to see you."
+
+She waited a second. "I don't know what he wants," she told the phone.
+"But he's from the FBI." A second's pause. "That's right, the FBI,"
+she said. "All right, Sir Lewis. Right away." She hung up the phone
+and turned to watch Malone warily.
+
+"Sir Lewis," she said, "will see you. I couldn't say why. But take the
+side corridor to the rear of the suite. His office has his name on it,
+and I won't tell you you can't miss it because I have every faith that
+you will. Good luck."
+
+Malone blinked. "Look," he said. "I know I startled you, but I didn't
+mean to. I--" He started to sneeze, but this time he got his own
+handkerchief out in time and muffled the explosion slightly.
+
+"Good work," the girl said approvingly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was nothing at all to say to that remark, Malone reflected as he
+wended his way down the side corridor. It seemed endless, and kept
+branching off unexpectedly. Once he blundered into a large open room
+filled with people at desks. A woman who seemed to have a great many
+teeth and rather bulbous eyes looked up at him. "Can I help you?" she
+said in a fervent whine.
+
+"I sincerely hope not," Malone said, backing away and managing to find
+the corridor once more. After what seemed like a long time, and two
+more sneezes, he found a small door which was labeled in capital
+letters:
+
+              THE PSYCHICAL RESEARCH
+                     SOCIETY
+                SIR LEWIS CARTER
+                   PRESIDENT
+
+Malone sighed. "Well," he muttered, "they certainly aren't hiding
+anything." He pushed at the door, and it swung open.
+
+Sir Lewis was a tall, solidly-built man with a kindly expression. He
+wore gray flannel trousers and a brown tweed jacket, which made an
+interesting color contrast with his iron-gray hair. His teeth were
+clenched so firmly on the bit of a calabash pipe with a meerschaum
+bowl that Malone wondered if he could ever get loose. Malone shut the
+door behind him, and Sir Lewis rose and extended a hand.
+
+Malone went to the desk and reached across to take the hand. It was
+firm and dry. "I'm Kenneth Malone," Malone said.
+
+"Ah, yes," Sir Lewis said. "Pleased to meet you; always happy, of
+course, to do whatever I can for your FBI. Not only a duty, so to
+speak, but a pleasure. Sit down. Please do sit down."
+
+Malone found a chair at the side of the desk, and sank into it. It was
+soft and comfortable. It provided such a contrast to O'Connor's
+furnishings that Malone began to wish it was Sir Lewis who was
+employed at Yucca Flats. Then he could tell Sir Lewis everything about
+the case.
+
+Now, of course, he could only hedge and try to make do without stating
+very many facts. "Sir Lewis," he said, "I trust you'll keep this
+conversation confidential."
+
+"Naturally," Sir Lewis said. He removed the pipe, stared at it, and
+replaced it.
+
+"I can't give you the full details," Malone went on, "but the FBI is
+presently engaged in an investigation which requires the specialized
+knowledge your organization seems to have."
+
+"FBI?" Sir Lewis said. "Specialized investigation?" He seemed pleased,
+but a trifle puzzled. "Dear boy, anything we have is at your disposal,
+of course. But I quite fail to see how you can consider us--"
+
+"It's rather an unusual problem," Malone said, feeling that that was
+the understatement of the year. "But I understand that your records go
+back nearly a century."
+
+"Quite true," Sir Lewis murmured.
+
+"During that time," Malone said, "the Society investigated a great
+many supposedly supernatural or supernormal incidents."
+
+"Many of them," Sir Lewis said, "were discovered to be fraudulent, I'm
+afraid. The great majority, in fact."
+
+"That's what I'd assume," Malone said. He fished in his pockets, found
+a cigarette and lit it. Sir Lewis went on chewing at his unlit pipe.
+"What we're interested in," Malone said, "is some description of the
+various methods by which these frauds were perpetrated."
+
+"Ah," Sir Lewis said. "The tricks of the trade, so to speak?"
+
+"Exactly," Malone said.
+
+"Well, then," Sir Lewis said. "The luminous gauze, for instance, that
+passes for ectoplasm; the various methods of table-lifting; control of
+the ouija board--things like that?"
+
+"Not quite that elementary," Malone said. He puffed on the cigarette,
+wishing it was a cigar. "We're pretty much up to that kind of thing.
+But had it ever occurred to you that many of the methods used by phony
+mind-reading acts, for instance, might be used as communication
+methods by spies?"
+
+"Why, I believe some have been," Sir Lewis said. "Though I don't know
+much about that, of course; there was a case during the First World
+War--"
+
+"Exactly," Malone said. He took a deep breath. "It's things like that
+we're interested in," he said, and spent the next twenty minutes
+slowly approaching his subject. Sir Lewis, apparently fascinated, was
+perfectly willing to unbend in any direction, and jotted down notes on
+some of Malone's more interesting cases, murmuring: "Most unusual,
+most unusual," as he wrote.
+
+The various types of phenomena that the Society had investigated came
+into the discussion, and Malone heard quite a lot about the Beyond,
+the Great Summerland, Spirit Mediums and the hypothetical existence of
+fairies, goblins and elves.
+
+"But, Sir Lewis--" he said.
+
+"I make no claims personally," Sir Lewis said. "But I understand that
+there is a large and somewhat vocal group which does make rather
+solid-sounding claims in that direction. They say that they have seen
+fairies, talked with goblins, danced with the elves."
+
+"They must be very unusual people," Malone said, understating heavily.
+
+"Oh," Sir Lewis said, "without a that it goes through
+Accounting."
+
+Talk like this passed away nearly a half hour, until Malone finally
+felt that it was the right time to introduce some of his real
+questions. "Tell me, Sir Lewis," he said, "have you had many instances
+of a single man, or a small group of men, controlling the actions of a
+much larger group? And doing it in such a way that the larger group
+doesn't even know it is being manipulated?"
+
+"Of course I have," Sir Lewis said. "And so have you. They call it
+advertising."
+
+Malone flicked his cigarette into an ashtray. "I didn't mean exactly
+that," he said. "Suppose they're doing it in such a way that the
+larger group doesn't even suspect that manipulation is going on?"
+
+Sir Lewis removed his pipe and frowned at it. "I may be able to give
+you a little information," he said slowly, "but not much."
+
+"Ah?" Malone said, trying to sound only mildly interested.
+
+"Outside of mob psychology," Sir Lewis said, "and all that sort of
+thing, I really haven't seen any record of a case of such a thing
+happening. And I can't quite imagine anyone faking it."
+
+"But you have got some information?" Malone said.
+
+"Certainly," Sir Lewis said. "There is always spirit control."
+
+"Spirit control?" Malone blinked.
+
+"Demonic intervention," Sir Lewis said. "'My name is Legion,' you
+know."
+
+Sir Lewis Legion, Malone thought confusedly, was a rather unusual
+name. He took a breath and caught hold of his revolving mind. "How
+would you go about that?" he said, a little hopelessly.
+
+"I haven't the foggiest," Sir Lewis admitted cheerfully. "But I will
+have it looked up for you." He made a note. "Anything else?"
+
+Malone tried to think. "Yes," he said at last. "Can you give me a
+condensed report on what is known--and I mean _known_--on telepathy
+and teleportation?"
+
+"What you want," Sir Lewis said, "are those cases proven genuine, not
+the ones in which we have established fraud, or those still in doubt."
+
+"Exactly," Malone said. If he got no other use out of the data, it
+would provide a measuring-stick for the Society. The general public
+didn't know that the government was actually using psionic powers, and
+the Society's theories, checked against actual fact, would provide a
+rough index of reliability to use on the Society's other data.
+
+But spirits, somehow, didn't seem very likely. Malone sighed and stood
+up.
+
+"I'll have copies made of all the relevant material," Sir Lewis said,
+"from our library and research files. Where do you want the material
+sent? I do want to warn you of its bulk; there may be quite a lot of
+it."
+
+"FBI Headquarters, on Sixty-ninth Street," Malone said. "And send a
+statement of expenses along with it. As long as the bill's within
+reason, don't worry about itemizing; I'll see that it goes through
+Accounting."
+
+Sir Lewis nodded. "Fine," he said. "And, if you should have any
+difficulties with the material, please let me know. I'll always be
+glad to help."
+
+"Thanks for your co-operation," Malone said. He went to the door, and
+walked on out.
+
+He blundered back into the same big room again, on his way through the
+corridors. The bulbous-eyed woman, who seemed to have inherited a full
+set of thirty-two teeth from each of her parents, gave him a friendly
+if somewhat crowded smile, but Malone pressed on without a word. After
+a while, he found the reception room again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The girl behind the desk looked up. "How did he react?" she said.
+
+Malone blinked. "React?" he said.
+
+"When you sneezed at him," she said. "Because I've been thinking it
+over, and I've got a new theory. You're doing a survey on how people
+act when encountering sneezes. Like Kinsey."
+
+This girl--Lou something, Malone thought, and with difficulty
+refrained from adding "Gehrig"--had an unusual effect, he decided. He
+wondered if there were anyone in the world she couldn't reduce to
+paralyzed silence.
+
+"Of course," she went on, "Kinsey was dealing with sex, and you
+aren't. At least, you aren't during business hours." She smiled
+politely at Malone.
+
+"No," he said helplessly, "I'm not."
+
+"It is sneezing, then," she said. "Will I be in the book when it's
+published?"
+
+"Book?" Malone said, feeling more and more like a rather low-grade
+moron.
+
+"The book on sneezing, when you get it published," she said. "I can
+see it now--the Case of Miss X, a Receptionist."
+
+"There isn't going to be any book," Malone said.
+
+She shook her head. "That's a shame," she said. "I've always wanted to
+be a Miss X. It sounds exciting."
+
+"X," Malone said at random, "marks the spot."
+
+"Why, that's the sweetest thing that's been said to me all day," the
+girl said. "I thought you could hardly talk, and here you come out
+with lovely things like that. But I'll bet you say it to all the
+girls."
+
+"I have never said it to anybody before," Malone said flatly. "And I
+never will again."
+
+The girl sighed. "I'll treasure it," she said. "My one great moment.
+Good-by, Mr. ... Malone, isn't it?"
+
+"Ken," Malone said. "Just call me Ken."
+
+"And I'm Lou," the girl said. "Good-by."
+
+An elevator arrived and Malone ducked into it. Louie? he thought.
+Louise? Luke? Of course, there was Sir Lewis Carter, who might be
+called Lou. Was he related to the girl?
+
+No, Malone thought wildly. Relations went by last names. There was no
+reason for Lou to be related to Sir Lewis. They didn't even look
+alike. For instance, he had no desire whatever to make a date with Sir
+Lewis Carter, or to take him to a glittering nightclub. And the very
+idea of Sir Lewis Carter sitting on the Malone lap was enough to give
+him indigestion and spots before the eyes.
+
+Sternly, he told himself to get back to business. The elevator stopped
+at the lobby and he got out and started down the street, feeling that
+consideration of the Lady Known As Lou was much more pleasant. After
+all, what did he have to work with, as far as his job was concerned?
+
+So far, two experts had told him that his theory was full of lovely
+little holes. Worse than that, they had told him that mass control of
+human beings was impossible, as far as they knew.
+
+And maybe it was impossible, he told himself sadly. Maybe he should
+just junk his whole theory and think up a new one. Maybe there was no
+psionics involved in the thing at all, and Boyd and O'Connor were
+right.
+
+Of course, he had a deep-seated conviction that psionics was somewhere
+at the root of everything, but that didn't necessarily mean anything.
+A lot of people had deep-seated convictions that they were beetles, or
+that the world was flat. And then again, murderers often suffered as a
+result of deep-seated convictions.
+
+On the other hand, maybe he had invented a whole new psionic
+theory--or, at least, observed some new psionic facts. Maybe they
+would call the results Maloneizing, instead of O'Connorizing. He tried
+to picture a man opening a door and saying: "Come out quick--Mr.
+Frembits is Maloneizing again."
+
+It didn't sound very plausible. But, after all, he did have a
+deep-seated conviction. He tried to think of a shallow-seated
+conviction, and failed. Didn't convictions ever stand up, anyhow, or
+lie down?
+
+He shook his head, discovered that he was on Sixty-ninth Street, and
+headed for the FBI headquarters. His convictions, he had found, were
+sometimes an expression of his precognitive powers; he determined to
+ride with them, at least for a while.
+
+By the time he came to the office of the agent-in-charge, he had
+figured out the beginnings of a new line of attack.
+
+"How about the ghosts?" the agent-in-charge asked as he passed.
+
+"They'll be along," Malone said. "In a big bundle, addressed to me
+personally. And don't open the bundle."
+
+"Why not?" the agent-in-charge asked.
+
+"Because I don't want the things to get loose and run around saying
+_Boo!_ to everybody," Malone said brightly, and went on.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He opened the door of his private office, went inside and sat down at
+the desk there. He took his time about framing a thought, a single,
+clear, deliberate thought:
+
+_Your Majesty, I'd like to speak to you._
+
+[Illustration]
+
+He hardly had time to finish it. A flash of color appeared in the
+room, just a few feet from his desk. The flash resolved itself into a
+tiny, grandmotherly-looking woman with a corona of white hair and a
+kindly, twinkling expression. She was dressed in the full court
+costume of the First Elizabethan period, and this was hardly
+surprising to Malone. The little old lady believed, quite firmly, that
+she was Queen Elizabeth I, miraculously preserved over all these
+centuries. Malone, himself, had practically forgotten that the woman's
+real name was Rose Thompson, and that she had only been alive for
+sixty-five years or so. For most of that time, she had been insane.
+
+For all of that time, however, she had been a genuine telepath. She
+had been discovered during the course of Malone's first psionic case,
+and by now she had even learned to teleport by "reading" the process
+in Malone's mind.
+
+"Good afternoon, Sir Kenneth," she said in a regal, kindly voice. She
+was mad, he knew, but her delusion was nicely kept within bounds. All
+of her bright world hinged on the single fact that she was unshakably
+certain of her royalty. As long as the FBI catered to that
+notion--which included a Royal dwelling for her in Yucca Flats, and
+the privilege of occasionally knighting FBI Agents who had pleased her
+unpredictable fancy--she was perfectly rational on all other points.
+She co-operated with Dr. O'Connor and with the FBI in the
+investigation of her psionic powers, and she had given her Royal word
+not to teleport except at Malone's personal request.
+
+"I'd like to talk to you," Malone said, "Your Majesty."
+
+There was an odd note in the Queen's voice, and an odd, haunted
+expression on her face. "I've been hoping you'd ask me to come," she
+said.
+
+"I had a hunch you were following me telepathically," Malone said.
+"Can you give me any help?"
+
+"I ... I really don't know," she said. "It's something new, and
+something ... disturbing. I've never come across anything like it
+before."
+
+"Like what?" Malone asked.
+
+"It's the--" She made a gesture that conveyed nothing at all to
+Malone. "The ... the static," she said at last.
+
+Malone blinked. "Static?" he said.
+
+"Yes," she said. "You're not telepathic, so I can't tell you what it's
+really like. But ... well, Sir Kenneth, have you ever seen disturbance
+on a TV screen, when there's some powerful electric output nearby? The
+bright, senseless snowstorms, the meaningless hash?"
+
+"Sure," Malone said.
+
+"It's like that," she said. "It's a ... a sudden, meaningless,
+disturbing blare of telepathic energy."
+
+The telephone rang once. Malone ignored it.
+
+"What's causing these disturbances?" he asked.
+
+She shook her head. "I don't know, Sir Kenneth. I don't know," she
+said. "I can't pick up a person's mind over a distance unless I know
+him--and I can't see what's causing this at all. It's ... frankly, Sir
+Kenneth, it's rather terrifying."
+
+The phone rang again.
+
+"How long have you been experiencing this disturbance?" Malone asked.
+He looked at the phone.
+
+"The telephone isn't important," Her Majesty said. "It's only Sir
+Thomas, calling to tell you he's arrested three spies, and that
+doesn't matter at all."
+
+"It doesn't?"
+
+"Not at all," Her Majesty said. "What does matter is that I've only
+been picking up these flashes since you were assigned to this new
+case, Sir Kenneth. And--" She paused.
+
+"Well?" Malone said.
+
+"And they only appear," Her Majesty said, "when I'm tuned to _your_
+mind!"
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+V
+
+Malone stared. He tried to say something but he couldn't find any
+words. The telephone rang again and he pushed the switch with a sense
+of relief. The beard-fringed face of Thomas Boyd appeared on the
+screen.
+
+"You're getting hard to find," Boyd said. "I think you're letting fame
+and fortune go to your head."
+
+"I left word at the office that I was coming here," Malone said
+aggrievedly.
+
+"Sure you did," Boyd said. "How do you think I found you? Am I
+telepathic? Do I have strange powers?"
+
+"Wouldn't surprise me in the least," Malone said. "Now, about those
+spies--"
+
+"See what I mean?" Boyd said. "How did you know?"
+
+"Just lucky, I guess," Malone murmured. "But what about them?"
+
+"Well," Boyd said, "we picked up two men working in the Senate Office
+Building, and another one working for the State Department."
+
+"And they are spies?" Malone said. "Real spies?"
+
+"Oh, they're real enough," Boyd said. "We've known about 'em for
+years, and I finally decided to pick them up for questioning. Maybe
+they have something to do with all this mess that's bothering
+everybody."
+
+"You haven't the faintest idea what you mean," Malone said. "Mess is
+hardly the word."
+
+Boyd snorted. "You go on getting yourself confused," he said, "while
+some of us do the real work. After all--"
+
+"Never mind the insults," Malone said. "How about the spies?"
+
+"Well," Boyd said, a trifle reluctantly, "they've been working as
+janitors and maintenance men, and of course we've made sure they
+haven't been able to get their hands on any really valuable
+information."
+
+"So they've suddenly turned into criminal masterminds," Malone said.
+"After being under careful surveillance for years--"
+
+"Well, it's possible," Boyd said defensively.
+
+"Almost anything is possible," Malone said.
+
+"Some things," Boyd said carefully, "are more possible than others."
+
+"Thank you, Charles W. Aristotle," Malone said. "I hope you realize
+what you've done, picking up those three men. We might have been able
+to get some good lines on them, if you'd left them where they were."
+
+There is an old story about a general who went on an inspection tour
+of the front during World War I, and, putting his head incautiously up
+out of a trench, was narrowly missed by a sniper's bullet. He turned
+to a nearby sergeant and bellowed: "Get that sniper!"
+
+"Oh, we've got him spotted, sir," the sergeant said. "He's been there
+for six days now."
+
+"Well, then," the general said, "why don't you blast him out of
+there?"
+
+"Well, sir, it's this way," the sergeant explained. "He's fired about
+sixty rounds since he's been out there, and he hasn't hit anything
+yet. We're afraid if we get rid of him they'll put up somebody who
+_can_ shoot."
+
+This was standard FBI policy when dealing with minor spies. A great
+many had been spotted, including four in the Department of Fisheries.
+But known spies are easier to keep track of than unknown ones. And, as
+long as they're allowed to think they haven't been spotted, they may
+lead the way to other spies or spy networks.
+
+"I thought it was worth the risk," Boyd said. "After all, if they have
+something to do with the case--"
+
+"But they don't," Malone said.
+
+Boyd exploded, "Let me find out for myself, will you? You're spoiling
+all the fun."
+
+"Well, anyhow," Malone said, "they don't."
+
+"You can't afford to take any chances," Boyd said. "After all, when I
+think about William Logan, I tell myself we'd better take care of
+every lead."
+
+"Well," Malone said finally, "you may be right. And then again, you
+may be normally wrong."
+
+"What is that supposed to mean?" Boyd said.
+
+"How should I know?" Malone said "I'm too busy to go around and around
+like this. But since you've picked up the spies, I suppose it won't do
+any harm to find out if they know anything."
+
+Boyd snorted again. "Thank you," he said, "for your kind permission."
+
+"I'll be right down," Malone said.
+
+"I'll be waiting," Boyd said. "In Interrogation Room 7. You'll
+recognize me by the bullet hole in my forehead and the strange South
+American poison, hitherto unknown to science, in my oesophagus."
+
+"Very funny," Malone said. "Don't give up the ship."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Boyd switched off without a word. Malone shrugged at the blank screen
+and pushed his own switch. Then he turned slowly back to Her Majesty,
+who was standing, waiting patiently, at the opposite side of the desk.
+Interference, he thought, located around him--
+
+"Why, yes," she said. "That's exactly what I did say."
+
+Malone blinked. "Your Majesty," he said, "would you mind terribly if I
+asked you questions before you answered them? I know you can see them
+in my mind, but it's simpler for me to do things the normal way, just
+now."
+
+"I'm sorry," she said sincerely. "I do agree that matters are confused
+enough already. Please go on."
+
+"Thank you, Your Majesty," Malone said. "Well, then. Do you mean that
+_I'm_ the one causing all this ... mental static?"
+
+"Oh, no," she said. "Not at all. It's definitely coming from somewhere
+else, and it's beamed at you, or beamed around you."
+
+"But--"
+
+"It's just that I can only pick it up when I'm tuned to your mind,"
+she said.
+
+"Like now?" Malone said.
+
+She shook her head. "Right now," she said, "there isn't any. It only
+happens every once in a while--every so often, and not continuously."
+
+"Does it happen at regular intervals?" Malone said.
+
+"Not as far as I've been able to tell," Her Majesty said. "It just ...
+happens, that's all. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to
+it. Except that it did start when you were assigned to this case."
+
+"Lovely," Malone said. "And what is it supposed to mean?"
+
+"Interference," she said. "Static. Jumble. That's all it means. I just
+don't know any more than that, Sir Kenneth; I've never experienced
+anything like it in my life. It really does disturb me."
+
+That, Malone told himself, he could believe. It must be an experience,
+he told himself, like having someone you were looking at suddenly
+dissolve into a jumble of meaningless shapes and lights.
+
+"That's a very good analogy," Her Majesty said. "If you'll pardon me
+speaking before you've voiced your thought--"
+
+"Not at all," Malone said. "Go right ahead."
+
+"Well, then," Her Majesty said. "The analogy you use is a good one.
+It's just as disturbing and as meaningless as that."
+
+"And you don't know what's causing it?" Malone said.
+
+"I don't know," she said.
+
+"Nor what the purpose of it is?" he said.
+
+Her Majesty shook her head slowly. "Sir Kenneth," she said, "I don't
+even know whether or not there _is_ any purpose."
+
+Malone sighed deeply. Nothing in the case seemed to make any sense. It
+wasn't that there were no clues, or no information for him to work
+with. There were a lot of clues, and there was a lot of information.
+But nothing seemed to link up with anything else. Every new fact was a
+bright, shiny arrow pointing nowhere in particular.
+
+"Well, then--" he started.
+
+The intercom buzzed. Malone jabbed ferociously at the button. "Yes,"
+he said.
+
+"The ghosts are here," the agent-in-charge's voice said.
+
+Malone blinked. "What?" he said.
+
+"You said you were going to get some ghosts," the agent-in-charge
+said. "From the Psychical Research Society, in a couple of large
+bundles And they're here now. Want me to exorcise 'em for you?"
+
+"No," Malone said wearily. "Just send them in to join the crowd. Got
+a messenger?"
+
+"I'll send them down," the agent-in-charge said. "About one minute."
+
+Malone nodded, realized the man couldn't see him, said: "Fine," and
+switched off. He looked at his watch. A little over half an hour had
+passed since he had left the Psychical Research Society offices. That,
+he told himself, was efficiency.
+
+Not that the books would mean anything, he thought. They would just
+take their places at the end of the long row of meaningless,
+disturbing, vicious facts that cluttered up his mind. He wasn't an FBI
+agent any more; he was a clown and a failure, and he was through. He
+was going to resign and go to South Dakota and live the life of a
+hermit. He would drink goat's milk and eat old shoes or something, and
+whenever another human being came near he would run away and hide.
+They would call him Old Kenneth, and people would write articles for
+magazines about The Twentieth Century Hermit.
+
+And that would make him famous, he thought wearily, and the whole
+circle would start all over again.
+
+"Now, now, Sir Kenneth," Queen Elizabeth said. "Things aren't quite
+that bad."
+
+"Oh, yes, they are," Malone said. "They're even worse."
+
+"I'm sure we can find an answer to all your questions," Her Majesty
+said.
+
+"Sure," Malone said. "Even I can find an answer. But it isn't the
+right one."
+
+"You can?" Her Majesty said.
+
+"That's right," Malone said. "My answer is: To Hell with everything."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Malone's Washington offices didn't look any different. He sighed and
+put the two big packages from the Psychical Research Society down on
+his desk, and then turned to Her Majesty.
+
+"I wanted you to teleport along with me," he said, "because I need
+your help."
+
+"Yes," she said. "I know."
+
+He blinked. "Oh. Sure you do. But let me go over the details."
+
+Her Majesty waved a gracious hand. "If you like, Sir Kenneth," she
+said.
+
+Malone nodded. "We're going on down to Interrogation Room 7 now," he
+said. "Next door to it, there's an observation room, with a one-way
+panel in the wall. You'll be able to see us, but we won't be able to
+see you."
+
+"I really don't require an observation panel," Her Majesty said. "If I
+enter your mind, I can see through your eyes--"
+
+"Oh, sure," Malone said. "But the observation room was built for more
+normal people--saving your presence, Your Majesty."
+
+"Of course," she said.
+
+"Now," Malone went on, "I want you to watch all three of the men we're
+going to bring in, and dig everything you can out of their minds."
+
+"Everything?" she said.
+
+"We don't know what might be useful," Malone said. "Anything you can
+find. And if you want any questions asked--if there's anything you
+think I ought to ask the men, or say to them--there's a nonvision
+phone in the observation room. Just lift the receiver. That
+automatically rings the one in the Interrogation Room and I'll pick it
+up. Understand?"
+
+"Perfectly, Sir Kenneth," she said.
+
+"O.K., then," Malone said. "Let's go." They headed for the door.
+Malone stopped as he opened it. "And by the way," he said.
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"If you get any more of those--disturbances, let me know."
+
+"At once," Her Majesty promised.
+
+They went on down the hall and took the elevator down to Interrogation
+Room 7, on the lowest level. There was no particular reason for
+putting the Interrogation section down there, except that it tended to
+make prisoners more nervous. And a nervous prisoner, Malone knew, was
+very possibly a confessing prisoner.
+
+Malone ushered Her Majesty through the unmarked door of the
+observation chamber, made sure that the panel and phone were in
+working order, and went out. He stepped into Interrogation Room 7
+trying hard to look bored, businesslike and unbeatable. Boyd and four
+other agents were already there, all standing around and talking
+desultorily in low tones. None of them looked as if they had ever had
+a moment's worry in their lives. It was all part of the same
+technique, of course, Malone thought. Make the prisoner feel
+resistance is useless, and you've practically got him working for you.
+
+The prisoner was a hulking, flabby fat man in work coveralls. He had
+black hair that spilled all over his forehead, and tiny button eyes.
+He was the only man in the room who was sitting down, and that was
+meant to make him feel even more inferior and insecure. His hands were
+clasped fatly in his lap, and he was staring down at them in a
+regretful manner. None of the FBI agents paid the slightest attention
+to him. The general impression was that something really tough was
+coming up, but that they were in no hurry for it. They were willing to
+wait for the Third Degree, it seemed, until the blacksmith had done a
+really good job with the new spikes for the Iron Maiden.
+
+The prisoner looked up apprehensively as Malone shut the door. Malone
+paid no attention to him, and the prisoner unclasped his hands, rubbed
+them on his coveralls and then reclasped them in his lap. His eyes
+fell again.
+
+Boyd looked up, too. "Hello, Ken," he said. He tapped a sheaf of
+papers on the single table in the room. Malone went over and picked
+them up.
+
+They were the abbreviated condensations of three dossiers. All three
+of the men covered in the dossiers were naturalized citizens, but all
+had come in us "political refugees"--from Hungary, from
+Czechoslovakia, and from East Germany. Further checking had turned up
+the fact that all three were actually Russians. They had been using
+false names during their stay in the United States, but their real
+ones were appended to the dossiers.
+
+The fat one in the Interrogation Room was named Alexis Brubitsch. The
+other two, who were presumably waiting separately in other rooms, were
+Ivan Borbitsch and Vasili Garbitsch. The collection sounded, to
+Malone, like a seedy musical-comedy firm of lawyers: Brubitsch,
+Borbitsch and Garbitsch. He could picture them dancing gaily across a
+stage while the strains of music followed them, waving legal forms and
+telephones and singing away.
+
+Brubitsch did not, however, look very gay. Malone went over to him
+now, walking slowly, and looked down. Boyd came and stood next to him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"This is the one who won't talk, eh?" Malone said, wondering if he
+sounded as much like Dick Tracy as he thought he did. It was a
+standard opening, meant to make the prisoner think his fellows had
+already confessed.
+
+"That's him," Boyd said.
+
+"Hm-m-m," Malone said, trying to look as if he were deciding between
+the rack and the boiling oil. Brubitsch fidgeted slightly, but he
+didn't say anything.
+
+"We didn't know whether we had to get this one to talk, too," Boyd
+said. "What with the others, and all. But we did think you ought to
+have a look at him." He sounded very bored. It was obvious from his
+tone that the FBI didn't care in the least if Alexis Brubitsch never
+opened his mouth again, in what was likely to be a very short
+lifetime.
+
+"Well," Malone said, equally bored, "we might be able to get a few
+corroborative details."
+
+Brubitsch swallowed hard. Malone ignored him.
+
+"Now, just look at him," Boyd said. "He certainly doesn't _look_ like
+the head of a spy ring, does he?"
+
+"Of course he doesn't," Malone said. "That's probably why the Russians
+used him. They figured nobody would ever look twice at a fat slob like
+this. Nobody would ever suspect him of being the head man."
+
+"I guess you're right," Boyd said. He yawned, which Malone thought was
+overacting a trifle. Brubitsch saw the yawn, and one hand came up to
+jerk at his collar.
+
+"Who'd ever think," Malone said, "that he plotted those killings in
+Redstone--all three of them?"
+
+"It is surprising," Boyd said.
+
+"But, then," Malone said, "we know he did. There isn't any doubt of
+that."
+
+Brubitsch seemed to be turning a pale green. It was a fascinating
+color, unlike any other Malone had ever seen. He watched it with
+interest.
+
+"Oh, sure," Boyd said. "We've got enough evidence from the other two
+to send this one to the chair tomorrow, if we want to."
+
+"More than enough," Malone agreed.
+
+Brubitsch opened his mouth, shut it again and closed his eyes. His
+lips moved silently.
+
+"Tell me," Boyd said conversationally, leaning down to the fat man,
+"Did your orders on that job come from Moscow, or did you mastermind
+it all by yourself?"
+
+Brubitsch's eyes stirred, then snapped open as if they'd been pulled
+by a string. "Me?" he said in a hoarse bass voice. "I know nothing
+about this murder. What murder?"
+
+There were no such murders, of course. But Malone was not ready to let
+Brubitsch know anything about that. "Oh, the ones you shot in
+Redstone," he said in an offhand way.
+
+"The what?" Brubitsch said. "I shot people? Never."
+
+"Oh, sure you did," Boyd said. "The others say you did."
+
+Brubitsch's head seemed to sink into his neck. "Borbitsch and
+Garbitsch, they tell you about a murder? It is not true. Is a lie."
+
+"Really?" Malone said. "We think it's true."
+
+"Is a lie," Brubitsch said, his little eyes peering anxiously from
+side to side. "Is not true," he went on hopefully. "I have alibi."
+
+"You do?" Boyd said. "For what time?"
+
+"For time when murder happened," Brubitsch said. "I was some place
+else."
+
+"Well, then," Malone said, "how do you know when the murders were
+done? They were kept out of the newspapers." That, he reflected, was
+quite true, since the murders had never happened. But he watched
+Brubitsch with a wary eye.
+
+"I know nothing about time," Brubitsch said, jerking at his collar. "I
+don't know when they happened."
+
+"Then how can you have an alibi?" Boyd snapped.
+
+"Because I didn't do them!" Brubitsch said tearfully. "If I didn't,
+then I _must_ have alibi!"
+
+"You'd be surprised," Malone said. "Now, about these murders--"
+
+"Was no murder, not by me," Brubitsch said firmly. "Was never any
+killing of anybody, not even by accident."
+
+"But your two friends say--" Boyd began.
+
+"My two friends are not my friends," Brubitsch said firmly. "If they
+tell you about murder and say it was me, they are no friends. I did
+not murder anybody. I have alibi. I did not even murder anybody a
+little bit. They are no friends. This is terrible."
+
+"There," Malone said reflectively, "I agree with you. It's positively
+awful. And I think we might as well give it up. After all, we don't
+need your testimony. The other two are enough; they'll get maybe ten
+years apiece, but you're going to get the chair."
+
+"I will not sit down," Brubitsch said firmly. "I am innocent. I am
+innocent like a small child. Does a small child commit a murder? It is
+ridiculous."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Boyd picked up his cue with ease. "You might as well give us your side
+of the story, then," he said easily. "If you didn't commit any
+murders--"
+
+"I am a small child," Brubitsch announced.
+
+"O.K.," Boyd said. "But if you didn't commit any murders, just what
+_have_ you been doing since you've been in this country as a Soviet
+agent?"
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"I will say nothing," Brubitsch announced. "I am a small child. It is
+enough." He paused, blinked, and went on: "I will only tell you this:
+no murders were done by our group in any of our activities."
+
+"And what were your activities?"
+
+"Oh, many things," Brubitsch said. "Many, many things. We--"
+
+The telephone rang loudly, and Malone scooped it up with a practiced
+hand. "Malone here," he said.
+
+Her Majesty's voice was excited. "Sir Kenneth!" she said. "I just got
+a tremendous burst of--static!"
+
+Malone blinked. _Is my mind acting up again?_ he thought, knowing she
+would pick it up. _Am I being interfered with?_
+
+He didn't feel any different. But then, how was he supposed to feel?
+
+"It's not _your_ mind, Sir Kenneth," Her Majesty said. "Not this time.
+It's _his_ mind. That sneaky-thinking Brubitsch fellow."
+
+_Brubitsch?_ Malone thought. _Now what is that supposed to mean?_
+
+"I don't know, Sir Kenneth," Her Majesty said. "But get on back to
+your questioning. He's ready to talk now."
+
+"O.K.," Malone said aloud. "Fine." He hung up and looked back to the
+Russian sitting on his chair. Brubitsch was ready to talk, and that
+was one good thing, anyhow. But what was all the static about?
+
+What was going on?
+
+"Now, then," Malone said. "You were telling us about your group
+activities."
+
+"True," Brubitsch said. "I did not commit any murders. It is possible
+that Borbitsch committed murders. It is possible that Garbitsch
+committed murders. But I do not think so."
+
+"Why not?" Boyd said.
+
+"They are my friends," Brubitsch said. "Even if they tell lies. They
+are also small children. Besides, I am not even the head of the
+group."
+
+"Who is?" Malone said.
+
+"Garbitsch," Brubitsch said instantly. "He worked in the State
+Department, and he told us what to look for in the Senate Office
+Building."
+
+"What were you supposed to look for?" Boyd said.
+
+"For information," Brubitsch said. "For scraps of paper, or things we
+overheard. But it was very bad, very bad."
+
+"What do you mean, bad?" Malone said.
+
+"Everything was terrible," Brubitsch said mournfully. "Sometimes
+Borbitsch heard something and forgot to tell Garbitsch about it.
+Garbitsch did not like this. He is a very inflamed person. Once he
+threatened to send Borbitsch to the island of Yap as a spy. That is a
+very bad place to go to. There are no enjoyments on the island of Yap,
+and no one likes strangers there."
+
+"What did you do with your information?" Boyd said.
+
+"We remembered it," Brubitsch said. "Or, if we had a scrap of paper,
+we saved it for Garbitsch and gave it to him. But I remember once that
+I had some paper. It had a formula on it. I do not know what the
+formula said."
+
+"What was it about?" Malone said.
+
+Brubitsch gave a massive shrug. "It was about an X and some numbers,"
+he said. "It was not very interesting, but it was a formula, and
+Garbitsch would have liked it. Unfortunately, I did not give it to
+him."
+
+"Why not?" Boyd said.
+
+"I am ashamed," Brubitsch said, looking ashamed. "I was lighting a
+cigarette in the afternoon, when I had the formula. It is a very
+relaxing thing to smoke a cigarette in the afternoon. It is soothing
+to the soul." He looked very sad. "I was holding the piece of paper in
+one hand," he said. "Unfortunately, the match and the paper came into
+contact. I burned my finger. Here." He stuck out a finger toward
+Malone and Boyd, who looked at it without much interest for a second.
+"The paper is gone," he said. "Don't tell Garbitsch. He is very
+inflamed."
+
+Malone sighed. "But you remember the formula," he said. "Don't you?"
+
+Brubitsch shook his massive head very slowly. "It was not very
+interesting," he said. "And I do not have a mathematical mind."
+
+"We know," Malone said, "You are a small child."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"It was terrible," Brubitsch said. "Garbitsch was not happy about our
+activities."
+
+"What did Garbitsch do with the information?" Boyd said.
+
+"He passed it on," Brubitsch said. "Every week he would send a
+short-wave message to the homeland, in code. Some weeks he did not
+send the message."
+
+"Why not?" Malone said.
+
+"The radio did not work," Brubitsch said simply. "We received orders
+by short-wave, but sometimes we did not receive the orders. The radio
+was of very poor quality, and some weeks it refused to send any
+messages. On other weeks, it refused to receive any messages."
+
+"Who was your contact in Russia?" Boyd said.
+
+"A man named X," Brubitsch said. "Like in the formula."
+
+"But what was his real name?" Malone said.
+
+"Who knows?" Brubitsch said.
+
+"What else did you do?" Boyd said.
+
+"We met twice a week," Brubitsch said. "Sometimes in Garbitsch's home,
+sometimes in other places. Sometimes we had information. At other
+times, we were friends, having a social gathering."
+
+"Friends?" Malone said.
+
+Brubitsch nodded. "We drank together, talked, played chess. Garbitsch
+is the best chess player in the group. I am not very good. But once we
+had some trouble." He paused. "We had been drinking Russian liquors.
+They are very strong. We decided to uphold the honor of our country."
+
+"I think," Malone murmured sadly, "I know what's coming."
+
+"Ah?" Brubitsch said, interested. "At any rate, we decided to honor
+our country in song. And a policeman came and talked to us. He took us
+down to the police station."
+
+"Why?" Boyd said.
+
+"He was suspicious," Brubitsch said. "We were singing the
+_Internationale_, and he was suspicious. It is unreasonable."
+
+"Oh, I don't know," Boyd said. "What happened then?"
+
+"He took us to the police station," Brubitsch said, "and then after a
+little while he let us go. I do not understand this."
+
+"It's all right," Malone said. "I do." He drew Boyd aside for a
+second, and whispered to him: "The cops were ready to charge these
+three clowns with everything in the book. We had a time springing them
+so we could go on watching them. I remember the stir-up, though I
+never did know their names until now."
+
+Boyd nodded, and they returned to Brubitsch, who was staring up at
+them with surly eyes.
+
+"It is a secret you are telling him," Brubitsch said. "That is not
+right."
+
+"What do you mean, it's not right?" Malone said.
+
+"It is wrong," Brubitsch went on. "It is not the American way."
+
+He went on, with some prodding, to tell about the activities of the
+spy ring. It did not seem to be a very efficient spy ring; Brubitsch's
+long sad tale of forgotten messages, mixed orders, misplaced documents
+and strange mishaps was a marvel and a revelation to the listening
+officers.
+
+"I've never heard anything like it," one of them whispered in a tone
+of absolute wonder. "They're almost working on our side."
+
+Over an hour later, Malone turned wearily away from the prisoner. "All
+right, Brubitsch," he said. "I guess that pretty much covers things
+for the moment. If we want any more information, though--"
+
+"Call on me," Brubitsch said sadly. "I am not going any place. And I
+will give you all the information you desire. But I did not commit any
+murders--"
+
+"Good-bye, small child," Malone said, as two agents led the fat man
+away. The other two left soon afterward, and Malone and Boyd were
+alone.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Think he was telling the truth?" Boyd said.
+
+Malone nodded. "Nobody," he said, "could make up a story like that."
+
+"I suppose so," Boyd said, and the phone rang. Malone picked it up.
+
+"Well?" he asked.
+
+"He was telling the truth, all right," Her Majesty said. "There are a
+few more details, of course--there was a girl Brubitsch was involved
+with, Sir Kenneth. But she doesn't seem to have anything to do with
+the spy ring, and besides, she isn't a very nice person. She always
+wants money."
+
+"Sounds perfectly lovely," Malone said. "As a matter of fact, I think
+I know her. I know a lot of girls who always want money."
+
+"You don't know this one, Sir Kenneth," Her Majesty said, "and
+besides, she wouldn't be a good influence on you."
+
+Malone sighed. "How about the static explosions?" he said. "Pick up
+any more?"
+
+"No," she said. "Just that one."
+
+Malone nodded at the receiver. "All right," he said. "We're going to
+bring in the second one now. Keep up the good work."
+
+He hung up.
+
+"Who've you got in the Observation Room?" Boyd asked.
+
+"Queen Elizabeth I," Malone said. "Her Royal Majesty."
+
+"Oh," Boyd said without surprise. "Well, was Brubitsch telling the
+truth?"
+
+"He wasn't holding back anything important," Malone said, thinking
+about the girl. It would be nice to meet a bad influence, he thought
+mournfully. It would be nice to go somewhere with a bad influence--a
+bad influence, he amended, with a good figure--and forget all about
+his job, about the spies, about telepathy, teleportation, psionics and
+everything else. It might be restful.
+
+Unfortunately, it was impossible.
+
+"What's this business about a static explosion?" Boyd said.
+
+"Don't ask silly questions," Malone said. "A static explosion is a
+contradiction in terms. If something is static, it doesn't move--and
+whoever heard of a motionless explosion?"
+
+"If it is a contradiction in terms," Boyd said, "they're your terms."
+
+"Sure," Malone said. "But I don't know what they mean. I don't even
+know what I mean."
+
+"You're in a bad way," Boyd said, looking sympathetic.
+
+"I'm in a perfectly terrible way," Malone said, "and it's going to get
+worse. You wait and see."
+
+"Of course I'll wait and see," Boyd said. "I wouldn't miss the end of
+the world for anything. It ought to be a great spectacle." He paused.
+"Want them to bring in the next one?"
+
+"Sure," Malone said. "What have we got to lose but our minds? And who
+is the next one?"
+
+"Borbitsch," Boyd said. "They're saving Garbitsch for a big finish."
+
+Malone nodded wearily. "Onward," he said, and picked up the phone. He
+punched a number, spoke a few words and hung up.
+
+A minute later, the four FBI agents came back, leading a man. This one
+was tall and thin, with the expression of a gloomy, degenerate and
+slightly nauseated bloodhound. He was led to the chair and he sat down
+in it as if he expected the worst to start happening at once.
+
+"Well," Malone said in a bored, tired voice. "So this is the one who
+won't talk."
+
+
+VI
+
+Midnight.
+
+Kenneth J. Malone sat at his desk, in his Washington office,
+surrounded by piles of papers covering the desk, spilling off onto the
+floor and decorating his lap. He was staring at the papers as if he
+expected them to leap up, dance round him and shout the solution to
+all his problems at him in trained choral voices. They did nothing at
+all.
+
+Seated cross-legged on the rug in the center of the room, and looking
+like an impossible combination of the last Henry Tudor and Gautama
+Buddha, Thomas Boyd did nothing either. He was staring downward, his
+hands folded on his ample lap, wearing an expression of utter, burning
+frustration. And on a nearby chair sat the third member of the
+company, wearing the calm and patient expression of the gently born
+under all vicissitudes: Queen Elizabeth I.
+
+"All right," Malone said into the silence. "Now let's see what we've
+got."
+
+"I think we've got cerebral paresis," Boyd said. "It's been coming on
+for years."
+
+"Don't be funny," Malone said.
+
+Boyd gave a short, mirthless bark. "Funny?" he said. "I'm absolutely
+hysterical with joy and good humor. I'm out of my mind with
+happiness." He paused. "Anyway," he finished, "I'm out of my mind.
+Which puts me in good company. The entire FBI, Brubitsch, Borbitsch,
+Garbitsch, Dr. Thomas O'Connor and Sir Lewis Carter--we're all out of
+our minds. If we weren't, we'd all move away to the Moon."
+
+"And drink to forget," Malone added. "Sure. But let's try and get some
+work done."
+
+"By all means, Sir Kenneth," Her Majesty said. Boyd had not included
+her in his list of insane people, and she looked slightly miffed. It
+was hard for Malone to tell whether she was miffed by the mention of
+insanity, or at being left out.
+
+"Let's review the facts," Malone said. "This whole thing started with
+some inefficiency in Congress."
+
+"And some upheavals elsewhere." Boyd said. "Labor unions, gangster
+organizations--"
+
+"Just about all over," Malone said. "And though we've found three
+spies, it seems pretty obvious that they aren't causing this."
+
+"They aren't causing much of anything," Boyd said. "Except a lot of
+unbelieving laughter farther up the FBI line. I don't think anybody is
+going to believe our reports of those interviews."
+
+"But they're true," Her Majesty said.
+
+"Sure they're true," Boyd said. "That's the unbelievable part. They
+read like farce--and not very good farce at that."
+
+"Oh, I don't know," Malone said. "I think they're pretty funny."
+
+"Shall we get back to the business at hand?" Her Majesty said gently.
+
+"Ah," Malone said. "Anyhow, it isn't the spies. And what we now have
+is confusion even worse compounded."
+
+"Confounded," Boyd said. "John Milton. 'Paradise Lost.' I heard it
+somewhere...."
+
+"I don't mean confounded," Malone said. "I mean confusion. Anyhow, the
+Russian espionage rings in this country seem to be in as bad a state
+as the Congress, the labor unions, the Syndicates, and all the rest.
+And all of them seem to have some sort of weird tie-in to these
+flashes of telepathic interference. Right, Your Majesty?"
+
+"I ... believe so, Sir Kenneth," she said. The old woman looked tired
+and confused. Somehow, a lot of the brightness seemed to have gone out
+of her life. "That's right," she said. "I didn't realize there was so
+much of it going on. You see, Sir Kenneth, you're the only one I can
+pick up at a distance who has been having these flashes. But now that
+I'm here in Washington, I can feel it going on all around me."
+
+"It may not have anything to do with everything else," Boyd said.
+
+Malone shook his head. "If it doesn't," he said, "it's the weirdest
+coincidence I've ever even dreamed about, and my dreams can be pretty
+strange. No, it's got to be tied in. There's some kind of mental
+static that is somehow making all these people goof up."
+
+"But why?" Boyd said. "What is it being done for? Just fun?"
+
+"God only knows," Malone said. "But we're going to have to find out."
+
+"In that case," Boyd said, "I suggest lots and lots of prayers."
+
+Her Majesty looked up. "That's a fine idea," she said.
+
+"But God helps those," Malone said, "who help themselves. And we're
+going to help ourselves. Mostly with facts."
+
+"All right," Boyd said. "So far, all the facts have been a great
+help."
+
+"Well, here's one," Malone said. "We got one flash each from
+Brubitsch, Borbitsch and Garbitsch while we were questioning them.
+And in each case, that flash occurred just before they started to blab
+everything they knew. Before the flash, they weren't talking. They
+were behaving just like good spies and keeping their mouths shut.
+After the flash, they couldn't talk fast enough."
+
+"That's true," Boyd said reflectively. "They did seem to give up
+pretty fast, even for amateurs."
+
+Malone nodded. "So the question is this," he said. "Just what happens
+during those crazy bursts of static?"
+
+He looked expectantly at Her Majesty, but she shook her head sadly. "I
+don't know," she said. "I simply don't know. It's just noise to
+me--meaningless noise." She put her hands slowly over her face.
+"People shouldn't do things like that to their Sovereign," she said in
+a muffled voice.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Malone got up and went over to her. She wasn't crying, but she wasn't
+far from it. He put an arm around her thin shoulders. "Now, look, Your
+Majesty," he said in gentle tones, "this will all clear up. We'll find
+out what's going on, and we'll find a way to put a stop to it."
+
+"Sure we will," Boyd said. "After all, Your Majesty, Sir Kenneth and I
+will work hard on this."
+
+"And the Queen's Own FBI," Malone said, "won't stop until we've
+finished with this whole affair, once and for all."
+
+Her Majesty brought her hands down from her face, very slowly. She was
+forcing a smile, but it didn't look too well. "I know you won't fail
+your Queen," she said. "You two have always been the most loyal of my
+subjects."
+
+"We'll work hard," Malone said. "No matter how long it takes."
+
+"Because, after all," Boyd said in a musing, thoughtful tone, "it is a
+serious crime, you know."
+
+The words seemed to have an effect on Her Majesty, like a tonic. For a
+second her face wore an expression of Royal anger and indignance, and
+the accustomed strength flowed back into her aged voice. "You're quite
+correct, Sir Thomas!" she said. "The security of the Throne and the
+Crown are at stake!"
+
+Malone blinked. "What?" he said. "Are you two talking about something?
+What crime is this?"
+
+"An extremely serious one," Boyd said in a grave voice. He rose
+unsteadily to his feet, planted them firmly on the carpet, and
+frowned.
+
+"Go on," Malone said, fascinated. Her Majesty was watching Boyd with
+an intent expression.
+
+"The crime," Boyd said, "the very serious crime involved, is that of
+Threatening the Welfare of the Queen. The criminal has committed the
+crime of Causing the Said Sovereign, Baselessly, Reasonlessly and
+Without Consent or Let, to Be in a State of Apprehension for Her Life
+or Her Well-Being. And this crime--"
+
+"Aha," Malone said. "I've got it. The crime is--"
+
+"High treason," Boyd intoned.
+
+"High treason," Her Majesty said with satisfaction and fire in her
+voice.
+
+"Very high treason," Malone said. "Extremely high."
+
+"Stratospheric," Boyd agreed. "That is, of course," he added, "if the
+perpetrators of this dastardly crime are Her Majesty's subjects."
+
+"My goodness," the Queen said. "I never thought of that. Suppose
+they're not?"
+
+"Then," Malone said in his most vibrant voice, "it is an Act of War."
+
+"Steps," Boyd said, "must be taken."
+
+"We must do our utmost," Malone said. "Sir Thomas--"
+
+"Yes, Sir Kenneth?" Boyd said.
+
+"This task requires our most fervent dedication," Malone said. "Please
+come with me."
+
+He went to the desk. Boyd followed him, walking straight-backed and
+tall. Malone bent and removed from a drawer of the desk a bottle of
+bourbon. He closed the drawer, poured some bourbon into two handy
+water glasses from the desk, and capped the bottle. He handed one of
+the water glasses to Boyd, and raised the other one aloft.
+
+"Sir Thomas," Malone said, "I give you--Her Majesty, the Queen!"
+
+"To the Queen!" Boyd echoed.
+
+They downed their drinks and turned, as one man, to hurl the glasses
+into the wastebasket.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In thinking it over later, Malone realized that he hadn't considered
+anything about that moment silly at all. Of course, an outsider might
+have been slightly surprised at the sequence of events, but Malone was
+no outsider. And, after all, it was the proper way to treat a Queen,
+wasn't it?
+
+And--
+
+When Malone had first met Her Majesty, he had wondered why, although
+she could obviously read minds, and so knew perfectly well that
+neither Malone nor Boyd believed she was Queen Elizabeth I, she
+insisted on an outward show of respect and dedication. He'd asked her
+about it at last, and her reply had been simple, reasonable and to the
+point.
+
+According to her--and Malone didn't doubt it for an instant--most
+people simply didn't think their superiors were all they claimed to
+be. But they acted as if they did--at least while in the presence of
+those superiors. It was a common fiction, a sort of handy oil on the
+wheels of social intercourse.
+
+And all Her Majesty had ever insisted on was the same sort of
+treatment.
+
+"Bless you," she'd said, "I can't help the way you _think_, but, as
+Queen, I do have some control over the way you _act_."
+
+The funny thing, as far as Malone was concerned, was that the two
+parts of his personality were becoming more and more alike. He didn't
+actually believe that Her Majesty was Queen Elizabeth I, and he hoped
+fervently that he never would. But he did have a great deal of respect
+for her, and more affection than he had believed possible at first.
+She was the grandmother Malone had never known; she was good, and
+kind, and he wanted to keep her happy and contented. There had been
+nothing at all phony in the solemn toast he had proposed--nor in the
+righteous indignation he had felt against anyone who was giving Her
+Majesty even a minute's worth of discomfort.
+
+And Boyd, surprisingly enough, seemed to feel the same way. Malone
+felt good about that; Her Majesty needed all the loyal supporters she
+could get.
+
+But all of this was later. At the time, Malone was doing nothing
+except what came naturally--nor, apparently, was Boyd. After the
+glasses had been thrown, with a terrifying crash, into the metal
+wastebasket, and the reverberations of that second had stopped ringing
+in their ears, a moment of silence had followed.
+
+Then Boyd turned, briskly rubbing his hands. "All right," he said.
+"Let's get back to work."
+
+Malone looked at the proud, happy look on Her Majesty's face; he saw
+the glimmer of a tear in the corner of each eye. But he gave no
+indication that he had noticed anything at all out of the ordinary.
+
+"Fine," he said. "Now, getting on back to the facts, we've established
+something, anyhow. Some agency is causing flashes of telepathic static
+all over the place. And those flashes are somehow connected with the
+confusion that's going on all around us. Somehow, these flashes have
+an effect on the minds of people."
+
+"And we know at least one manifestation of that effect," Boyd said.
+"It makes spies blab all their secrets when they're exposed to it."
+
+"These three spies, anyhow," Malone said.
+
+"If 'spies' is the right word," Boyd said.
+
+"O.K.," Malone said. "And now we've got another obvious question."
+
+"It seems to me we've got about twelve," Boyd said.
+
+"I mean: who's doing it?" Malone said. "Who is causing these
+telepathic flashes?"
+
+"Maybe it's just happening," Boyd said. "Out of thin air."
+
+"Maybe," Malone said. "But let's go on the assumption that there's a
+human cause. The other way, we can't do a thing except sit back and
+watch the world go to hell."
+
+Boyd nodded. "It doesn't seem to be the Russians," he said. "Although,
+of course, it might be a Red herring."
+
+"What do you mean?" Malone said.
+
+"Well," Boyd said, "they might have known we were on to Brubitsch,
+Borbitsch and Garbitsch--" He stopped. "You know," he said, "every
+time I say that name I have to reassure myself that we're not all
+walking around in the world of Florenz Ziegfeld?"
+
+"Likewise," Malone said. "But go on."
+
+"Sure," Boyd said. "Anyhow, they might have set the three of them up
+as patsies--just in case we stumbled on to this mess. We can't
+overlook that possibility."
+
+"Right," Malone said. "It's faint, but it is a possibility. In other
+words, the agency behind the flashes might be Russian, and it might
+not be Russian."
+
+"That clears that up nicely," Boyd said. "Next question?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"The next one," Malone said grimly, "is: what's behind the flashes?
+Some sort of psionic power is causing them--that much is obvious."
+
+"I'll go along with that," Boyd said. "I have to go along with it. But
+don't think I like it."
+
+"Nobody likes it," Malone said. "But let's go on. O'Connor isn't any
+help; he washes his hands of the whole business."
+
+"Lucky man," Boyd said.
+
+"He says that it can't be happening," Malone said, "and if it is we're
+all screwy. Now, right or wrong, that isn't an opinion that gives us
+any handle to work with."
+
+"No," Boyd said reflectively. "A certain amount of comfort, to be
+sure, but no handles."
+
+"Sir Lewis Carter, on the other hand--" Malone said. He fumbled
+through some of the piles of paper until he had located the ones the
+President of the Psychical Research Society had sent. "Sir Lewis
+Carter," he went on, "does seem to be doing some pretty good work. At
+least, some of the more modern stuff he sent over looks pretty solid.
+They've been doing quite a bit of research into the subject, and their
+theories seem to be all right, or nearly all right, to me. Of course,
+I'm not an expert--"
+
+"Who is?" Boyd said. "Except for O'Connor, of course."
+
+"Well, somebody is," Malone said. "Whoever's doing all this, for
+instance. And the theories do seem O.K. In most cases, for instance,
+they agree with O'Connor's work--though they're not in complete
+agreement."
+
+"I should think so," Boyd said. "O'Connor wouldn't recognize an Astral
+Plane if TWA were putting them into service."
+
+"I don't mean that sort of thing," Malone said. "There's lots about
+astral bodies and ghosts, ectoplasm, Transcendental Yoga, theosophy,
+deros, the Great Pyramid, Atlantis, and other such pediculous pets.
+That's just silly, as far as I can see. But what they have to say
+about parapsychology and psionics as such does seem to be reasonably
+accurate."
+
+"I suppose so," Boyd said tiredly.
+
+"O.K., then," Malone said. "Did anybody notice anything in that pile
+of stuff that might conceivably have any bearing whatever on our
+problems?"
+
+"I did," Boyd said. "Or I think I did."
+
+"You both did," Her Majesty said. "And so did I, when I looked through
+it. But I didn't bother with it. I dismissed it."
+
+"Why?" Malone said.
+
+"Because I don't think it's true," she said. "However, my opinion is
+really only an opinion." She smiled around at the others.
+
+Malone picked up a thick sheaf of papers from one of the piles of his
+desk. "Let's get straight what it is we're talking about," he said.
+"All right?"
+
+"Anything's all right with me," Boyd said. "I'm easy to please."
+
+Malone nodded. "Now, this writer ... what's his name?" he said. He
+glanced at the copy of the cover page. "'Minds and Morons'," he read.
+"By Cartier Taylor."
+
+"Great title," Boyd said. "Does he say which is which?"
+
+"Let's get back to serious business," Malone said, giving Boyd a
+single look. There was silence for a second, and then Malone said: "He
+mentions something, in the book, that he calls 'telepathic
+projection.' As far as I understand what he's talking about, that's
+some method of forcing your thoughts on another person." He glanced
+over at the Queen. "Now, Your Majesty," he said, "you don't think it's
+true--and that may only be an opinion, but it's a pretty informed one.
+It seems to me as if Taylor makes a good case for this 'telepathic
+projection' of his. Why don't you think so?"
+
+"Because," Her Majesty said flatly, "it doesn't work."
+
+"You've tried it?" Boyd put in.
+
+"I have," she said. "And I have had no success with it at all. It's a
+complete failure."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Now, wait a minute," Boyd said. "Just a minute."
+
+"What's the matter?" Malone said. "Have you tried it, and made it
+work?"
+
+Boyd snorted. "Fat chance," he said. "I just want to look at the
+thing, that's all." He held out his hand, and Malone gave him the
+sheaf of papers. Boyd leafed through them slowly, stopping every now
+and again to consult a page, until he found what he was looking for.
+"There," he said.
+
+"There, what?" Malone said.
+
+"Listen to this," Boyd said. "'For those who draw the line at demonic
+possession, I suggest trying telepathic projection. Apparently, it is
+possible to project one's own thoughts directly into the mind of
+another--even to the point of taking control of the other's mind.
+Hypnotism? You tell me, and we'll both know. Ever since the orthodox
+scientists have come around to accepting hypnotism, I've been chary of
+it. Maybe there really is an astral body or a soul that a person has
+stashed about him somewhere--something that he can send out to take
+control of another human being. But I, personally, prefer the
+telepathic projection theory. All you have to do is squirt your
+thoughts across space and spray them all over the fellow's brain.
+Presto-bingo, he does pretty much what you want him to do.'"
+
+"That's the quote I was thinking of," Malone said.
+
+"Of course it is," Her Majesty said. "But it really doesn't work. I've
+tried it."
+
+"How have you tried it?" Malone said.
+
+"There were many times, Sir Kenneth," Her Majesty said, "when I wanted
+someone to do something particular--for me, or for some other person.
+After all, you must remember that I was in a hospital for a long
+time. Of course, that represents only a short segment of my life span,
+but it seemed long to me."
+
+Malone, who was trying to view the years from age fifteen to age
+sixty-odd as a short segment of anybody's lifetime, remembered with a
+shock that this was not Rose Thompson speaking. It was Queen Elizabeth
+I, who had never died.
+
+"That's right, Sir Kenneth," she said kindly. "And in that hospital,
+there were a number of times when I wanted one of the doctors or
+nurses to do what I wanted them to. I tried many times, but I never
+succeeded."
+
+Boyd nodded his head. "Well--" he began.
+
+"Oh, yes, Sir Thomas," Her Majesty said. "What you're thinking is
+certainly possible. It may even be true."
+
+"What _is_ he thinking?" Malone said.
+
+"He thinks," Her Majesty said, "that I may not have the talent for
+this particular effect--and perhaps I don't. But, talent or not, I
+know what's possible and what isn't. And the way Mr. Taylor describes
+it is simply silly, that's all. And unladylike. Imagine any
+self-respecting lady 'squirting' her thoughts about in space!"
+
+"Well," Malone said carefully, "aside from its being unladylike--"
+
+"Sir Kenneth," Her Majesty said, "you are not telepathic. Neither is
+Sir Thomas."
+
+"I'm nothing," Boyd said. "I don't even exist."
+
+"And it is very difficult to explain to the nontelepath just what Mr.
+Taylor is implying," Her Majesty went on imperturbably. "Before you
+could inject any thoughts into anyone else's mind, you'd have to be
+able to see into that mind. Is that correct?"
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"I guess so," Malone said.
+
+"And in order to do that, you'd have to be telepathic," Her Majesty
+said. "Am I correct?"
+
+"Correct," Malone said.
+
+"Well, then," Her Majesty said with satisfaction, and beamed at him.
+
+A second passed.
+
+"Well, then, what?" Malone said in confusion.
+
+"Telepathy," Her Majesty said patiently, "is an extremely complex
+affair. It involves a sort of meshing with the mind of this other
+person. It has nothing--absolutely nothing--in common with this simple
+'squirting' of thoughts across space, as if they were orange pips you
+were trying to put into a wastebasket. No, Sir Kenneth, I cannot
+believe in what Mr. Taylor says."
+
+"But it's still possible," Malone said.
+
+"Oh," Her Majesty said, "it's certainly possible. But I should think
+that if any telepaths were around, and if they were changing people's
+minds by 'squirting' at them, I would know it."
+
+Malone frowned. "Maybe you would at that," he said. "I guess you
+would."
+
+"Not to mention," Boyd put in, "that if you were going to control
+everything we've come across like that you'd need an awful lot of
+telepathic operators."
+
+"That's true," Malone admitted. "And the objections seem to make some
+sense. But what else is there to go on?"
+
+"I don't know," Boyd said. "I haven't the faintest idea. And I'm
+rapidly approaching the stage where I don't care."
+
+"Well," Malone said, heaving a sigh, "let's keep looking."
+
+He bent down and picked up another sheaf of copies from the Psychical
+Research Society.
+
+"After all," he said, without much hope, "you never know."
+
+
+VII
+
+Malone looked around the office of Andrew J. Burris as if he'd never
+seen it before. He felt tired, and worn out, and depressed; it had
+been a long night, and here it was morning and the head of the FBI was
+talking to him about his report. It was, Malone told himself heavily,
+a hell of a life.
+
+"Now, Malone," Burris said in a kindly voice, "this is a very
+interesting report."
+
+"Yes, sir," Malone said automatically.
+
+"A very interesting report indeed, Kenneth," Burris went on,
+positively bursting with good-fellowship.
+
+"Thank you, sir," Malone said dully.
+
+Burris beamed a little more. "You've done a fine job," he said, "a
+really fine job. Hardly on the job any time at all, and here you've
+managed to get all three of the culprits responsible."
+
+"Now, wait a minute," Malone said in sudden panic. "That isn't what I
+said."
+
+"No?" Burris said, looking a little surprised.
+
+"Not at all," Malone said. "I don't think those three spies have
+anything to do with this at all. Not a thing."
+
+There was a brief silence, during which Burris' surprise seemed to
+expand like a gas and fill the room. "But they've confessed," he said
+at last. "Their job was to try and get information, and also to
+disrupt our own work here."
+
+"I know all that," Malone said. "But--"
+
+Burris held up a pink, patient hand. Malone stared at it, fascinated.
+It had five pink, patient fingers on it. "Malone," Burris said slowly,
+"just what's bothering you? Don't you think those men _are_ spies? Is
+that it?"
+
+"Spies?" Malone said, slightly confused.
+
+"You know," Burris said. "The men you arrested, Malone. The men you
+wrote this report about."
+
+Malone blinked and focused on the hand again. It still had five
+fingers. "Sure they are," he said. "They're spies, all right. And
+they're caught, and that's that. Except I don't think they're causing
+all the confusion around here."
+
+"Well, of course they're not," Burris said, the beam of kindliness
+coming back to his face. "Not any more. You caught them."
+
+"I mean," Malone said desperately, "they never were. Even before I
+caught them."
+
+"Then why," Burris said with great patience, "did you arrest them?"
+
+"Because they're spies," Malone said. "Besides, I didn't."
+
+"Didn't what?" Burris said, looking confused. He seemed to realize he
+was still holding up his hand, and dropped it to the desk. Malone felt
+sad as he watched it go. Now he had nothing to concentrate on except
+the conversation, and he didn't even want to think about what was
+happening to that.
+
+"Didn't arrest them," he said. "Tom Boyd did."
+
+"Acting," Burris pointed out gently, "under your orders, Kenneth."
+
+It was the second time Burris had called him Kenneth, Malone realized.
+It started a small warning bell in the back of his mind. When Burris
+called him by his first name, Burris was feeling paternal and kindly.
+And that, Malone thought determinedly, boded Kenneth J. Malone very
+little good indeed.
+
+"He was under my orders to arrest them because they were spies," he
+said at last. He wondered if the sentence made any real sense, but
+shrugged his shoulders and plunged on. "But they're not the real
+spies," he said. "Not the ones everybody's been looking for."
+
+"Kenneth," Burris said, his voice positively dripping with what Malone
+thought of as the heavy, Grade A, Government-inspected cream of human
+kindness, "all the confusion with the computer-secretaries has
+stopped. Everything is running fine in that department."
+
+"But--" Malone began.
+
+"The technicians," Burris said, hypnotized by this poem of beauty,
+"aren't making any more mistakes. The information is flowing through
+beautifully. It's a pleasure to see their reports. Believe me,
+Kenneth--"
+
+"Call me Chief," Malone said wearily.
+
+Burris blinked. "What?" he said. "Oh. Ha. Indeed. Very well, then:
+Malone, what more proof do you want?"
+
+"Is that proof?" Malone said. "The spies didn't even confess to that.
+They--"
+
+"Of course they didn't, Malone," Burris said.
+
+"Of course?" Malone said weakly.
+
+"Look at their confessions," Burris said. "Just look at them, in black
+and white." He reached for a sheaf of papers and pushed them across
+the desk. Malone looked at them. They were indeed, he told himself, in
+black and white. There was no arguing with that. None at all.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Well?" Burris said after a second.
+
+"I don't see anything about computer-secretaries," Malone said.
+
+"The Russians," Burris began slowly, "are not stupid, Malone. You
+believe that, don't you?"
+
+"Of course I believe it," Malone said. "Otherwise we wouldn't need an
+FBI."
+
+Burris frowned. "There are still domestic cases," he said. "Like
+juvenile delinquents stealing cars inter-state, for instance. If you
+remember." He paused, then went on: "But the fact remains: Russians
+are not stupid. Not by a long shot."
+
+"All right," Malone said agreeably.
+
+"Do you really think, then," Burris said instantly, "that a spy ring
+could be as utterly inefficient as the one described in those
+confessions?"
+
+"Lots of people are inefficient," Malone said.
+
+"Not spies," Burris said with decision. "Do you really believe that
+the Russians would send over a bunch of operatives as clodheaded as
+these are pretending to be?"
+
+"People make mistakes," Malone said weakly.
+
+"Russian spies," Burris said, "do not make mistakes. Or, anyhow, we
+can't depend on it. We have to depend on the fact that they're
+operating at peak efficiency, Malone. Peak."
+
+Malone nearly asked: "Where?" but controlled himself at the last
+minute. Instead, he said: "But the confessions are right there. And,
+according to the confessions--"
+
+"Do you really believe," Burris said, "that a trio of Soviet agents
+would confess everything as easily as all that if they didn't intend
+to get something out of it? Such as, for instance, covering up their
+methods of doing damage? And do you really believe--"
+
+Malone began to feel as if he were involved in the Athanasian Creed.
+"I don't think the spies are the real spies," he said stubbornly. "I
+mean the spies we're all looking for."
+
+"Do you mean to stand there and tell me," Burris went on inexorably,
+"that you take the word of spies when they tell you about their own
+activities?"
+
+"Their confessions--"
+
+"Spies can lie, Malone," Burris said gently. "As a matter of fact,
+they usually do. We have come to depend on it as one of the facts of
+life."
+
+"But Queen Elizabeth," Malone said stubbornly, "told me they weren't
+lying." As he finished the sentence, he suddenly realized what it
+sounded like. "You know Queen Elizabeth," he said chummily.
+
+"The Virgin Queen," Burris said helpfully.
+
+"I wouldn't know," Malone said, feeling uncomfortable. "I mean Rose
+Thompson. She thinks she's Queen Elizabeth and I just said it that way
+because--"
+
+"It's all right, Malone," Burris said softly. "I know who you mean."
+
+"Well, then," Malone said. "If Queen Elizabeth says the spies aren't
+lying, then--"
+
+"Then nothing," Burris said flatly. "Miss Rose Thompson is a nice,
+sweet, little old lady. I admit that."
+
+"And she's been a lot of help," Malone said.
+
+"I admit that, too," Burris said. "But she is also somewhat battier,
+Malone, than the entire Order Chiroptera, including Count Dracula and
+all his happy friends."
+
+"She only thinks she's Queen Elizabeth I," Malone said defensively.
+
+"That," Burris said, "is a large sort of _only_. Malone, you've got to
+look at the facts sensibly. Square in the face."
+
+Malone pictured a lot of facts going by with square faces. He didn't
+like the picture. "All right," he said.
+
+"Things are going wrong in the Congressional computer-secretaries,"
+Burris said. "So I assign you to the case. You come back to me with
+three spies, and the trouble stops. And what other information have
+you got?"
+
+"Plenty," Malone said, and stopped for thought. There was a long
+pause.
+
+"All this business about mysterious psionic faculties," Burris said,
+"comes direct from the testimony of that sweet little old twitch.
+Which she is. Dr. O'Connor, for instance, has told you in so many
+words that there's no such thing as this mysterious force. And if you
+don't want to take the word of the nation's foremost authority,
+there's this character from the Psychical Research Society--Carter, or
+whatever his name is. Carter told you he'd never heard of such a
+thing."
+
+"But that doesn't mean there isn't such a thing," Malone said.
+
+"Even your own star witness," Burris said, "even the Queen herself,
+told you it couldn't be done."
+
+"Nevertheless--" Malone began. But he felt puzzled. There was no way,
+he decided, to finish a sentence that started with _nevertheless_. It
+was the wrong kind of word.
+
+"What are you trying to do?" Burris said. "Beat your head against a
+stone wall?"
+
+Malone realized that that was just what he felt like. Of course,
+Burris thought the stone wall was his psionic theory. Malone knew that
+the stone wall was Andrew J. Burris. But it didn't matter, he thought
+confusedly. Where there's a stone, there's a way.
+
+"I feel," he said carefully, "like a man with a stone head."
+
+"And I don't blame you," Burris said in an understanding tone. "Here
+you are trying to make evidence to fit your theories. What real
+evidence is there, Malone, that these three spies ... these three
+comic-opera spies--are innocent?"
+
+"What evidence is there that they're guilty?" Malone said. "Now,
+listen, Chief--"
+
+"Don't call me Chief," Burris murmured.
+
+"Another five minutes," Malone said in a sudden rage, "and I won't
+even call you."
+
+"Malone!" Burris said.
+
+Malone swallowed hard. "Sorry," he said at last. "But isn't it just
+barely possible that these three spies aren't the real criminals?
+Suppose you were a spy."
+
+"All right," Burris said. "I'm a spy." Something in his tone made
+Malone look at him with a sudden suspicion. Burris, he thought, was
+humoring him.
+
+Is it possible, Malone asked himself, that _I_ am the one who is as a
+little child?
+
+Little children, he told himself with decision, do not capture Russian
+spies and then argue about it. They go home, eat supper and go to bed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He stopped thinking about sleep in a hurry, and got back to the
+business at hand. "If you were a spy," he said, "and you knew that a
+lot of other spies had been arrested and charged with the crimes you
+were committing, what would you do?"
+
+Burris appeared to think deeply. "I would celebrate," he said at last,
+in a judicious tone.
+
+"I mean, would you just go on with the same crimes?" Malone said.
+
+"What are you talking about, Malone?" Burris said cautiously.
+
+"If you knew we'd arrested Brubitsch, Borbitsch and Garbitsch," Malone
+went on doggedly, "you'd lay off for a while, just to make us think
+we'd caught the right men. Doesn't that make sense?"
+
+"Of course it makes sense," Burris said in what was almost a pitying
+tone. "But don't push it too far. Malone, I want you to know
+something."
+
+Malone sighed. "Yes, sir?" he said.
+
+"Contrary to popular opinion," Burris said, "I was not appointed
+Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation just because I own a
+Hoover vacuum cleaner."
+
+"Of course not," Malone said, feeling that something of the sort was
+called for.
+
+"And I think you ought to know by now," Burris went on, "that I
+wouldn't fall for a trick like that any more than you would. There are
+obviously more members in this spy ring. Brubitsch, Borbitsch and
+Garbitsch are just a start."
+
+"Well, then--" Malone began.
+
+"_I'm_ not going to be taken in by what these three say," Burris said.
+"But now, Malone, we know what to look for. All we have to do is
+pretend to be taken in. Get it?"
+
+"Sure," Malone said. "We pretend to be taken in. And in the meantime I
+can go on looking for--"
+
+"We don't have to look for anything," Burris said calmly.
+
+Malone took a deep breath. Somehow, he told himself, things were not
+working out very well. "But the other spies--"
+
+"The next time they try anything," Burris said, "we'll be able to
+reach out and pick them up as easy as falling off a log."
+
+"It's the wrong log!" Malone said.
+
+Burris folded his hands on the desk and looked at them for a second,
+frowning slightly like a psychiatrist. "Malone," he said at last, "I
+want you to listen to me. Calmly. Coolly. Collectedly."
+
+Malone shrugged. "All right," he said. "I'm calm and cool."
+
+"And collected," Burris added.
+
+"That, too," Malone said vaguely.
+
+"Malone," Burris began, "you've got to get rid of this idea that
+everything the FBI investigates these days is somehow linked with
+psionics. I know you've done a lot of work in that connection--"
+
+"Now, wait a minute," Malone said. "There are those errors. How did
+the technicians feed the wrong data into the machines?"
+
+"Errors do happen," Burris said. "If I slip on a banana peel, do I
+blame psionics? Do I even blame the United Fruit Growers? I do not,
+Malone. Instead, I tell myself that errors do happen. All the time."
+
+"Now," Malone said, "you've contradicted yourself."
+
+"I have?" Burris said with a look of complete surprise.
+
+"Sure," Malone said. He leaned forward across the desk. "If the errors
+were just ordinary accidental errors, then how were the spies
+responsible? And why did they stop after the spies were arrested? When
+you slip on a banana peel, does it matter whether or not the United
+Fruit Growers are out on strike?"
+
+"Oh," Burris said.
+
+"You see?" Malone said. "You've gone and contradicted yourself." He
+felt victorious, but somewhere in the back of his mind was the
+horrible sensation that someone was about to come up behind him and
+hit him on the head with a wet sock full of old sand.
+
+A long second passed. Then Burris said: "Oh. Malone, I forgot to give
+you the analysis report."
+
+That, Malone realized dimly, was supposed to be the wet sock. Fate, he
+told himself, was against him. Anyhow, something was against him. It
+was a few seconds before he came to the conclusion that what he had
+heard didn't really make any sense. "Analysis report?" he said.
+
+"On the water cooler," Burris explained cheerfully.
+
+"There is an analysis report on a water cooler," Malone said.
+"Everything now becomes as clear as crystal." He heard his voice begin
+to rise. "You analyzed a water cooler and discovered that it was a
+Siberian spy in disguise," he said, trying to make himself sound less
+hysterical.
+
+"No, no," Burris said, pushing at Malone with his palms. "The water in
+it, Malone. The water in it."
+
+"No Siberian spy," Malone said with decision, "could disguise himself
+as the water in a water cooler."
+
+"I didn't say that," Burris went on. "But what do you think was in
+that water cooler, Malone?"
+
+"Water," Malone said. "_Cool_ water."
+
+"Congratulations," Burris said, in the hearty tones usually reserved
+for announcers on programs where housewives win trips to Nome. "You
+are just a shade less than ninety-nine point nine nine per cent
+correct."
+
+"The rest of the water," Malone hazarded, "was warm?"
+
+"The rest of the water," Burris said, "wasn't water. Aside from the
+usual minerals, there was also a trace of one of the psychodrugs."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The word seemed to hang in mid-air, like somebody's sword. Malone knew
+perfectly well what the psychodrugs were. Over the past twenty years,
+a great number of them had been developed by confused and anxious
+researchers. Some were solids, some liquids and a few gaseous at
+normal temperatures. Some were weak and some were highly potent. Some
+were relatively innocuous, and quite a few were as deadly as any of
+the more common poisons. They could be administered by mouth, by
+injection, by spray, as drops, grains, whiffs or in any other way
+conceivable to medical science. But they all had one thing in common.
+They affected the mental functioning--what seemed to be the
+personality itself--of the person dosed with them.
+
+The effect of the drugs was, in most cases, highly specific. One might
+make a normally brave man a craven coward; laboratory tests on that
+one had presented the interesting spectacle of terrified cats running
+from surprised, but by no means displeased, experimental mice. Another
+drug reversed this picture, and made the experimental mice mad with
+power. They attacked cats in battalions or singly, cheering and almost
+waving large flags as they went over the top, completely foolhardy in
+the presence of any danger whatever. Others made man abnormally
+suspicious and still others disassociated judgment to the point where
+all decisions were made completely at random.
+
+The FBI had a large file on psychodrugs, Malone knew. But he didn't
+need the file to see what was coming. He asked the question anyhow,
+just for the record: "What particular psychodrug was this one?"
+
+"One of the judgment-warpers," Burris said. "Haenlingen's Mixture;
+it's more or less a new development, but the Russians probably know as
+much about it as we do. In large doses, the drug affects even the
+automatic nervous system and throws the involuntary functions out of
+whack; but it isn't usually used in killing amounts."
+
+"And in the water cooler?" Malone asked.
+
+"There wasn't much of it," Burris said, "but there was enough. The
+technicians could be depended on to make a great many more mistakes
+than usual--just how many we can't determine, but the order of
+magnitude seems about right. It would depend on how much water each
+one of them drank, of course, and we haven't a chance of getting
+anything like a precise determination of that now."
+
+"Oh," Malone said. "But it comes out about right, doesn't it?" He felt
+hopeless.
+
+"Just about," Burris said cheerfully. "And since it was Brubitsch's
+job to change the cooler jug--"
+
+"Wait a minute," Malone said. "I think I see a hole in that."
+
+"Really?" Burris said. He frowned slightly.
+
+Malone nodded. "Sure," he said. "If any of the spies drank the
+water--their judgment would be warped, too, wouldn't it?"
+
+"So they didn't drink the water," Burris said easily.
+
+"How can we be sure?" Malone asked.
+
+Burris shrugged. "Why do we have to be?" he said. "Malone, you've got
+to stop pressing so hard on this."
+
+"But a man who didn't drink water all day would be a little
+conspicuous," Malone said. "After a while, anyhow."
+
+Burris sighed. "The man is a janitor, Kenneth," he said. "Do you know
+what a janitor is?"
+
+"Don't baby me," Malone snapped.
+
+Burris shrugged. "A janitor doesn't work in the office with the men,"
+he said. "He can drink out of a faucet in the broom closet--or
+wherever the faucets might be. Nobody would notice. Nobody would think
+it odd."
+
+Malone said: "But--" and stopped and thought it over. "All right," he
+went on at last. "But I still insist--"
+
+"Now, Kenneth," Burris said in a voice that dripped oil. "I'll admit
+that psionics is new and wonderful and you've done a lot of fine work
+with it. A lot of very fine work indeed. But you can't go around
+blaming everything on psionics no matter what it is or how much sense
+it makes."
+
+"I don't," Malone said, injured. "But--"
+
+"But you do," Burris said. "Lately, you've been acting as though magic
+were loose in the world. As though nothing were dependable any more."
+
+"It's not magic," Malone said.
+
+"But it is," Burris told him, "when you use it as an explanation for
+anything and everything." He paused, "Kenneth," he said in a more
+kindly tone, "don't think I blame you. I know how hard you've been
+working. I know how much time and effort you've put into the gallant
+fight against this country's enemies."
+
+Malone closed his eyes and turned slightly green. "It was nothing," he
+said at last. He opened his eyes but nothing had changed. Burris'
+expression was still kindly and concerned.
+
+"Oh, but it was," Burris said. "Something, I mean. You've been working
+very hard and you're just not at peak efficiency any more. You need a
+rest, Kenneth. A nice rest."
+
+"I do not," Malone said indignantly.
+
+"A lovely rest," Burris went on, oblivious. "Somewhere peaceful and
+quiet, where you can just sit around and think peacefully about
+peaceful things. Oh, it ought to be wonderful for you, Kenneth. A
+nice, peaceful, lovely, wonderful vacation."
+
+Through the haze of adjectives, Malone remembered dimly the last time
+Burris had offered him a vacation in that tone of voice. It had turned
+out to be one of the toughest cases he'd ever had: the case of the
+teleporting delinquents.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"Nice?" Malone said. "Peaceful? Lovely? Wonderful? I can see it now."
+
+"What do you mean, Malone?" Burris said.
+
+"What am I going to get?" Malone said. "A nice easy job like arresting
+all the suspected nose-pickers in Mobile, Alabama?"
+
+Burris choked and recovered quickly. "No," he said. "No, no, no. I
+mean it. You've earned a vacation, Kenneth, a real vacation. A nice,
+peaceful--"
+
+"Lovely, wonderful vacation," Malone said. "But--"
+
+"You're one of my best agents," Burris said. "I might almost say
+you're my top man. My very top man. And because of that I've been
+overworking you."
+
+"But--"
+
+"Now, now," Burris said, waving a hand vaguely. "I have been
+overworking you, Kenneth, and I'm sorry. I want to make amends."
+
+"A what?" Malone said, feeling confused again.
+
+"Amends," Burris said. "I want to do something for you."
+
+Malone thought about that for a second. Burris was well-meaning, all
+right, but from the way the conversation was going it looked very much
+as if "vacation" weren't going to be the right word.
+
+The right word, he thought dismally, was going to be "rest home." Or
+possibly even "insane asylum."
+
+"I don't want to stop work," he said grimly. "Really, I don't."
+
+"You'll have lots of time to yourself," Burns said in a wheedling
+tone.
+
+Malone nodded. "Sure I will," he said. "Until they come and put me in
+a wet pack."
+
+Burris blinked, but recovered gamely. "You don't have to go swimming,"
+he said, "if you don't want to go swimming. Up in the mountains, for
+instance--"
+
+"Where there are nice big guards to watch everything," Malone said.
+"And nuts."
+
+"Guides," Burris said. "But you could just sit around and take things
+easy."
+
+"All locked up," Malone said. "Sure. I'll love it."
+
+"If you want to go out," Burris said, "you can go out. Anywhere. Just
+do whatever you feel like doing."
+
+Malone sighed. "O.K.," he said. "When do the men in the white coats
+arrive?"
+
+"White coats?" Burris said. There was a short silence. "Kenneth," he
+said, "don't suspect me of trying to do anything to you. This is my
+way of doing you a favor. It would just be a vacation--going anywhere
+you want to go, doing anything you want to do."
+
+"Avacado," Malone muttered at random.
+
+Burris stared. "What?"
+
+"Nothing," Malone said shamefacedly. "An old song. It runs through my
+mind. And when you said that about going where I want to go--"
+
+"An old song with avacados in it?" Burris said.
+
+Malone cleared his throat and burst into shy and slightly hoarse song.
+
+"Avacado go where you go," he piped feebly, "do what you do--"
+
+"Oh," Burris said. "Oh, my."
+
+"Sorry," Malone muttered. He took a breath and waited. A second
+passed.
+
+"Well, Kenneth," Burris said at last, with an attempt at heartiness,
+"you can do anything you like. The mountains. The seashore. Hawaii.
+The Riviera. Just go and forget all about gangsters, spies,
+counter-espionage, kidnapings, mad telepaths, juvenile teleports and
+anything else like that."
+
+"You forgot water coolers," Malone said.
+
+Burris nodded. "And water coolers," he said, "by all means. Forget
+about FBI business. Forget about me. Just relax."
+
+It did sound appealing, Malone told himself. But there was a case to
+finish, and he was sure Burris was finishing it wrong. He wanted to
+argue about it some more, but he was fresh out of arguments.
+
+And besides, the idea of being able to forget all about Andrew J.
+Burris for a little while was almost insidious. Malone liked it more
+the more he thought about it. Burris went on naming vacation spots and
+drawing magnificent travel-agency pictures of how wonderful life could
+be, and after a while Malone left. There just wasn't anything else to
+say. Burris had given him an order for his vacation pay and another
+guaranteeing travel expenses. Not, he thought glumly, that he would be
+expected to buy return tickets. Oh, no. Once he'd been to a place he
+could teleport back, so there would be no point in taking a plane or
+a train back from wherever he went.
+
+"And suppose I like planes and trains?" he muttered, going on down the
+hall. But there was nothing he could do about it. He did think of
+looking for some sympathy, at least, but he couldn't even get much of
+that. Tom Boyd had apparently already talked to Burris, and was in
+full agreement with him.
+
+"After all," Boyd said, "there's the drug in the water--and it looks
+like pretty solid proof to me, Ken."
+
+"It's not proof of anything," Malone said sourly.
+
+"Sure it is," Boyd said. "Why would anybody put it there otherwise?"
+
+Malone shrugged. "Who knows?" he said. "But I'm not surprised you like
+Burris' theory. Psionics never did make you very happy, did it?"
+
+"Not very," Boyd admitted. "This way, anyhow, I've got something I can
+cope with. And it makes nice, simple sense. No reason to go and
+complicate it, Ken. None at all."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Glumly, Malone made his farewells and then teleported himself from the
+Justice Department Building back to his own apartment. There, slowly
+and sadly, he began to pack. He hadn't yet decided just where he _was_
+going, but that was a minor detail. The important thing was that he
+was going. If the Director of the FBI tells you that you need a rest
+cure, Malone thought, you do not argue with him. Argument may result
+in your vacation being extended indefinitely. And that is not a good
+thing.
+
+Of course, such a "vacation" wouldn't be the end of the world. Not
+quite. He could even beat Burris to the gun, hand in his resignation
+and go into private practice as a lawyer. The name of Malone, he told
+himself proudly, had not been entirely forgotten in Chicago, by any
+means. But he didn't feel happy about the idea. He knew, perfectly
+well, that he didn't want to live by trading on his father's
+reputation. And besides, he _liked_ being an FBI agent. It had
+glamour. It had standing.
+
+It had everything. It even had trouble.
+
+Malone caught his whirling mind and forced it back to a landing.
+Where, he asked himself, was he going?
+
+He thought about that for a second. Perhaps, as Burris had apparently
+suspected, he was going nuts. When he considered it, it even sounded
+like a good possibility.
+
+After all, what evidence _did_ he have for his psionic theory? Her
+Majesty had told him about those peculiar bursts of metal energy,
+true. But there wasn't anything else. And, come to think of it, wasn't
+it possible that Her Majesty had slipped just a little off the trolley
+of her one-track psychosis?
+
+At that thought a quick wave of guilt swept through him. Her Majesty,
+after all, might be reading his mind from Yucca Flats, where she had
+returned the previous night, right at that moment. He felt as if he
+had committed high, middle and low treason all in one great big
+package, not to mention Jack and the Game, he added disconsolately.
+
+"Nevertheless," he muttered, and stopped. He blinked and started over
+again. In spite of all that, he told himself, the Burris Theory
+certainly looked a lot sounder when you considered it objectively.
+
+The big question was whether or not he _wanted_ to consider it
+objectively. But he put this aside for the future, and continued
+packing slowly and carefully. When at last he snapped shut the last
+suitcase, he still hadn't made up his mind as to the best spot for a
+vacation. Images tumbled through his brain: mountains, seacoasts,
+beaches, beautiful native girls and even a few insane asylums. But
+nothing definite appeared. He sat down in his favorite easychair,
+found a cigar and lit it, and luxuriated in the soothing fumes while
+his mind began to wander.
+
+Her Majesty, he was quite certain, wouldn't lie purposely. Granted,
+she had misled him now and again, but even when she felt misleading
+necessary she hadn't lied; she had merely juggled the truth a little.
+And Malone was sure she would continue to tell him the truth as she
+knew it.
+
+Of course, that was the stopper: _as she knew it_. And she might have
+developed another delusion. In which case, he thought sadly, Burris
+was very probably right.
+
+But she might also be telling the actual truth. And that meant, Malone
+thought, that little pops of energy were occasionally bursting in
+various minds. These little pops had an effect, or an apparent effect:
+they made people change their minds about doing one thing or another.
+
+And that meant--Malone stopped, his cigar halfway to his mouth.
+
+_Wasn't it possible that just such a burst of energy had made Burris
+call him off the case?_
+
+It seemed like a long time before the cigar reached his mouth. Malone
+felt slightly appalled. The flashes that had been going on in his own
+mind had already been bothering him, and he'd decided that he'd have
+to check every decision he made to be sure that it was not capricious;
+now he made a resolve that he'd kept his mental faculties on a
+perpetual watch for that sort of interference. Of course, it was more
+than barely possible that he wouldn't notice it if anything happened.
+But it would be pretty stupid to succumb to that sort of defeatism
+now, he told himself grimly.
+
+Now that everything was narrowing down so nicely, anyhow, he thought.
+There were only two real possibilities. Malone numbered them in his
+mind:
+
+1. Her Majesty has developed a new delusion. In this case, he thought,
+Burris was perfectly right. I can enjoy a month of free vacation.
+
+2. Her Majesty is no nuttier than before. If this is the case, he
+thought, then there's more to the case than has appeared, and Kenneth
+J. Malone, with or without the FBI, is going to get to the bottom of
+it.
+
+Therefore, he summed up, everything now hinged on whether or not Her
+Majesty was unhinged.
+
+That was confusing, but he managed to straighten it out after a
+second. He put his half-smoked cigar carefully in an ashtray and stood
+up. He went over to the phone and dialed the special unlisted number
+of the FBI.
+
+The face that appeared was faintly sallow and looked sad. "Pelham
+here," it said in the tones of a discouraged horse.
+
+"Hello, Pelham," Malone said. "Kenneth Malone here."
+
+"Trouble?" Pelham said. It was obvious that he expected trouble, and
+always had, and probably always would.
+
+"Nope," Malone said. Pelham looked even sadder. "Just checking out for
+vacation. You can tell the Chief I'm going to take off for Las Vegas.
+I'm taking his advice, tell him; I'm going to carouse and throw my
+money away and look at dancing girls and smoke and drink and stay out
+late. I'll let the local office know where I'm staying when I get
+there, just in case something comes up."
+
+"O.K.," Pelham said unhappily. "I'll check you out." He tried a smile,
+but it looked more like the blank expression on the face of a local
+corpse. "Have fun," he said.
+
+"Thanks," Malone said. "I'll try."
+
+But his precognitive sense suddenly rose up on its hind legs as he
+broke the connection. The attempt to have fun, it told him in no
+uncertain terms, was going to be a morbid failure.
+
+"Nevertheless," Malone muttered, heaved a great sigh, and started for
+the suitcase and the door.
+
+
+VIII
+
+The Great Universal was not the tops in every field. Not by a long
+shot. As Las Vegas resorts went, as a matter of fact, almost any of
+them could outdo the Great Universal in one respect or another. The
+Golden Palace, for instance, had much gaudier gaming rooms. The
+Moonbeam had a louder orchestra. The Barbary Coast and the Ringing
+Welkin both had more slot machines, and it was undeniable that the
+Flower of the West had fatter and pinker dancing girls. The Red Hot,
+the Last Fling and the Double Star all boasted more waiters and more
+famous guests per square foot of breathable air.
+
+But the Great Universal, in sheer size, volume of business and
+elegance of surroundings, outdid any three of the others combined. It
+stood grandly alone at the edge of the Strip, the grandiloquent Las
+Vegas version of Broadway or Hollywood Boulevard. It had a central
+Tower that climbed thirty stories into the clean desert air, and the
+Tower was surrounded by a quarter of a square mile of single-level
+structures. At the base, the building spread out for five hundred feet
+in every direction, and beyond that were the clusters of individual
+cabins interlaced by walks, small parks, an occasional pool, and a few
+little groves of trees "for privacy and the feeling of oneness with
+Nature," the brochure said. But the brochure didn't even do justice to
+the place. Nothing could have except the popping eyes of the thousand
+of tourists who saw the Great Universal every month. And they were
+usually in no condition to sit down and talk calmly about it.
+
+Around the entire collection of buildings rose a wall that fitted the
+architectural style of the place perfectly. A Hollywood writer out for
+a three-day bender had called it "Futuristic Mediaeval," since it
+seemed to be a set-designer's notion of Camelot combined with a
+Twenty-fifth Century city as imagined by Frank R. Paul. It had
+Egyptian designs on it, but no one knew exactly why. On the other
+hand, of course, there was no real reason why not.
+
+That was not the only decoration. Emblazoned on the Tower, in huge
+letters of evershifting color, was a glowing sign larger than the eye
+could believe. The sign proclaimed through daylight and the darkest
+night: Great Universal Hotel. Malone had no doubts about it.
+
+There was a running argument as to whether or not the Great Universal
+was actually on the Strip. Certainly the original extent of the Strip
+didn't include it. But the Strip itself had been spreading Westward at
+a slow but steady pace for two decades, and the only imaginable
+stopping-point was the California border.
+
+Malone had taken a taxi from the airfield, and had supplied himself
+with silver dollars there. He gave the cabbie one of them and added
+another when the man's expression showed real pain. Still unhappy but
+looking a little less like a figure out of the Great Depression, the
+cabbie gunned his machine away, leaving Malone standing in the carport
+surrounded by suitcases and bags of all sizes and weights.
+
+A robot redcap came gliding along. Inevitably, it was gilded, and
+looked absolutely brand new. Behind it, a chunky little man with
+bright eyes waved at Malone. "Reserved here?" he said.
+
+"That's right," Malone said. "The name is Malone."
+
+The redcap's escort shrugged. "I don't care if the name is Jack the
+Ripper," he said. "Just reservations, that's all I care."
+
+Malone watched the luggage being stowed away, and followed after the
+redcap and its escort with mixed feelings. Las Vegas glittered like
+mad, but the two inhabitants he had met so far seemed a little dim.
+However, he told himself, better things might turn up.
+
+Better things did, almost immediately. In the great lobby of the
+Tower, guests were lounging about in little groups. Many of the guests
+were dressed in tuxedos, others in sport shirts and slacks. Quite a
+number were wearing dresses, skirt-and-blouse combinations or evening
+gowns, and Malone paid most of his attention to these.
+
+New York, Washington and even Chicago had nothing to match them, he
+thought dazedly. They were magnificent, and almost frightening in
+their absolute beauty. Malone however, was not easily daunted. He
+followed a snappily-dressed bellman to the registration desk while his
+robot purred gently after him. First things first, he thought--but
+making friends with the other guests definitely came up number two. Or
+three, anyhow, he amended sadly.
+
+He signed his own name to the register, but didn't add: "Federal
+Bureau of Investigation" after it. After all, he thought, he was there
+unofficially. And even though gambling was perfectly legal in Nevada,
+the thought of the FBI still made many of the club owners just the
+least little bit nervous. Instead, Malone gave a Chicago firm as his
+business address--one which the FBI used as a cover for just such
+purposes.
+
+The clerk looked at him politely and blankly. "A room in the Tower,
+sir?" he said.
+
+Malone shook his head. "Ground floor," he said. "But not too far from
+the Tower. I get airsick easily."
+
+The clerk gave Malone a large laugh, which made him uncomfortable and
+a little angry. The joke hadn't been all that good, he thought. If
+he'd ordered a top-price room he could understand the hospitality, but
+the most expensive rooms were in the Tower, with the outside cabins
+running a close second. The other rooms dropped in price as they
+approached the periphery of the main building.
+
+"A humorist, sir?" the clerk said.
+
+"Not at all," Malone said pleasantly, wishing he'd signed with his
+full occupation and address. "I'm a gravedigger. Business has been
+very good this year."
+
+The clerk, apparently undecided as to whether or not to offer
+congratulations, settled for consulting his registry and then stabbing
+at a button on a huge and complex board at his right. A key slid out
+of a slot and the clerk handed it to Malone with a rather strained
+smile. "10-Q," he said.
+
+"You're very welcome," Malone said in his most unctuous tones. He took
+the key.
+
+The clerk blinked. "The bellman will take you to your rooms, sir," he
+said in a good imitation of his original voice. "There are maps of the
+building at intervals along the halls, and if you find that you have
+become lost you have only to ask one of the hall guides to show you
+the proper directions."
+
+"My, my," Malone said.
+
+The clerk cleared his throat. "If you wish to use one of the cars," he
+went on in a slightly more unsteady voice, "simply insert your key in
+the slot beneath one of the wall maps, and a car will be at your
+service."
+
+Malone shook his head and gave a deep sigh. "What," he said, "will
+they think of next?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Satisfied with that for an exit line, he turned and found that the
+bellman had already taken his luggage from the robot redcap and put it
+aboard a small electric car. Malone got in beside him and the bellman
+started the vehicle down the hallway. It rolled along on soft, silent
+tires. It, too, was gilded. It didn't move very fast, Malone thought,
+but it certainly beat walking.
+
+Each hallway which radiated out from the central section beneath the
+Tower was built like a small-edition city street. The little cars
+scooted up and down the two center lanes while pedestrians, poor
+benighted souls, kept to the side walkways. Every so often Malone saw
+one, walking along the raised walkway and holding the rail along the
+outside that was meant to keep guests of every stage of drunkenness
+from falling into the road. At the intersections, small,
+Japanese-style bridges crossed over the roadway. On these, Malone saw
+uniformed men standing motionless, one to a bridge. They all looked
+identical, and each one had a small gold stripe sewn to the chest of
+the red uniform. Malone read the letters on the stripe as they passed
+the third man. It said: _Guide_.
+
+"Now, you live in Q-wing, sir," the bellman was saying in a nasal, but
+rather pleasant voice as Malone looked away. "You're not far from the
+Tower Lobby, so you won't have a lot to remember. It's not like living
+along, say, the D-E Passageway out near 20 or 23."
+
+"I'm sure it isn't," Malone said politely.
+
+"No," the bellman said, "you got it simple. This here is Q-Yellow--see
+the yellow stripe on the wall?"
+
+Malone looked. There was a yellow stripe on the wall. "I see it," he
+said.
+
+"So all you got to do," the bellman said, "is follow Q-Yellow to the
+Tower Lobby." He acted as if he had demonstrated a Euclidean
+proposition flawlessly. "Got it?" he asked.
+
+"Very simple," Malone said.
+
+"O.K.," the bellman said. "Now, the gaming rooms--"
+
+Malone listened with about a fifth of an ear while the bellman went on
+spinning out incredibly complex directions for getting around in the
+quasi-city that was the Great Universal. At one point he thought he
+caught the man saying that an elephant ramp took guests past the
+resplendent glass rest rooms to the roots of the roulette wheel, but
+that didn't sound even remotely plausible when he considered it. At
+last the bellman announced:
+
+"Here we are, sir. Right to your door. A courtesy of the friendly
+Great Universal Hotel."
+
+He pulled over to the side, pushed a button on the sidewalk, and the
+little car's body elevated itself on hydraulic pistons until it was
+even with the elevated sidewalk. The bellman pushed a stud on the
+walkway rail and a gate swung open. Malone stepped out and waited
+while luggage was unloaded. The courtesy of the Great Universal Hotel
+was not free, of course; Malone got rid of some more silver dollars.
+He fished in his pockets, found one lone crumpled ten-dollar bill and
+arranged it neatly and visibly in his right hand.
+
+"I notice you've got a lot of guides in the halls," he said as the
+bellman eyed the ten-spot. "Do that many people get lost in here?"
+
+"Well, not really, sir," the bellman said. "Not really. That's for
+the--what they call the protection of our guests. A courtesy."
+
+"Protection?" Malone said. He had noticed, he recalled, odd bulges
+beneath the left armpits of the guides. "Protection from what?" he
+asked, keeping a firm, loving grip on the bill. "There are a lot more
+guides than you'd expect, aren't there?"
+
+The bellman shifted uneasily from foot to foot. "Well, sir," he said
+at last in an uneasy manner, "I guess it's because of the politics
+around here. I mean, it's sort of confused."
+
+"Confused how?" Malone said, waving the bill ever so slightly.
+
+The bellman appeared to be hypnotized by its green color. "It's the
+governor shooting himself," he said at last. "And the Legislature
+wants to impeach the Lieutenant-governor, and the City Council of Las
+Vegas is having trouble with the Mayor, and the County Sheriff is
+having a feud with the State Police, and--Sir, it's all sort of
+confused right now. But it isn't serious." He grinned hopefully.
+
+Malone sighed and let go of the ten. It stayed fluttering in the air
+for perhaps a tenth of a second, and disappeared. "I'm sure it isn't,"
+Malone said. "Just forget I asked you."
+
+The bellman's hand went to his pocket and came out again empty. "Asked
+me, sir?" he said. "Asked me what?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next fifteen minutes were busy ones. Malone made himself quickly
+at home, keeping his eyes open for hidden TV cameras or other forms of
+bugging. Satisfied at last that he was entirely alone, he took a deep
+breath, closed his eyes and teleported himself to Yucca Flats.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+This time, he didn't land in Dr. O'Connor's office. Instead, he opened
+his eyes in the hallway in the nearby building that housed the
+psychologists, psychiatrists and psychotherapists who were working
+with the telepaths Malone and the FBI had unearthed two years before.
+
+Apparently, telepathy was turning out to be more a curse than a
+blessing. Of the seven known telepaths in the world, only Her Majesty
+retained anything like the degree of sanity necessary for
+communication. The psych men who were working with the other six had
+been trying to establish some kind of rapport, but their efforts so
+far had been as fruitless as a petrified tree.
+
+Malone went down the hallway until he came to a door near the end. He
+looked at the sign painted on the opaqued glass for a second:
+
+                 ALAN MARSHALL, M.D.
+                   CHIEF OF STAFF
+                PSYCHOLOGY DEPARTMENT
+
+With a slight sigh, he pushed open the door and went in.
+
+Dr. Marshall was a tall, balding man with a light-brown brush mustache
+and a pleasant smile. He wore thick glasses but he didn't look at all
+scholarly; instead, he looked rather like Alec Guinness made up for a
+role as a Naval lieutenant. He rose as Malone entered, and stretched a
+hand across the desk. "Glad to see you, Sir Kenneth," he said. "Very
+glad."
+
+Malone shook hands and raised his eyebrows. "_Sir_ Kenneth?" he said.
+
+Dr. Marshall shrugged slightly. "She prefers it," he said. "And since
+there's no telling whose mind she might look into--" He smiled. "After
+all," he finished, "why not?"
+
+"Tell me, doctor," Malone said. "Don't you ever get uneasy about the
+fact that Her Majesty can look into your mind? I mean, it has
+disturbed some people."
+
+"Not at all," Marshall said. "Not in the least. After all, Sir
+Kenneth, it's all a matter of adjustment. Simple adjustment and no
+more." He paused, then added: "Like sex."
+
+"Sex?" Malone said in a voice he hoped was calm.
+
+"Cultural mores," Marshall said. "That sort of thing. Nothing,
+really." He sat down. "Make yourself comfortable," he told Malone. "As
+a matter of fact, the delusion Her Majesty suffers from has its
+compensations for the psychiatrist. Where else could I be appointed
+Royal Psychiatrist, Advisor to the Crown, and Earl Marshal?"
+
+Malone looked around, found a comfortable chair and dropped into it.
+"I suppose so," he said. "It must be sort of fun, in a way."
+
+"Oh, it is," Marshall said. "Of course, it can get to be specifically
+troublesome; all cases can. I remember a girl who'd managed to get
+herself married to the wrong man--she was trying to escape her mother,
+or some such thing. And she'd moved into this apartment where her
+next-door neighbor, a nice woman really, had rather strange sexual
+tendencies. Well, what with those problems, and the husband himself--a
+rather ill-tempered brute, but a nice fellow basically--and her
+eventually meeting Mr. Right, which was inevitable--"
+
+"I'm sure it was very troublesome," Malone put in.
+
+"Extremely," Marshall said. "Worked out in the end, though. Ah ...
+most of them do seem to, when we're lucky. When things break right."
+
+"And when they don't?" Malone said.
+
+Marshall shook his head slowly and rubbed at his forehead with two
+fingers. "We do what we can," he said. "It's an infant science. I
+remember one rather unhappy case--started at a summer theatre, but the
+complications didn't stop there. As I recall, there were something
+like seven women and three men involved deeply before it began to
+straighten itself out. My patient was a young boy. Ah ... he had
+actually precipitated the situation, or was convinced that he had. All
+basically nice people, by the way. All of them. But the kind of thing
+they managed to get mixed up in--"
+
+"I'm sure it was interesting," Malone said. "But--"
+
+"Oh, they're all interesting," Marshall said. "But for sheer
+complexity ... well, this is an unusual sort of case, the one I'm
+thinking about now. I remember it began with a girl named Ned--"
+
+"Dr. Marshall," Malone said desperately, "I'd like to hear about a
+girl named Ned. I really would. It doesn't even sound probable."
+
+"Ah?" Dr. Marshall said. "I'd like to tell you--"
+
+"Unfortunately," Malone went on doggedly, "there is some business I've
+got to talk over."
+
+Dr. Marshall's disappointment was evident for less than a second.
+"Yes, Sir Kenneth?" he said.
+
+Malone took a deep breath. "It's about Her Majesty's mental state," he
+said. "I understand that a lot of it is complicated, and I probably
+wouldn't understand it. But can you give me as much as you think I can
+digest?"
+
+Marshall nodded slowly. "Ah ... you must understand that psychiatrists
+differ," he said. "We appear to run in schools--like fish, which is
+neither here nor there. But what I tell you might not be in accord
+with a psychiatrist from another school, Sir Kenneth."
+
+"O.K.," Malone said. "Shoot."
+
+"An extremely interesting slang word, by the way," Marshall said.
+"'Shoot.' Superficially an invitation to violence. I wonder--" A
+glance from Malone was sufficient. "Getting back to the track,
+however," he went on, "I should begin by saying that Her Majesty
+appears to have suffered a shock of traumatic proportions early in
+life. That might be the telepathic faculty itself coming to the
+fore--or, rather, the realization that others did not share her
+faculty. That she was, in fact, in communication with a world which
+could never reach her on her own deepest and most important level." He
+paused. "Are you following me so far?" he asked.
+
+"Gamely," Malone admitted. "In other words, when she couldn't
+communicate, she went into this traumatic shock."
+
+"Nor exactly," Marshall said. "We must understand what communication
+is. Basically, Sir Kenneth, we can understand it as a substitute for
+sexual activity. That is, in its deepest sense. It is this attack on
+the deepest levels of the psychic organism that results in the trauma;
+and has results of its own, by the way, which succeed in stabilizing
+the traumatic shock on several levels."
+
+Malone blinked. "That last part began to get me a little," he said.
+"Can we go over it again, just the tune this time and leave out the
+harmony?"
+
+Marshall smiled. "Certainly," he said. "Remember that Her Majesty has
+been locked up in institutions since early adolescence. Because of
+this--a direct result of the original psychosis--she has been
+deprived, not only of the communication which serves as a sublimation
+for sexual activity, but, in fact, any normal sexual activity. Her
+identification of herself with the Virgin Queen is far from
+accidental, Sir Kenneth."
+
+The idea that conservation was sex was a new and somewhat frightening
+one to Malone, but he stuck to it grimly. "No sex," Malone said.
+"That's the basic trouble."
+
+Marshall nodded. "It always is," he said. "In one form or another, Sir
+Kenneth; it is at the root of such problems at all times. But in Her
+Majesty's case the psychosis has become stabilized; she is the Virgin
+Queen, and therefore her failure to become part of the normal sexual
+activity of her group has a reason. It is accepted on that basis by
+her own psyche."
+
+"I see," Malone said. "Or, anyhow, I think I do. But how about
+changes? Could she get worse or better? Could she start lying to
+people--for the fun of it, or for reasons of her own?"
+
+"Changes in her psychic state don't seem very probable," Marshall
+said. "In theory, of course, anything is possible; but in fact, I have
+observed and worked with Her Majesty and no such change has occurred.
+You may take that as definite."
+
+"And the lying?" Malone said.
+
+Marshall frowned slightly. "I've just explained," he said, "that Her
+Majesty has been blocked in the direction of communication--that is,
+in the direction of one of her most important sexual sublimations.
+Such communication as she can have, therefore, is to be highly
+treasured by her; it provides the nearest thing to sex that she may
+have. As the Virgin Queen, she may still certainly _converse_ in any
+way possible. She would not injure that valuable possession and right
+by falsifying it. It's quite impossible, Sir Kenneth. Quite
+impossible."
+
+This did not make Malone feel any better. It removed one of the two
+possibilities--but it left him with no vacation, and the most
+complicated case he had ever dreamed of sitting squarely in his lap
+and making rude faces at him.
+
+He had to solve the case--and he had nobody but himself to depend on.
+
+"You're sure?" he said.
+
+"Perfectly sure, Sir Kenneth," Marshall said.
+
+Malone sighed. "Well, then," he said, "can I see Her Majesty?" He knew
+perfectly well that he didn't have to ask Marshall's permission--or
+anybody else's. But it seemed more polite, somehow.
+
+"She's receiving Dr. Sheldon Lord in audience just at the moment,"
+Marshall said. "I don't see why you shouldn't go on to the Throne
+Room, though. He's giving her some psychological tests, but they ought
+to be finished in a minute or two."
+
+"Fine," Malone said. "How about court dress? Got anything here that
+might fit me?"
+
+Marshall nodded. "We've got a pretty complete line of court costume
+now," he said. "I should say it was the most complete in
+existence--except possibly for the TV historical companies. Down the
+hall, three doors farther on, you'll find the dressing room."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Malone thanked Dr. Marshall and went out slowly. He didn't really mind
+the court dress or the Elizabethan etiquette Her Majesty liked to
+preserve; as a matter of fact, he was rather fond of it. There had
+been some complaints about expense when the Throne Room and the
+costume arrangement were first set up, but the FBI and the Government
+had finally decided that it was better and easier to humor Her
+Majesty.
+
+Malone spent ten minutes dressing himself magnificently in hose and
+doublet, slash-sleeved, ermine-trimmed coat, lace collar, and plumed
+hat. By the time he presented himself at the door to the Throne Room
+he felt almost cheerful. It had been a long time since he had entered
+the world of Elizabethan knighthood over which Her Majesty held sway,
+and it always made him feel taller and more sure of himself. He bowed
+to a chunkily-built man of medium height in a stiffly brocaded jacket,
+carrying a small leather briefcase. The man had a whaler's beard of
+blond-red hair that looked slightly out of period, but the costume
+managed to overpower it. "Dr. Lord?" Malone said.
+
+The bearded man peered at him. "Ah, Sir Kenneth," he said. "Yes, yes.
+Just been giving Her Majesty a few tests. Normal weekly check, you
+know."
+
+"I know," Malone said. "Any change?"
+
+"Change?" Lord said. "In Her Majesty? Sir Kenneth, you might as well
+expect the very rocks to change. Her Majesty remains Her Majesty--and
+will, in all probability, throughout the foreseeable future."
+
+"The same as ever?" Malone asked hopefully.
+
+"Exactly," Lord said. "But--if you do want background on the case--I'm
+flying back to New York tonight. Look me up there, if you have a
+chance. I'm afraid there's little information I can give you, but it's
+always a pleasure to talk with you."
+
+"Thanks," Malone said dully.
+
+"Barrow Street," Lord said with a cheery wave of the briefcase.
+"Number 69." He was gone. The Security Officer at the door, a young
+man in the uniform of a page, opened it and peered out at Malone. The
+FBI Agent nodded to him and the Security Officer announced in a firm,
+loud voice: "Sir Kenneth Malone, of Her Majesty's Own FBI!"
+
+The Throne Room was magnificent. The whole place had been done in
+plastic and synthetic fibers to look like something out of the
+Sixteenth Century. It was as garish, and as perfect, as a Hollywood
+movie set--which wasn't surprising, since two stage designers had been
+hired away from color-TV spectaculars to set it up. At the far end of
+the room, past the rich hangings and the flaming chandeliers, was a
+great golden throne, and on it Her Majesty was seated.
+
+Lady Barbara Wilson, Her Majesty's personal nurse, was sitting on a
+camp-chair arrangement nearby. She smiled slowly at Malone as he went
+by, and Malone returned the smile with a good deal of interest. He
+strode firmly down the long crimson carpet that stretched from the
+doorway to the throne. At the steps leading up toward the dais that
+held the Throne, his free hand went up and swept off the plumed hat.
+He sank to one knee.
+
+"Your Majesty," he said gravely.
+
+The queen looked down on him. "Rise, Sir Kenneth," she said in a tone
+of surprise. "We welcome your presence."
+
+Malone got up off his knee and stood, his hat in his hand.
+
+"What is your business with us?" Her Majesty asked.
+
+Malone looked her full in the face for the first time. He realized
+that her expression was rather puzzled and worried. She looked even
+more confused than she had the last time he'd seen her.
+
+He took a deep breath, wished for a cigar and plunged blindly ahead
+into the toils of court etiquette.
+
+"Your Majesty," he said, "I know full well that you are aware of the
+thoughts that I have had concerning the case we have been working on.
+I beg Your Majesty's pardon for having doubted Your Majesty's Royal
+Word. Since my first doubts, of which I am sore ashamed, I have been
+informed by Our Majesty's Royal Psychiatrist that my doubts were
+ill-founded, and I wish to convey my deepest apologies. Now, having
+been fully convinced of the truth of Your Majesty's statements, I have
+a theory I would discuss with you, the particulars of which you can
+doubtless see in my mind."
+
+He paused. Her Majesty was staring at him, her face pale.
+
+"Sir Kenneth," she said in a strained voice, "we appreciate your
+attitude. However--" She paused for a moment, and then continued.
+"However, Sir Kenneth, it is our painful duty to inform you--"
+
+She stopped again. And when she managed to speak, she had dropped all
+pretense of Court Etiquette.
+
+"Sir Kenneth, I've been so worried! I was afraid you were dead!"
+
+Malone blinked. "Dead?" he asked.
+
+"For the past twenty-four hours," Her Majesty said in a frightened
+voice, "I've been unable to contact your mind. And right now, as you
+stand there, I can't read anything!
+
+"It's as though you weren't thinking at all!"
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+PART 3
+
+IX
+
+Malone stared at Her Majesty for what seemed like a long time. "Not
+thinking at all?" he said at last, weakly. "But I _am_ thinking. At
+least, I _think_ I am." He suddenly felt as if he had gone Rene
+Descartes one better. It wasn't a pleasant feeling.
+
+Her Majesty regarded Malone for an interminable, silent second. Then
+she turned to Lady Barbara. "My dear," she said, "I would like to
+speak to Sir Kenneth alone. We will go to my chambers."
+
+Malone, feeling as though his brain had suddenly turned to quince
+jelly, followed the two women out of a small door at the rear of the
+Throne Room, and into Her Majesty's private apartments. Lady Barbara
+left them alone with some reluctance, but she'd evidently been getting
+used to following her patient's orders. Which, Malone thought with
+admiration, must take a lot of effort for a nurse.
+
+The door closed and he was alone with the Queen. Malone opened his
+mouth to speak, but Her Majesty raised a monitory hand. "Please, Sir
+Kenneth," she said. "Just a moment. Don't say anything for a little
+bit."
+
+Malone shut his mouth. When the minute was up, Her Majesty began to
+nod her head, very slowly. Her voice, when she spoke, was low and
+calm.
+
+"It's as though you were almost invisible," she said. "I can see you
+with my eyes, of course, but mentally you are almost completely
+indetectable. Knowing you as well as I do, and being this close to
+you, it is just possible for me to detect very faint traces of
+activity."
+
+"Now, wait a minute," Malone said. "I am thinking. I know I am. Maybe
+it's not me. Your telepathy might be fading out temporarily, or
+something like that. It's possible, isn't it?" He was reasonably sure
+it wasn't, but it was a last try at making sense. Her Majesty shook
+her head.
+
+"I can still receive Sir Thomas, for instance, quite clearly," she
+said. She seemed a little miffed, but the irritation was overpowered
+by her worry. "I think, Sir Kenneth, that you just don't know your own
+power, that's all. I don't know how, but you've managed somehow to
+smother telepathic communication almost completely."
+
+"But not quite?" Malone said. Apparently, he was thinking, but very
+weakly. Like a small child, he told himself dismally. Like a small
+Elizabethan child.
+
+Her Majesty's face took on a look of faraway concentration. "It's like
+looking at a very dim light," she said, "a light just at the threshold
+of perception. You might say that you've got to look at such a light
+sideways. If you look directly at it, you can't see it. And, of
+course, you can't see it at all if you're a long way off." She
+blinked. "It's not exactly like that, you understand," she finished.
+"But in some ways--"
+
+"I get the idea," Malone said. "Or I think I do. But what's causing
+it? Sunspots? Little green men?"
+
+"Not so little," Her Majesty said with some return of her old humor,
+"and not green, either. As a matter of fact, _you_ are, Sir Kenneth."
+
+Malone opened his mouth, shut it again and finally managed to say:
+"Me?" in a batlike squeal of surprise.
+
+"I don't know how, Sir Kenneth," Her Majesty went on, "but you are.
+It's ... rather frightening to me, as a matter of fact; I've never
+seen such a thing before. I've never even considered it before."
+
+"You?" Malone said. "How about me?" It was like suddenly discovering
+that you'd been lifting two-hundred-pound barbells and not knowing it.
+"How could I be doing anything like that without knowing anything
+about it?"
+
+Her Majesty shook her head. "I haven't the faintest idea," she said.
+
+But Malone, very suddenly, did. He remembered deciding to keep a close
+check on his mental processes to make sure those bursts of energy
+didn't do anything to him. Subconsciously, he knew, he was still
+keeping that watch.
+
+And maybe the watch itself caused the complete blanking of his
+telepathic faculties. It was worth a test, at least, he decided. And
+it was an easy test to make.
+
+"Listen," he said. He told himself that he would now allow
+communication between himself and Her Majesty--and only between those
+two. Maybe it wasn't possible to let down the barrier in a selective
+way, but he gave it all he had. A long second passed.
+
+"My goodness!" Her Majesty said in pleased surprise. "There you are
+again!"
+
+"You can read me?" Malone asked.
+
+"Why ... yes," Her Majesty said. "And I can see just what you're
+thinking. I'm afraid, Sir Kenneth, that I don't know whether it's
+selective or not. But ... oh. Just a minute. You go right on thinking,
+now, just the way you are." Her Majesty's eyes unfocused slightly and
+a long time passed, while Malone tried to keep on thinking. But it was
+difficult, he told himself, to think about things without having any
+things to think about. He felt his mind begin to spin gently with the
+rhythm of the last sentence, and he considered slowly the possibility
+of thinking about things when there weren't any things thinking about
+you. That seemed to make as much sense as anything else, and he was
+turning it over and over in his mind when a voice broke in.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I was contacting Willie," Her Majesty said.
+
+"Ah," Malone said. "Willie. Of course. Very fine for contacting."
+
+Her Majesty frowned. "You remember Willie, don't you?" she said.
+"Willie Logan--who used to be a spy for the Russians, just because he
+didn't know any better, poor boy?"
+
+"Oh," Malone said. "Logan." He remembered the catatonic youngster who
+had used his telepathic powers against the United States until Her
+Majesty, the FBI, and Kenneth J. Malone had managed to put matters
+right. That had been the first time he'd met Her Majesty; it seemed
+like fifty years before.
+
+"Well," Her Majesty said, "Willie and I had a little argument just
+now. And I think you'll be interested in it."
+
+"I'm fascinated," Malone said.
+
+"Was he thinking about things or were things thinking about him?"
+
+"Really, Sir Kenneth," Her Majesty said, "you do think about the
+silliest notions when you don't watch yourself."
+
+Malone blushed slightly. "Anyhow," he said after a pause, "what was
+the argument about?"
+
+"Willie says you aren't here," Her Majesty said. "He can't detect you
+at all. Even when I let him take a peek at you through my own
+mind--making myself into sort of a relay station, so to speak--Willie
+wouldn't believe it. He said I was hallucinating."
+
+"Hallucinating me?" Malone said. "I think I'm flattered. Not many
+people would bother."
+
+"Don't underestimate yourself, Sir Kenneth," Her Majesty said, rather
+severely. "But you do see what this little argument means, don't you?
+I think you may assume that your telepathic contact is quite
+selective. If Willie can't read you, Sir Kenneth, believe me, nobody
+at all can ... unless you let them."
+
+How he had developed this mental shield, he couldn't imagine, unless
+his subconscious had done it for him. Good old subconscious, he
+thought, always looking out for a person's welfare, preparing little
+surprises and things. Though he hoped vaguely that the next surprise,
+if there were a next one, would sneak up a little more gently. Being
+told flatly that your mind was not in operation was not a very good
+way to start an investigation.
+
+Then he thought of something else. "Do you think this ... barrier of
+mine will keep out those little bursts of mental energy?" he said.
+
+Her Majesty looked judicious. "I really do," she said. "It does appear
+quite impenetrable, Sir Kenneth. I can't understand how you're doing
+it. Or why, for that matter."
+
+"Well--" Malone began.
+
+Her Majesty raised a hand. "No," she said. "I'd rather not know, if
+you please." Her voice was stern, but just a little shaken. "The
+thought of blocking off thought--the only real form of communication
+that exists--is, frankly, quite horrible to me. I would rather be
+blinded, Sir Kenneth. I truly would."
+
+Malone thought of Dr. Marshall and blushed. Her Majesty peered at him
+narrowly, and then smiled.
+
+"You've been talking to my Royal Psychiatrist again, haven't you?" she
+said. Malone nodded. "Frankly, Sir Kenneth," she went on, "I think
+people pay too much attention to that sort of thing nowadays."
+
+The subject, Malone recognized, was firmly closed. He cleared his
+throat and started up another topic. "Let's talk about these energy
+bursts," he said. "Do you still pick them up occasionally?"
+
+"Oh, my, yes," Her Majesty said. "And it's not only me. Willie has
+been picking them up too. We've had some long talks about it, Willie
+and I. It's frightening, in a way, but you must admit that it's very
+interesting."
+
+"Fascinating," Malone muttered. "Tell me, have you figured out what
+they might be, yet?"
+
+Her Majesty shook her head. "All we know is that they do seem to occur
+just before a person intends to make a decision. The burst somehow
+appears to influence the decision. But we don't know how, and we don't
+know where they come from, or what causes them. Or even why."
+
+"In other words," Malone said, "we know absolutely nothing new."
+
+"I'm afraid not, Sir Kenneth," Her Majesty said. "But Willie and I do
+intend to keep working on it. It is important, isn't it?"
+
+"Important," Malone said, "is not the word." He paused. "And now, if
+your Majesty will excuse me," he said, "I'll have to go. I have work
+to do, and your information has been most helpful."
+
+"You may go, Sir Kenneth," Her Majesty said, returning with what
+appeared to be real pleasure to the etiquette of the Elizabethan
+Court. "We are grateful that you have done so much, and continue to do
+so much, to defend the peace of Our Realm."
+
+"I pledge myself to continue in those efforts which please Your
+Majesty," Malone said, and started back for the costume room. Once
+he'd changed into his regular clothing again he snapped himself back
+to the room he had rented in the Great Universal. He had a great deal
+of thinking to do, he told himself, and not much time to do it in.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+However, he was alone. That meant he could light up a cigar--something
+which, as an FBI Agent, he didn't feel he should do in public. Cigars
+just weren't right for FBI Agents, though they were all right for
+ordinary detectives like Malone's father. As a matter of fact, he
+considered briefly hunting up a vest, putting it on and letting the
+cigar ash dribble over it. His father seemed to have gotten a lot of
+good ideas that way. But, in the end, he rejected the notion as being
+too complicated, and merely sat back in a chair, with an ashtray
+conveniently on a table by his side, and smoked and thought.
+
+Now, he knew with reasonable certainty that Andrew J. Burris was wrong
+and that he, Malone, was right. The source of all the confusion in the
+country was due to psionics, not to psychodrugs and Walt Disney spies.
+
+His first idea was to rush back and tell Burris. However, this looked
+like a useless move, and every second he thought about it made it seem
+more useless. He simply didn't have enough new evidence to convince
+Burris of anything whatever; psychiatric evidence was fine to back up
+something else, but on its own it was still too shaky to be accepted
+by the courts, in most cases. And Burris thought even more strictly
+than the courts in such matters.
+
+Not only that, Malone realized with alarm, but even if he did manage
+somehow to convince Burris there was very little chance that Burris
+would stay convinced. If his mind could be changed by a burst of wild
+mental power--and why not? Malone reflected--then he could be
+unconvinced as often as necessary. He could be spun round and round
+like a top and never end up facing the way Malone needed him to face.
+
+That left the burden of solving the problem squatting like a
+hunchback's hunch squarely on Malone's shoulders. He thought he could
+bear the weight for a while, if he could only think of some way of
+dislodging it. But the idea of its continuing to squat there forever
+was horribly unnerving. "Quasimodo Malone," he muttered, and uttered a
+brief prayer of thanks that his father had been spared a classical
+education. "Ken" wasn't so bad. "Quasi" would have been awful.
+
+He couldn't think of any way to get a fingerhold on the thing that
+weighed him down. Slowly, he went over it in his mind.
+
+Situation: an unidentifiable something is attacking the United States
+with an untraceable something else from a completely unknown source.
+
+Problem: how do you go about latching on to anything as downright
+nonexistent as all that?
+
+Even the best detective, Malone told himself irritably, needed clues
+of some kind. And this thing, whatever it was, was not playing fair.
+It didn't go around leaving bloody fingerprints or lipsticked
+cigarette butts or packets of paper matches with _Ciro's, Hollywood_,
+written on them. It didn't even have an alibi for anything that could
+be cracked, or leave tire marks or footprints behind that could be
+photographed. Hell, Malone thought disgustedly, it wasn't that the
+trail was cold. It just _wasn't_.
+
+Of course, there were ways to get clues, he reflected. He thought of
+his father. His father would have gone to the scene of the crime, or
+questioned some of the witnesses. But the scene of the crime was
+anywhere and everywhere, and most of the witnesses didn't know they
+were witnessing anything. Except for Her Majesty, of course--but he'd
+already questioned her, and there hadn't been any clues he could
+recall in that conversation.
+
+Malone stubbed out his cigar, lit another one absent-mindedly, and
+rescued his tie, which was working its slow way around to the side of
+his collar. There were, he remembered, three classic divisions of any
+crime: method, motive and opportunity. Maybe thinking about those
+would lead somewhere.
+
+As an afterthought, he got up, found a pencil and paper with the
+hotel's name stamped on them in gold and came back to the chair.
+Clearing the ashtray aside, he put the paper on the table and divided
+the paper into three vertical columns with the pencil. He headed the
+first one _Method_, the second _Motive_ and the third _Opportunity_.
+
+He stared at the paper for a while, and decided with some trepidation
+to take the columns one by one. Under _Method_, he put down: "Little
+bursts. Who knows cause?" Some more thought gave him another item, and
+he set it down under the first one: "Psionic. Look for psionic
+people?"
+
+That apparently was all there was to the first column. After a while
+he moved to number two, _Motive_. "Confuse things," he wrote with
+scarcely a second's reflection. But that didn't seem like enough. A
+few minutes more gave him several other items, written down one under
+the other. "Disrupt entire US. Set US up for invasion? Martians?
+Russians? CK: Is Russia having trble?" That seemed to exhaust the
+subject and with some relief he went on. But the title of the next
+column nearly stopped him completely.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+_Opportunity._ There wasn't anything he could put down under that one,
+Malone told himself, until he knew a great deal more about method. As
+things stood at present, the best entry under _Opportunity_ was a
+large, tastefully done question mark. He made one, and then sat back
+to look at the entire list and see what help it gave him:
+
+_Method_
+Little bursts. Who knows cause?
+Psionic. Look for psionic people?
+
+_Motive_
+Confuse things.
+Disrupt entire US.
+Set US up for invasion?
+Martians?
+Russians?
+CK: Is Russia having trble?
+
+_Opportunity_
+?
+
+Somehow, it didn't seem to be much help, when he thought about it. It
+had a lot of information on it, but none of the information seemed to
+lead anywhere. It did seem to be established that the purpose was to
+confuse or disrupt the United States, but this didn't seem to point to
+anybody except a Russian, an alien or a cosmic practical joker. Malone
+could see no immediate way of deciding among the trio. However, he
+told himself, there are other ways to start investigating a crime.
+There must be.
+
+Psychological methods, for instance. People had little gray cells, he
+remembered from his childhood reading. Some of the more brainy
+fictional detectives never stooped to anything so low as an actual
+physical clue. They concentrated solely on finding a pattern in the
+crimes that indicated, infallibly, the psychology of the individual.
+Once his psychology had been identified, it was only a short step to
+actually catching him and putting him in jail until his psychology
+changed for the better. Or, of course, until it disappeared entirely
+and was buried, along with the rest of him, in a small wood box.
+
+That wasn't Malone's affair. All he had to do was take the first few
+steps and actually find the man. And perhaps psychology and pattern
+was the place to start. Anyhow, he reflected, he didn't have any other
+method that looked even remotely likely to lead to anything except
+brain-fag, disappointment, and catalepsy.
+
+But he didn't have enough cases to find a pattern. There must, he
+thought, be a way to get some more. After a few seconds he thought of
+it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At first he thought of asking Room Service for all the local and
+out-of-state papers, but that, he quickly saw, was a little unwise.
+People didn't come to Las Vegas to catch up on the news; they came to
+get away from it. A man might read Las Vegas papers, and possibly even
+his home town's paper if he couldn't break himself of the pernicious
+habit. But nobody on vacation would start reading papers from
+everywhere.
+
+There was no sense in causing suspicion, Malone told himself. Instead,
+he reached for the phone and called the desk.
+
+"Great Universal, good afternoon," a pleasant voice said in his ear.
+
+Malone blinked. "What time _is_ it?" he said.
+
+"A few minutes before six," the voice said. "In the evening, sir."
+
+"Oh," Malone said. It was later than he'd thought; the list had taken
+some time. "This is Kenneth J. Malone," he went on, "in Room--" He
+tried to remember the number of his room and failed. It seemed like
+four or five days since he'd entered it. "Well, wherever I am," he
+said at last, "send up some kind of a car for me and have a taxi
+waiting outside."
+
+The voice sounded unperturbed. "Right away, sir," it said. "Will there
+be anything else?"
+
+"I guess not," Malone said. "Not now, anyhow." He hung up and stubbed
+out the latest in his series of cigars.
+
+The hallway car arrived in a few minutes. It was manned by a muscular
+little man with beady eyes and thinning black hair. "You Malone?" he
+said when the FBI Agent opened the door.
+
+"Kenneth J.," Malone said. "I called for a car."
+
+"Right outside, Chief," the little man said in a gravelly voice. "Just
+hop in and off we go into the wild blue yonder. Right?"
+
+"I guess so," Malone said helplessly. He followed the man outside,
+locked his door and climbed into a duplicate of the little car that
+had taken him to his room in the first place.
+
+"Step right in, Chief," the little man said. "We're off."
+
+Malone, overcoming an immediate distaste for the chummy little fellow,
+climbed in and the car retreated down to the road. It started off
+smoothly and they went back toward the lobby. The little man chatted
+incessantly and Malone tried not to listen. But there was nothing else
+to do except watch the gun-toting "guides" as the car passed them, and
+the sight was making him nervous.
+
+"You want anything--special," the driver said, giving Malone a blow in
+the ribs that was apparently meant to be subtle, "you just ask for
+Murray. Got it?"
+
+"I've got it," Malone said wearily.
+
+"You just pick up the little phone and you ask for Murray," the driver
+said. "Maybe you want something a little out of the ordinary--get what
+I mean?" Malone moved aside, but not fast enough, and Murray's stone
+elbow caught him again. "Something special, extra-nice. For my
+friends, pal. You want to be a friend of mine?"
+
+Assurances that friendship with Murray was Malone's dearest ambition
+in life managed to fend off further blows until the car pulled to a
+stop in the lobby. "Cab's outside, Mr. Malone," Murray said. "You
+remember me--hey?"
+
+"I will never, never forget you," Malone said fervently, and got out
+in a hurry. He found the cab and the driver, a heavy-set man with a
+face that looked as if, somewhere along the line, it had run into a
+Waring Blendor and barely escaped, swiveled around to look at him as
+he got in.
+
+"Where to, Mac?" he asked sourly.
+
+Malone shrugged. "Center of town," he said. "A nice big newsstand."
+
+The cabbie blinked. "A what?" he said.
+
+"Newsstand," Malone said pleasantly. "All right with you?"
+
+"Everybody's a little crazy, I guess," the cabbie said. "But why do I
+always get the real nuts?" He started the cab with a savage jerk and
+Malone was carried along the road at dizzying speed. They managed to
+make ten blocks before the cab squealed to a stop. Malone peered out
+and saw a nice selection of sawhorses piled up in the road, guarded by
+two men with guns. The men were dressed in police uniforms and the
+cabby, staring at them, uttered one brief and impolite word.
+
+"What's going on?" Malone said.
+
+"Roadblock," the cabbie said. "Thing's going to stay here until Hell
+freezes over. Not that they need it. Hell, I passed it on the way in
+but I figured they'd take it down pretty quick."
+
+"Roadblock?" Malone said. "What for?"
+
+The cabbie shrugged eloquently. "Who knows?" he said. "You ask
+questions, you might get answers you don't like. I don't ask
+questions, I live longer."
+
+"But--"
+
+The cops, meanwhile, had advanced toward the car. One of them looked
+in. "Who's the passenger?" he said.
+
+The cabbie swore again. "You want me to take loyalty oaths from
+people?" he said. "You want to ruin my business? I got a passenger,
+how do I know who he is? Maybe he's the Lone Ranger."
+
+"Don't get funny," the cop said. His partner had gone around to the
+back of the car.
+
+"What's this, the trunk again?" the cabbie said. "You think maybe I'm
+smuggling in showgirls from the edge of town?"
+
+"Ha, ha," the cop said distinctly. "One more joke and it's thirty
+days, buster. Just keep cool and nothing will happen."
+
+"Nothing, he calls it," the cabbie said dismally. But he stayed silent
+until the second cop came back to rejoin his partner.
+
+"Clean," he said.
+
+"Here, too, I guess," the first cop said, and looked in again. "You,"
+he said to Malone. "You a tourist?"
+
+"That's right," Malone said. "Kenneth J. Malone, at the Great
+Universal. Arrived this afternoon. What's happening here, officer?"
+
+"I'm asking questions," the cop said. "You're answering them. Outside
+of that, you don't have to know a thing." He looked very tough and
+official. Malone didn't say anything else.
+
+After a few more seconds they went back to their positions and the
+cabbie started the car again. Ten yards past the roadblock he turned
+around and looked at Malone. "It's the sheriff's office every time,"
+he said. "Now, you take a State cop, he's O.K. because what does he
+care? He's got other things to worry about, he don't have to bear down
+on hard-working cabbies."
+
+"Sure," Malone said helpfully.
+
+"And the city police--they're right here in the city, they're O.K. I
+know them, they know me, nothing goes wrong. Get what I mean?"
+
+"The sheriff's office is the worst, though?" Malone said.
+
+"The worst is nothing compared to those boys," the cabbie said.
+"Believe me, every time they can make life tough for a cabbie, they do
+it. It's hatred, that's what it is. They hate cabbies. That's the
+sheriff's office for you."
+
+"Tough," Malone said. "But the roadblock--what _was_ it for, anyhow?"
+
+The cabbie looked back at the road, avoided an oncoming car with a
+casual sweep of the wheel, and sighed gustily. "Mister," he said, "you
+don't ask questions, I don't give out answers. Fair?"
+
+There was, after all, nothing else to say. "Fair," Malone told him,
+and rode the rest of the way in total silence.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Buying the papers in Las Vegas took more time than Malone had
+bargained for. He had to hunt from store to store to get a good,
+representative selection, and there were crowds almost everywhere
+playing the omnipresent slot-machines. The whir of the machines and
+the low undertones and whispers of the bettors combined in the air to
+make what Malone considered the single most depressing sound he had
+ever heard. It sounded like a factory, old, broken-down and unwanted,
+that was geared only to the production of cigarette butts and old
+cellophane, ready-crumpled for throwing away. Malone pushed through
+the crowds as fast as possible, but nearly an hour had gone by when he
+had all his papers and hailed another cab to get him back to the
+hotel.
+
+This time, the cabbie had a smiling, shining face. He looked like
+Pollyanna, after eight or ten shots at the middleweight title. Malone
+beamed right back at him and got in. "Great Universal," he said.
+
+"Hey, that's a nice place," the cabbie said heartily, as they started
+off. "I heard there was a couple TV stars there last week and they got
+drunk and had a fight. You see that?"
+
+"Just arrived this afternoon," Malone said. "Sorry."
+
+"Oh, don't worry," the cabbie assured him. "Something's always going
+on at the Universal. I hear they posted a lot of guards there, just
+waiting for something to come up now. Something about some shooting,
+but I didn't get the straight story yet. That true?"
+
+"Far as I know," Malone said. "There's a lot of strange things
+happening lately, aren't there?"
+
+"Lots," the cabbie said eagerly. He meandered slowly around a couple
+of bright-red convertibles. "A guy owned the _Last Stand_, he killed
+himself with a gun today. It's in the papers. Listen, Mister, funny
+things happen all the time around here. I remember last week there was
+a lady in my cab, nice old bat, looked like she wouldn't take off an
+earring in public, not among strangers. You know the type. Well, sir,
+she asked me to take her on to the Golden Palace, and that's a fair
+ride. So on the way down, she--"
+
+Fascinated as he was by the unreeling story of the shy old bat, Malone
+interrupted. "I hear there's a roadblock up now, and they're searching
+all the cars. Know anything about that?"
+
+The cabbie nodded violently. "Sure, Mister," he said. "Now, it's funny
+you should ask. I hit the block once today and I was saying to myself,
+I'll bet somebody's going to ask me about this. So when I was in town
+I talked around with Si Deeds ... you know Si? Oh, no, you just
+arrived today ... anyhow, I figured Si would know."
+
+"And did he?" Malone said.
+
+"Not a thing," the cabbie said. Malone sighed disgustedly and the
+cabbie went on: "So I went over and talked to Bob Grindell. I figured,
+there was action, Bob would know. And guess what?"
+
+"He didn't know either," Malone said tiredly.
+
+"Bob?" the cabbie said. "Say, Mister, you must be new here for sure,
+if you say Bob wouldn't know what was going on. Why, Bob knows more
+about this town than guys lived in it twice as long, I'll tell you.
+Believe me, he knows."
+
+"And what did he say?" Malone asked.
+
+The cabbie paused. "About what?" he said.
+
+"About the roadblock," Malone said distinctly.
+
+"Oh," the cabbie said. "That. Well, that was a funny thing and no
+mistake. There was this fight, see? And Shellenberger got in the
+middle of it, see? So when he was dead they had to set up this
+roadblock."
+
+Malone restrained himself with some difficulty. "What fight?" he said.
+"And who's Shellenberger? And how did he get in the way?"
+
+"Mister," the cabbie said, "you must be new here."
+
+"A remarkable guess," Malone said.
+
+The cabbie nodded. "Sure must be," he said. "Gus Shellenberger's lived
+here over ten years now. I drove him around many's the time. Remember
+when he used to go out to this motel out on the outskirts there; there
+was this doll he was interested in but it never came to much. He said
+she wasn't right for his career, you know how guys like that are, they
+got to be careful all the time. Never hit the papers or anything--I
+mean with the doll and all--but people get to know things. You know.
+So with this doll--"
+
+"How long ago did all this happen?" Malone asked.
+
+"The doll?" the cabbie said. "Oh, five-six years. Maybe seven. I
+remember it was the year I got a new cab, business was pretty good,
+you know. Seven, I guess. Garage made me a price, you know, I had to
+be an idiot to turn it down? A nice price. Well, George Lamel who owns
+the place, he's an old friend, you know? I did him some favors so he
+gives me a nice price. Well, this new cab--"
+
+"Can we get back to the present for a little while?" Malone said.
+"There was this fight, and your friend Gus Shellenberger got involved
+in it somehow--"
+
+"Oh, that," the cabbie said. "Oh, sure. Well, there was a kind of
+chase. Some sheriff's officers were looking for an escaped convict,
+and they were chasing him and doing some shooting. And Shellenberger,
+he got in the way and got shot accidentally. The criminal, he got
+away. But it's kind of a mess, because--"
+
+A loud chorus of sirens effectively stopped all conversation. Two cars
+stamped with the insignia of the sheriff's office came into sight and
+streaked past, headed for Las Vegas.
+
+"Because Shellenberger was State's attorney, after all," the cabbie
+said. "It's not like just anybody got killed."
+
+"And the roadblock?" Malone said.
+
+"For the criminal, I guess," the cabbie said.
+
+Malone nodded heavily. The whole thing smelled rather loudly, he
+thought. The "accident" wasn't very plausible to start with. And a
+search for an escaped criminal that didn't even involve checking
+identification of strangers like Malone wasn't much of a search. The
+cops knew who they were looking for.
+
+And Shellenberger hadn't been killed by accident.
+
+The roadblock was down, he noticed. The sheriff's office cars had
+apparently carried the cheerful cops back to Las Vegas. Maybe they'd
+found their man, Malone thought, and maybe they just didn't care any
+more.
+
+"Wouldn't a State's attorney live in Carson City?" he asked after a
+while.
+
+"Not old Gus Shellenberger," the cabbie said. "Many's the time I
+talked with him and he said he loved this old town. Loved it. Like an
+old friend. Why, he used to say to me--"
+
+At that point the Great Universal hove into view. Malone felt
+extraordinarily grateful to see it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He went to his room with the bundle of papers in his hand and locked
+himself in. He lit a fresh cigar and started through the papers. Las
+Vegas was the one on top, and he gave it a quick going-over. Sure
+enough, the suicide of the Golden Palace owner was on page one, along
+with a lot of other local news.
+
+_Mayor Resigns Under Council Pressure_, one headline read. On page 3
+another story was headlined: _County Attorney Indicted by Grand Jury
+in Bribery Case_. And at the bottom of page 1, complete with pictures
+of baffled phone operators and linemen, was a double column spread:
+_Damage to Phone Relay Station Isolates City Five Hours_.
+
+Carson City, the State Capitol, came in for lots of interesting news,
+too. Three headlines caught Malone's attention:
+
+     LT.-GOVERNOR MORRIS SWORN IN AS GOVERNOR TWELVE MEMBERS OF
+     LEGISLATURE RESIGN
+
+     Ill Health Given As Reason
+
+     STATE'S ATTORNEY'S OFFICE: "NO COMMENT" ON RACKETS
+     CONNECTION CHARGE.
+
+The next paper was the New York Post. Malone studied the front page
+with interest:
+
+     MAYOR ORDERS ARREST OF POLICE COMM.
+
+The story on page 3 had a little more detail:
+
+     MAYOR AMALFI ORDERS ARREST OF POLICE COMMISSIONER ON
+     EVIDENCE SHOWING "COLLUSION WITH GAMBLING INTERESTS"
+
+But Malone didn't have time to read the story. Other headlines on
+pages 2 and 3 attracted his startled attention:
+
+     TWELVE DIE IN BROOKLYN GANG MASSACRE
+
+     Ricardo, Numbers Head, Among Slain
+
+     "DANGEROUS DAN" SUGRUE LINKED WITH TRUCKER'S UNION
+
+     Admits Connection "Gladly"
+
+[Illustration]
+
+     HOUSING AUTHORITY DENIES, THEN CONFESSES GRAFT CHARGE
+
+Malone wiped a streaming brow. Apparently all hell was busting loose.
+Under the _Post_ was the San Francisco _Examiner_, its crowded front
+page filled with all sorts of strange and startling news items. Malone
+looked over a few at random. A wildcat waterfront strike had been
+called off after the resignation of the union local's president. The
+"Nob Hill Mob," which had grown notorious in the past few years, had
+been rounded up and captured _in toto_ after what the paper described
+only as a "police tipoff." Two headlines caught his special attention:
+
+     BERSERK POLICE CAPTAIN KILLS TWO AIDES, SELF: CORRUPTION
+     HINTED
+
+The second hit closer to home:
+
+     FBI ARRESTS THREE STATE SENATORS ON INCOME TAX CHARGE
+
+Malone felt a pang of nostalgia. Conquering it after a brief struggle,
+he went on to the next paper. From Los Angeles, its front page showed
+that Hollywood, at least, was continuing to hold its own:
+
+     LAVISH FUNERAL PLANNED FOR WONDER DOG TOMORROW
+
+But the Washington _Times-Herald_ brought things back to the mess
+Malone had expected. All sorts of things were going on:
+
+     PRESIDENT ACCEPTS RESIGNATION OF THREE CABINET MEMBERS
+
+     New Appointees Not Yet Named
+
+     PENTAGON TO INVESTIGATE QUARTER-MASTER CORPS GRAFT
+
+     Revelations Hinted In Closed Hearing Thursday
+
+     RIOT ON SENATE FLOOR QUELLED BY GUARDS
+
+     Sen. Briggs Hospitalized
+
+     GENERAL BREGER, MISSILE BASE HEAD, DIES IN TESTING ACCIDENT
+
+     Faulty Equipment Blamed
+
+Malone put the papers down with a deep sigh. There was some kind of a
+pattern there, he was sure; there had to be. More was happening in the
+good old United States inside of twenty-four hours than ordinarily
+happened in a couple of months. The big trouble was that some of it
+was, doubtless, completely unconnected with the work of Malone's
+psychological individual. It was equally certain that some of it
+wasn't; no normal workings of chance could account for the spate of
+resignations, deaths, arrests of high officials, freak accidents and
+everything else he'd just seen.
+
+But there was no way of telling which was which. The only one he was
+reasonably sure he could leave out of his calculations was Hollywood's
+good old Wonder Dog. And when he looked at the rest all he could see
+was that confusion was rampant. Which was exactly what he'd known
+before.
+
+He remembered once, when he was a boy, his mother had taken him to an
+astronomical observatory, and he had looked at Mars through the big
+telescope, hoping to see the canals he'd heard so much about. Sure,
+enough, there had been a blurred pattern of some kind. It might have
+represented canals--but he'd been completely unable to trace any given
+line. It was like looking at a spiderweb through a sheet of frosted
+glass.
+
+He needed a clearer view, and there wasn't any way to get it without
+finding some more information. Sooner or later, he told himself,
+everything would fall into one simple pattern, and he would give a cry
+of "Eureka!"
+
+There was, at any rate, no need to go to the scene of the crime. He
+was right in the middle of it--and would have been, apparently, no
+matter where he'd been. The big question was: where were all the facts
+he needed?
+
+He certainly wasn't going to find them all alone in his room, he
+decided. Mingling with the Las Vegas crowds might give him some sort
+of a lead--and, besides, he had to act like a man on vacation, didn't
+he? Satisfied of this, Malone began to change into his dress suit.
+People who came to Las Vegas, he told himself while fiddling with what
+seemed to be a left-hand-thread cufflink of a peculiarly nasty
+disposition, were usually rich. Rich people would be worried about the
+way the good old United States was acting up, just like anybody else,
+but they'd have access to various sources both of information and
+rumor. Rumor was more valuable than might at first appear, Malone
+thought sententiously, sneaking up on the cufflink and fastening it
+securely. He finished dressing with what was almost an air of hope.
+
+He surveyed himself in the mirror when he was done. Nobody, he told
+himself with some assurance, would recognize him as the FBI Agent who
+had come into the Golden Palace two years before, clad in Elizabethan
+costume and escorting a Queen who had turned out to be a phenomenal
+poker player. After all, Las Vegas was a town in which lots of strange
+things happened daily, and he was dressed differently, and he'd aged
+at least two years in the intervening two years.
+
+He put in a call for a hallway car--carefully refraining from asking
+for Murray.
+
+
+X
+
+"Business, Mr. Malone," the bartender said, "is shot all to hell. The
+whole country is shot all to hell."
+
+"I believe it," Malone said.
+
+"Sure," the bartender said. He finished polishing one glass and set to
+work on another one. "Look at the place," he went on. "Half full. You
+been here two weeks now, and you know how business was when you came.
+Now look."
+
+It wasn't necessary, but Malone turned obediently to survey the huge
+gambling hall. It was roofed over by a large golden dome that seemed
+to make the place look even emptier than it could possibly be. There
+were still plenty of people around the various tables, and something
+approaching a big crowd clustered around the _chemin de fer_ layout.
+But it was possible to breathe in the place, and even move from table
+to table without stepping into anybody's pocket. Las Vegas was
+definitely sliding downhill at the moment, Malone thought.
+
+The glitter of polished gold and silver ornaments, the low cries of
+the various dealers and officials, the buzz of conversation, were all
+the same. But under the great dome, Malone told himself sadly, you
+could almost see the people leaving, one by one.
+
+"No money around either," the bartender said. "Except maybe for a few
+guys like yourself. I mean, people take their chances at the wheel or
+the tables, but there's no big betting going on, just nickel-dime
+stuff. And no big spending, either. Used to be tips in a place like
+this, just tips, would really mount up to something worth while. Now,
+nothing." He put the glass and towel down and leaned across the bar.
+"You know what I think, Mr. Malone?" he said.
+
+"No," Malone said politely. "What do you think?"
+
+The bartender looked portentous. "I think all the big-money guys have
+rushed off home to look after their business and like that," he said,
+"everything's going to hell, and what I want to know is: What's wrong
+with the country? You're a big businessman, Mr. Malone. You ought to
+have some ideas."
+
+Malone paused and looked thoughtful. "I'll tell you what I think," he
+said. "I think people have decided that gambling is sinful. Maybe we
+all ought to go and get our souls dry-cleaned."
+
+The bartender shook his head. "You always got a little joke, Mr.
+Malone," he said. "It's what I like about you. But there must be some
+reason for what's happening."
+
+"There must be," Malone agreed. "But I'll be double-roasted for extra
+fresh flavor if I know what it is."
+
+His vacation pay, he told himself with a feeling of downright misery,
+was already down the drain. He'd been dipping into personal savings to
+keep up his front as a big spender, but that couldn't go on
+forever--even though he saved money on the front by gambling very
+little while he tipped lavishly. And in spite of what he'd spent he
+was no closer to an answer than he had been when he'd started.
+
+"Now, you take the stock market," the bartender said, picking up the
+glass and towel again and starting to work in a semiautomatic fashion.
+"It's going up and down like a regular roller coaster. I know because
+I got a few little things going for me there--nothing much, you
+understand, but I keep an eye out for developments. It doesn't make
+any sense, Mr. Malone. Even the financial columnists can't make sense
+out of it."
+
+"Terrible," Malone said.
+
+"And the Government's been cracking down on business everywhere it
+can," the bartender went on. "All kinds of violations. I got nothing
+against the law, you understand. But that kind of thing don't help
+profits any. Look at the Justice Department."
+
+"You look at it," Malone muttered.
+
+"No," the bartender said. "I mean it. They been arresting people all
+over the place for swindling on Government contracts, and falsifying
+tax records, and graft, and all kinds of things. Listen, every FBI man
+in the country must be up to his cute little derby hat in work."
+
+"I'll bet they are," Malone said. He heaved a great sigh. Every one of
+them except Kenneth J. Malone was probably hopping full time in an
+effort to straighten out the complicated mess everything was getting
+into. Of course, he was working, too--but not officially. As far as
+the FBI knew, he was on vacation, and they were perfectly willing to
+let him stay there.
+
+A nationwide emergency over two weeks old, and getting worse all the
+time--and Burris hadn't even so much as called Malone to talk about
+the weather. He'd said that Malone was one of his top operatives, but
+now that trouble was really piling up there wasn't a peep out of him.
+
+The enemy, whoever they were, were doing a great job, Malone thought
+bitterly. Every time Burris decided he might need Malone, apparently,
+they pushed a little mental burst at him and turned him around again.
+He could just picture Burris looking blankly at an FBI roster and
+saying: "Malone? Who's he?"
+
+It wasn't a nice picture. Malone took a deep swallow of his
+bourbon-and-water and tried forgetting about it. The bartender, called
+by another customer, put the glass and towel down and went to the
+other end of the bar. Malone finished his drink very slowly, feeling
+more lonely than he could ever remember being before.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At last, though, four-thirty rolled around and he got up from the
+plush bar stool and headed for the Universal Joint, the hotel's big
+show-room. It was one of the few places in the hotel that was easily
+reachable from the front bar on foot, and Malone walked, taking an
+unexpected pleasure in this novel form of locomotion. In a few minutes
+he was at the great curtained front doors.
+
+He pushed them open. Later, of course, when the Universal Joint was
+open to the public, a man in a uniform slightly more impressive than
+that of a South American generalissimo would be standing before the
+doors to save patrons the unpleasant necessity of opening them for
+themselves. But now, in the afternoon, the Universal Joint was closed.
+There was no one inside but Primo Palveri, the manager and majority
+stockholder of the Great Universal, and the new strip act he was
+watching. Malone didn't particularly like the idea of sharing his
+conversation with a burlesque stripper, but there was little he could
+do about it; he'd waited several days for the appointment already.
+
+As the doors opened he could hear a nasal voice, almost without
+over-tones, saying: "Now turn around, baby. Turn around." A pause, and
+then another voice, this one female:
+
+"Is this all right, Mr. Palveri? You want me to show you something
+else?"
+
+Malone shut the door quietly behind him. The female voice was coming
+from the throat of a semi-naked girl about five feet eight, with
+bright red hair and a wide, wide smile. She was staring at a chunky
+little black-haired man sunk in a chair, whose back was to Malone.
+
+"What else do you do, Sweetheart?" the chunky man said. "Let me see
+whatever you do. I want some wide-talent stuff, you know, for the
+place. Class."
+
+The girl smiled even wider. Malone was sure her teeth were about to
+fall out onto the floor, probably in a neat arrangement that spelled
+out _Will You Kiss Me In The Dark Baby_. That would take an awful lot
+of teeth, he reflected, but the stripper looked as if she could manage
+the job. "I dance and sing," she said. "I could do a dance for you,
+but my music is upstairs. You want me to go and get it?"
+
+Palveri shook his head. "How about a song, baby? You mind singing
+without a piano?"
+
+"I don't have anything prepared," the girl said, her eyes wide. "I
+didn't know this was going to be a special audition. I thought, you
+know, just a burlesque audition, so I didn't bring anything."
+
+Palveri sank a little lower in the chair. "O.K., Sweetheart," he said.
+"You got a nice shape, you'll fit in the line anyhow. But just sing a
+song you know. How about that? If you make it with that, you could get
+yourself a featured spot. More dough."
+
+The girl appeared to consider this proposition. "Gee," she said
+slowly. "I could do 'God Bless America'. O.K., Mr. Palveri?"
+
+The chunky man sank even deeper toward the floor. "Never mind," he
+said. "Go get dressed, tell Tony you got the number five spot in the
+line. O.K.?"
+
+"Gee," she said. "Maybe I could work on something and do it for you
+some other time, Mr. Palveri?"
+
+He nodded wearily. "Some other time," he said. "Sure."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The girl went off through a door at the left of the club. Malone
+threaded his way past tables with chairs piled on top of them until he
+came to Palveri's side. The club owner was sitting on a single chair
+dragged off the heap that stood on a table next to him. He didn't turn
+around. "Mr. Malone," he said, "take another chair, sit down and we'll
+talk. O.K.?"
+
+Malone blinked. "How'd you know I was there?" he said. "Much less who
+I was?"
+
+"In this business," Palveri said, still without turning, "you learn to
+notice things, Mr. Malone. I heard you come in and wait. Who else
+would you be?"
+
+Malone took a chair from the pile and set it up next to Palveri's. The
+chunky man turned to face him for the first time. Malone took a deep
+breath and tried to look hard and tough as he studied the club owner.
+
+Palveri had small, sunken eyes decorated with bluish bags below and
+tufted black eyebrows above. The eyes were very cold. The rest of his
+face didn't warm things up any; he had an almost lipless slash for a
+mouth, a small reddish nose and cheeks that could have used either a
+shave or a good sandblasting job.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"You said you wanted to see me," Palveri began after a second. "But
+you didn't say what about. What's up, Mr. Malone?"
+
+"I've been looking around," Malone said in what he hoped was a grim,
+no-nonsense tone. "Checking things. You know."
+
+"Checking?" Palveri said. "What's this about?"
+
+Malone shrugged. He fished out a cigarette and lit it. "Castelnuovo in
+Chicago sent me down," he said. "I've been doing some checking around
+for him."
+
+Palveri's eyes narrowed slightly. Malone puffed on the cigarette and
+tried to act cool. "You throwing names around to impress me?" the club
+owner said at last.
+
+"I'm not throwing names around," Malone said grimly. "Castelnuovo
+wants me to look around, that's all."
+
+"Castelnuovo's a big man in Chicago," Palveri said. "He wouldn't send
+a guy down without telling me about it."
+
+"He did," Malone said. He thought back to the FBI files on Giacomo
+Castelnuovo, which took up a lot of space in Washington, even on
+microfilm. "You want proof?" he said. "He's got a scar over his ribs
+on the left side--got it from a bullet in '62. He wears a little black
+mustache because he thinks he looks like an old-time TV star, but he
+doesn't, much. He's got three or four girls on the string, but the
+only one he cares about is Carla Bragonzi. He--"
+
+"O.K.," Palveri said. "O.K., O.K. You know him. You're not fooling,
+around. But how come he sends you down without telling me?"
+
+Malone shrugged. "I've been here two weeks," he said. "You didn't know
+I was around, did you? That's the way Castelnuovo wanted it."
+
+"He thinks I'd cheat him?" Palveri said, his face changing color
+slightly. "He thinks I'd dress up for him or drag down? He knows me
+better than that."
+
+Malone took a puff of his cigarette. "Maybe he just wants to be sure,"
+he said. "Funny things are happening all over." The cigarette tasted
+terrible and he put it out in an ashtray from the chair-covered table.
+
+"You're telling me," Palveri said. "Things are crazy. What I'm
+thinking is this: Maybe Castelnuovo wants to keep this place
+operating. Maybe he wants to keep me here working for him."
+
+"And if he does?" Malone said.
+
+"If he does, he's going to have to pay for it," Palveri said firmly.
+"The place needs dough to keep operating. I've got to have a loan, or
+else I'm going under."
+
+"The place is making money," Malone said.
+
+Palveri shook his head vigorously. He reached into a pocket and took
+out a gold cigar case. He flipped it open. "Have one," he told Malone.
+
+An FBI Agent, Malone told himself, had no business smoking cigars and
+looking undignified. But as a messenger from Castelnuovo, he could do
+as he pleased. He almost reached for one before he realized that
+maybe, sometime in the future, Palveri would find out who Kenneth J.
+Malone really was. And then he'd remember Malone smoking cigars, and
+that would be bad for the dignity of the FBI. Reluctantly, he drew his
+hand back.
+
+"No, thanks," he said. "Never touch 'em."
+
+"To each his own," Palveri muttered. He took out a cigar, lit it and
+returned the case to his pocket. The immediate vicinity became crowded
+with smoke. Malone breathed deeply.
+
+"About the money--" Malone said after a second.
+
+Palveri snorted. "The place is making half of what I'm losing," he
+said. "You got to see it this way, Malone: the contacts are gone."
+
+"Contacts?" Malone said.
+
+Palveri nodded. "The mayor's resigned, remember?" he said. "You saw
+that. Everybody's getting investigated. A couple of weeks ago the
+Golden Palace guy knocked himself off, and where does that leave me?
+He's my only contact with half the State boys; hell, he ran the whole
+string of clubs here, more or less. Castelnuovo knows all that."
+
+"Sure," Malone said. "But you can make new contacts."
+
+"Where?" Palveri said. He flung out his arms. "When nobody knows
+what's going to happen tomorrow? I tell you, Malone, it's like a curse
+on me."
+
+Malone decided to push the man a little farther. "Castelnuovo," he
+said with what he hoped was a steely glint in his eyes, "isn't going
+to like a curse ruining business." He took another deep breath of
+tobacco smoke.
+
+"Primo Palveri don't like it either," Palveri said. "You think
+whatever you like but that's the way things are. It's like Prohibition
+except we're losing all the way down the line. Listen, and I'll tell
+you something you didn't pick up around town."
+
+"Go ahead," Malone said.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Palveri blew out some more smoke. "You know about the shipments?" he
+said. "The stuff from out on the desert?"
+
+Malone nodded. The FBI had a long file on the possibility of
+Castelnuovo, through Palveri or someone else in the vicinity, shipping
+peyotl buttons from Nevada and New Mexico all over the country. Until
+this moment, it had only been a possibility.
+
+"Mike Sand wanted to get in on some of that," Palveri said. "Well,
+it's big money, a guy figures he's got to have competition. But it's
+business nowadays, not a shooting war. That went out forty years ago."
+
+"So?" Malone said, acting impatient.
+
+"I'm getting there," Palveri said. "I'm getting there. Mike Sand and
+his truckers, they tried to high jack a shipment coming through out on
+the desert. Now, the Trucker's Union is old and experienced, maybe,
+but not as old and experienced as the Mafia. It figures we can take
+them, right?"
+
+"It figures," Malone agreed. "But you didn't?"
+
+Palveri looked doleful. "It's like a curse," he said. "Two boys
+wounded and one of them dead, right there on the sand. The shipment
+gone, and Mike Sand on his way to the East with it. A curse." He
+sucked some more at the cigar.
+
+Malone looked thoughtful and concerned. "Things are certainly bad," he
+said. "But how's money going to make things any better?"
+
+Palveri almost dropped his cigar. Malone watched it lovingly. "Help?"
+the club owner said. "With money I could stay open, I could stay
+alive. Listen, I had investments, nice guaranteed stuff: real estate,
+some California oil stuff ... you know the kind of thing."
+
+"Sure," Malone said.
+
+"Now that the contacts are gone and everybody's dead or resigned or
+being investigated," Palveri said, "what do you think's happened to
+all that? Down the drain, Malone."
+
+Malone said: "But--"
+
+"And not only that," Palveri said, waving the cigar. "The club was
+going good, and you know I thought about building a second one a
+little farther out. A straight investment, get me: an honest one."
+
+Malone nodded as if he knew all about it.
+
+"So I got the foundation in, Malone," Palveri said, "and it's just
+sitting there, not doing anything. A whole foundation going to pot
+because I can't do anything more with it. Just sitting there because
+everything's going to hell with itself."
+
+"In a handbasket," Malone said automatically.
+
+Palveri gave him a violent nod. "You said it, Malone," he added.
+"Everything. My men, too." He sighed. "And the contractor after me for
+his dough. Good old Harry Seldon, everybody's friend. Sure. Owe him
+some money and find out how friendly he is. Talks about nothing but
+figures. Ten thousand. Twelve thousand."
+
+"Tough," Malone said. "But what do you mean about your men?"
+
+"Mistakes," Palveri said. "Book-keepers throwing the computers off and
+croupiers making mistakes paying off and collecting--and always
+mistakes against me, Malone. Always. It's like a curse. Even the hotel
+bills--three of them this week were made out too small and the
+customer paid up and went before I found out about it."
+
+"It sounds like a curse," Malone said. "Either that or there are spies
+in the organization."
+
+"Spies?" Palveri said. "With the checking we do? With the way I've
+known some of these guys from childhood? They were little kids with
+me, Malone. They stuck with me all the way. And with Castelnuovo,
+too," he added hurriedly.
+
+"Sure," Malone said. "But they could still be spies."
+
+Palveri nodded sadly. "I thought of that," he said. "I fired four of
+them. Four of my childhood friends, Malone. It was like cutting off an
+arm. And all it did was leave me with one arm less. The same mistakes
+go on happening."
+
+Malone stood up and heaved a sigh. "Well," he said, "I'll see what I
+can do."
+
+"I'd appreciate it, Malone," Palveri said. "And when Primo Palveri
+appreciates something, he _appreciates_ it. Get what I mean?"
+
+"Sure," Malone said. "I'll report back and let you know what happens."
+
+Palveri looked just as anxious, but a little hopeful. "I need the
+dough," he said. "I really need it."
+
+"With dough," Malone said, "you could fix up what's been happening?"
+
+Palveri shrugged. "Who knows?" he said. "But I could stay open long
+enough to find out."
+
+Malone went back to the gaming room feeling that he had learned
+something, but not being quite sure what. Obviously whatever
+organization was mixing everything up was paying just as much
+attention to gangsters as to congressmen and businessmen. The simple
+justice of this arrangement did not escape Malone, but he failed to
+see where it led him.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+He considered the small chance that Palveri would actually call
+Castelnuovo and check up on Kenneth J. Malone, but he didn't think it
+was probable. Palveri was too desperate to take the chance of making
+his boss mad in case Malone's story were true. And, even if the check
+were made, Malone felt reasonably confident. It's hard to kill a man
+who has a good, accurate sense of precognition and who can teleport
+himself out of any danger he might get into. Not impossible, but hard.
+Being taken for a ride in the desert, for instance, might be an
+interesting experience, but could hardly prove inconvenient to anybody
+except the driver of the car and the men holding the guns.
+
+The gaming room wasn't any fuller, he noticed. He wended his way back
+to the bar for a bourbon-and-water and greeted the bartender morosely.
+The drink came along and he sipped at it quietly, trying to put things
+together in his mind. The talk with Palveri, he felt sure, had
+provided an essential clue--maybe _the_ essential clue--to what was
+going on. But he couldn't find it.
+
+"Mess," he said quietly. "Everything's in a mess. And so what?"
+
+A voice behind him picked that second to say: "Gezundheit." Malone
+didn't turn. Instead he looked at the bar mirror, and one glance at
+what was reflected there was enough to freeze him as solid as the core
+of Pluto.
+
+Lou was there. Lou Gehrig or whatever her name was, the girl behind
+the reception desk of the New York offices of the Psychical Research
+Society. That, in itself, didn't bother him. The company of a
+beautiful girl while drinking was not something Malone actually hated.
+But she knew he was an FBI Agent, and she might pick any second to
+blat it out in the face of an astonished bartender. This, Malone told
+himself, would not be pleasant. He wondered just how to hush her up
+without attracting attention. Knock-out pills in her drink? A hand
+over her mouth? A sudden stream of unstoppable words?
+
+He had reached no decision when she sat down on the stool beside him,
+turned a bright, cheerful smile in his direction and said: "I've
+forgotten your name. Mine's Luba Ardanko."
+
+"Oh," Malone said dully. Even the disclosure of what "Lou" stood for
+did nothing to raise his spirits.
+
+"I'm always forgetting things," Lou went on. "I've forgotten just
+about everything about you."
+
+Malone breathed a long, inaudible sigh of relief. If more people, he
+thought, had the brains not to greet FBI Agents by name, rank and
+serial number when meeting them in a strange place, there would be
+fewer casualties among the FBI.
+
+He realized that Luba was still smiling at him expectantly. "My name's
+Malone," he said. "Kenneth Malone. I'm a cookie manufacturer,
+remember?"
+
+"Oh," Luba said delightedly. "Sure! I remember last time I met you you
+gave me that lovely box of cookies. Modeled on the Seven Dwarfs."
+
+Occasionally, Malone told himself, things moved a little faster than
+he liked. "On the Seven Dwarfs," he said. "Oh, sure."
+
+"And I thought the model of Sneezy was awfully cute," she said. "But
+don't let's talk about cookies. Let's talk about Martinis."
+
+Malone opened his mouth, tried to think of something clever to say,
+and shut it again. Luba Ardanko was, perfectly obviously, altogether
+too fast for him. But then, he reflected, I've had a hard day. "All
+right," he said at last. "What _about_ Martinis?"
+
+Luba's smile broadened. "I'd like one," she said. "And since you're a
+wealthy cookie manufacturer--"
+
+"Be my guest," Malone said. "On the other hand, why not buy your own?
+Since they're free as long as you're in the gambling room."
+
+The bartender had approached them silently. "That's right," he said in
+a voice that betrayed the fact that he had memorized the entire
+speech, word for word. "Drinks are free for those who play the gaming
+tables. A courtesy of the Great Universal."
+
+He delivered a Martini and Luba drank it while Malone finished his
+bourbon-and-water. "Well," she said, "I suppose we've got to go to the
+gambling tables now. If only to be fair."
+
+"A horrible fate," Malone agreed, "but there you are: that's life."
+
+"It certainly is," she said brightly, and moved off. Malone, shaking
+his head, went after her and found her standing in front of a roulette
+wheel. "I just love roulette," she said, turning. "Don't you? It's so
+exciting and expensive."
+
+Malone licked dry lips, said: "Sure," and started to move off.
+
+"Oh, let's just play a little," Luba said.
+
+There was nothing to do but agree. Malone put a small stack of silver
+dollars on Red, and the croupier looked up with a bored expression.
+There were three other people in the game, including a magnificent old
+lady with blue hair who spent her money with a lavish hand. Two weeks
+before, she wouldn't even have been noticed. Now the croupier was
+bending over backward in an attempt not to show how grateful he was
+for the patronage.
+
+The wheel spun around and landed on Number Two, Black. Malone sighed
+and fished for more money. He felt his precognitive sense beginning to
+come into play and happily decided to ride with it. This time the
+stack of silver dollars was larger.
+
+Twenty minutes later he left the table approximately nine hundred
+dollars richer. Luba was beaming. "There, now," she said. "Wasn't that
+fun?"
+
+"Hysterical," Malone said. He glanced back over his shoulder. The
+blue-haired old lady was winning and losing large sums with a speed
+and aplomb that was certainly going to make her a twenty-four-hour
+legend by the end of the evening. She looked grim and secure, as if
+she were undergoing a penance. Malone shrugged and looked away.
+
+"Now," Luba said, "you can take me dancing."
+
+"I can?" Malone said. "I mean, do I? I mean--"
+
+"I mean the Solar Room," Luba said. "I've always wanted to enter on
+the arms of a handsome cookie manufacturer. It will make me the
+sensation of New York society."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Solar Room was magnificently expensive. Malone had been there
+once, establishing his character as a man of lavish appetites, and had
+then avoided the place in deference to his real bankroll. He
+remembered it as the kind of place where an order of scrambled eggs
+was liable to come in, flaming, on a golden sabre. But Luba wanted the
+Solar Room, and Malone was not at all sure she wouldn't use blackmail
+if he turned her down. "Fine," he said in a lugubrious tone.
+
+The place shone, when they entered, as if they had come in from the
+darkness of midnight. Along with the Universal Joint, it was the pride
+and glory of the Great Universal Hotel and no expense had been spared
+in the attempt to give it what Primo Palveri called Class. Couples and
+foursomes were scattered around at the marble-topped tables, and
+red-uniformed waiters scurried around bearing drinks, food and even
+occasional plug-in telephones. There seemed to be more of the last
+than Malone remembered as usual; people were worrying about
+investments and businesses, and even those who had decided to stick it
+out grimly at Las Vegas and, _enjoy_ themselves had to check up with
+the home folks in order to know when to start pricing windows in high
+buildings. Malone wondered how many people were actually getting their
+calls through. Since the first breakdown two weeks before, Las Vegas
+and virtually every other United States city had suffered
+interruptions in telephone service. Las Vegas had had three breakdowns
+in two weeks; other cities weren't doing much better, if at all.
+
+Vaguely, Malone began looking around for handbaskets.
+
+"Let's dance," Luba said happily. "They're playing our song."
+
+On a stand at the front of the room a small orchestra was working away
+busily. There were two or three couples on the postage-stamp dance
+floor, whirling away to the strains of something Malone dimly
+remembered as: "My heart's in orbit out in space until I see you
+again."
+
+"Our song?" he said.
+
+Luba nodded. "You sang it to me the very first time we met," she said.
+"At the cookie-manufacturer's ball. Remember?"
+
+Malone sighed. If Luba wanted to dance, Luba was going to dance. And
+so was Malone. He rose and they went to the dance floor. Malone took
+her in his arms and for a few bars they danced silently. At the end of
+that time they were much closer together than they had been, and
+Malone realized that he was somehow managing to enjoy himself.
+Thoroughly.
+
+He thought dimly of the stripper he'd seen when he walked in on
+Palveri. Like Luba, she had red hair. But somehow, she looked less
+attractive undressed than Luba did in a complete wardrobe. Malone
+wondered what the funny feeling creeping up his spine was. After a
+second he realized that it wasn't love. Luba's hand was tickling him.
+He shifted slightly and the hand left, but the funny feeling remained.
+
+Maybe it _was_ love, he thought. He didn't know whether or not to hope
+so.
+
+Luba was pressed close to him. He wondered how to open the
+conversation, and decided that a sudden passionate declaration would
+be more startling than welcome. At last he said: "Thanks for not
+tipping my hand."
+
+Luba's whisper caressed his ear. "Don't thank me," she said. "I
+enjoyed it."
+
+"Why are you doing this?" Malone said. "Not that I don't appreciate
+it, but I thought you were sore."
+
+"Let's just say that your masterful, explosive approach was
+irresistible," Luba said.
+
+Malone wondered briefly whether or not they'd turned off the
+air-conditioning. If he moved slightly away from Luba, he thought, he
+could breathe more easily. But breathing just wasn't worth it. "I will
+cheerfully admit," he said, "that I am a ball of fire in the
+feathers, as they say. But I didn't realize it was that obvious--even
+to a woman of your tender sensitivity."
+
+Somehow, Luba had managed to get even closer to him. "You touch me
+deeply," she whispered into his ear.
+
+Malone swallowed hard and tried to take another breath. Just one more,
+he thought; that would be all he needed. "What are you doing in Las
+Vegas?" he asked in what he hoped was a casual tone. It didn't sound
+very casual, though.
+
+"I'm on vacation," Luba said in an off-handed manner. "I won't ask
+what you're doing; I can guess pretty well. Besides, you obviously
+want to keep it under cover."
+
+"Well," Malone said, "I certainly wouldn't want what I'm doing to be
+broadcast aloud to the great American public out there in
+television-land." It was a long speech for a man without any breath.
+Just one more, Malone told himself, and he could die happy.
+
+"I felt that," Luba said. "You know, Mr. Malone--"
+
+"Call me Ken," Malone said.
+
+"It is silly to be formal now, isn't it?" Luba said. "You know, Ken,
+I'm beginning to realize that you are really a very nice person--in
+spite of your rather surprising method of attack."
+
+"What's surprising about it?" Malone said. "People do it all the
+time."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The orchestra suddenly shifted from the previous slow number to a
+rapid fire tune Malone couldn't remember having heard before. "That,"
+he announced, "is too fast for me. I'm going to get some fresh air."
+
+Luba nodded, her red hair brushing Malone's cheek silkily. "I'm
+coming, too," she said.
+
+Surrounding the Great Universal, Malone remembered, was a small belt
+of parkland. He flagged a hallway car--remembering carefully to check
+whether or not the driver was the sniggering Murray--and he and Luba
+piled in and started out for the park. In the car, he held her hand
+silently, feeling a little like a bashful schoolboy and a little like
+Sir Kenneth Malone. It was a strange mixture, but he decided that he
+liked it.
+
+They got out, standing in the cool darkness of the park. Overhead a
+moon and stars were shining. The little hallway car rolled away and
+they were alone. Completely alone. Malone swallowed hard.
+
+"Sleuth," Luba said softly in the darkness.
+
+Malone turned to face her.
+
+"Sleuth," she said, "don't you ever take a chance?"
+
+"Chance?" Malone said.
+
+"Damn it," Luba said in a soft, sweet voice, "kiss me, Ken."
+
+Malone had no answer to that--at least, no verbal answer. But then,
+one didn't seem to be needed.
+
+When he finally came up for air, he said: "Lou--"
+
+"Yes, Ken?"
+
+"Lou, how long are you going to be here? Or in New York? What I mean
+is--"
+
+"I'll be around," Lou said. "I will be going back to New York of
+course; after all, Ken, I do have a living to make, such as it is, and
+Sir Lewis is expecting me."
+
+"I don't know," Malone said, "but it still sounds funny. A girl like
+you working for ... well, for the Psychical Research people. Ghosts
+and ectoplasm and all that."
+
+Suddenly Lou wasn't in his arms any more. "Now, wait a minute," she
+said. "You seemed to need their information, all right."
+
+"But that was ... oh, well," Malone said. "Never mind. Maybe I'm
+silly. It really doesn't matter."
+
+"I guess it doesn't, now," Lou said in a softer tone. "Except that it
+does mean I'll be going back to New York pretty soon."
+
+"Oh," Malone said. "But ... look, Lou, maybe we could work something
+out. I could tell Sir Lewis I needed you here for something, and then
+he'd--"
+
+"My, my," she said. "What it must be like to have all that influence."
+
+"What?" Malone said.
+
+Lou grinned, almost invisibly. "Nothing," she said. "Nothing. But, my
+fine feathered Fed, I don't want to be pulled around on somebody
+else's string."
+
+"But--"
+
+"I mean it, Ken," Luba said.
+
+Malone shrugged. "Suppose we table it for now, then," he said, "and
+get around to it later. At dinner, say ... around nine?"
+
+"And just where," Luba said, "will you be before nine? Making improper
+advances to the local contingent of chorines?"
+
+"I will make improper advances," Malone vowed, "only to you, Lou."
+
+Lou's eyes sparkled. "Goody," she said. "I've always wanted to be a
+Fallen Woman."
+
+"But I have got some things to do before nine," Malone said. "I've got
+to work, too."
+
+"Well, then," Lou said in a suspiciously sweet voice, "suppose I talk
+to Sir Lewis Carter, and tell him to keep you in New York? Then--"
+
+"Enough," Malone said. "Nine o'clock."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+XI
+
+    Somebody somewhere was wishing all the world "a plague on
+    both your houses," and making it stick. Confusion is fun in a
+    comedy--but in the pilot of a plane or an executive of a
+    nation....
+
+Back in his room, Malone put on a fresh shirt, checked the .44 Magnum
+in his shoulder holster, changed jackets, adjusted his hat to the
+proper angle, and vanished.
+
+He had, he'd realized, exactly one definite lead. And now he was going
+to follow up on it. The Government was apparently falling to pieces;
+so was business and so was the Mafia. Nobody Malone had heard of had
+gained anything. Except Mike Sand and his truckers. They'd beaten the
+Mafia, at least.
+
+Sand was worth a chat. Malone had a way to get in to see him, but he
+had to work fast. Otherwise Sand would very possibly know what Malone
+was trying to do. And that might easily be dangerous.
+
+He had made his appearance in the darkness beneath one of the bridges
+at the southwest side of Central Park, in New York. It was hardly
+Malone's idea of perfect comfort, but it did mean safety; there was
+very seldom anyone around after dark, and the shadows were thick
+enough so that his "appearance" would only mean, to the improbable
+passerby, that he had stepped out into the light.
+
+Now he strolled quietly over to Central Park West, and flagged a taxi
+heading downtown. He'd expected to run into one of the roving muggers
+who still made the Park a trap for the unwary--he'd almost looked
+forward to it, in a way--but nobody appeared. It was unusual, but he
+didn't have time to wonder about it.
+
+The headquarters for the National Brotherhood of Truckers was east of
+Greenwich Village, on First Avenue, so Malone had plenty of time to
+think things out while the cab wended its laborious southeast way.
+After a few minutes he realized that he would have even more time to
+think than he'd planned on.
+
+"Lots of traffic for this time of night," he volunteered.
+
+The cabbie, a fiftyish man with a bald, wrinkled head and surprisingly
+bright blue eyes, nodded without turning his head. "Maybe you think
+this is bad," he said. "You would not recognize the place an hour
+earlier, friend. During the real rush hour, I mean. Things are what
+they call _meshuggah_, friend. It means crazy."
+
+"How come?" Malone said.
+
+"The subway is on strike since last week," the cabbie said. "The buses
+are also on strike. This means that everybody is using a car. They
+can make it faster if they wish to walk, but they use a car. It does
+not help matters, believe me."
+
+"I can see that," Malone murmured.
+
+"And the cops are not doing much good either," the cabbie went on,
+"since they went on strike sometime last Tuesday."
+
+Malone nodded, and then did a double-take. "Cops?" he said. "On
+strike? But that's illegal. They could be arrested."
+
+"You can be funny," the cabbie said. "I am too sad to be funny."
+
+"But--"
+
+"Unless you are from Rhode Island," the cabbie said, "or even farther
+away, you are deaf, dumb and blind. Everybody in New York knows what
+is going on by this time. I admit that it is not in the newspapers,
+but the newspapers do not tell the truth since, as I remember it, the
+City Council election of 1924, and then it is an accident, due to the
+major's best friend working in the printing plants."
+
+"But cops can't go on strike," Malone said plaintively.
+
+"This," the cabbie said in a judicious tone, "is true. But they do not
+give out any parking tickets any more, or any traffic citations
+either. They are working on bigger things, they say, and besides all
+this there are not so many cops on the force now. They are spread very
+thin."
+
+Malone could see what was coming. "Arrests of policemen," he said,
+"and resignations."
+
+"And investigations," the cabbie said. "Mayor Amalfi is a good Joe
+and does not want anything in the papers until a real strike comes
+along, but the word gets out anyhow, as it always does."
+
+"Makes driving tough," Malone said.
+
+"People can make better time on their hands and knees," the cabbie
+said, "with the cops pulling a strike. They concentrate on big items
+now, and you can even smoke in the subways if you can find a subway
+that is running."
+
+Malone stopped to think how much of the city's income depended on
+parking tickets and small fines, and realized that a "strike" like the
+one the police were pulling might be very effective indeed. And,
+unlike the participants in the Boston Police Strike of sixty-odd years
+before, these cops would have public sentiment on their side--since
+they were keeping actual crime down.
+
+"How long do they think it's going to last?" Malone said.
+
+"It can be over tomorrow," the cabbie said, "but this is not generally
+believed in the most influential quarters. Mayor Amalfi and the new
+Commissioner try to straighten things out all day long, but the way
+things go straightening them out does no good. Something big is in the
+wind, friend. I--"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The cab, on Second Avenue and Seventeenth Street, stopped for a
+traffic light. Malone felt an itch in the back of his mind, as if his
+prescience were trying to warn him of something; he'd felt it for a
+little while, he realized, but only now could he pay attention to it.
+
+The door on the driver's side opened suddenly, and so did the door
+next to Malone. Two young men, obviously in their early twenties, were
+standing in the openings, holding guns that were plainly intended for
+immediate use.
+
+The one next to the driver said, in a flat voice: "Don't nobody get
+wise. That way nobody gets hurt. Give us--"
+
+That was as far as he got.
+
+When the rear door had opened, Malone had had a full second to prepare
+himself, which was plenty of time. The message from his precognitive
+powers had come along just in time.
+
+The second gunman thrust his gun into the cab. He seemed almost to be
+handing it to Malone politely, and this effect was spoiled only by
+Malone's twist of the gunman's wrist, which must have felt as if he'd
+put his hand into a loop tied to the axle of a high-speed centrifuge.
+The gunman let go of the gun and Malone, spurning it, let it drop.
+
+He didn't need it. His other hand had gone into his coat and come out
+again with the .44 Magnum.
+
+The thug at the front of the car had barely realized what was
+happening by the time it was all over. Automatic reflexes turned him
+away from the driver and toward the source of danger, his gun pointing
+toward Malone. But the reflexes gave out as he found himself staring
+down a rifled steel tube which, though hardly more than
+seven-sixteenths of an inch in diameter, must have looked as though a
+high-speed locomotive might come roaring out of it at any second.
+
+Malone hardly needed to bark: "_Drop it!_" The revolver hit the seat
+next to the cabbie.
+
+"Driver," Malone said in a conversational voice, "can you handle a
+gun?"
+
+"Why, it is better than even that I still can," the cabbie said. "I am
+in the business myself many years ago, before I see the error of my
+ways and buy a taxi with the profits I make. It is a high-pay
+business," he went on, "but very insecure."
+
+The cabbie scooped up the weapon by his side, flipped out the cylinder
+expertly to check the cartridges, flipped it back in and centered the
+muzzle on the gunman who'd dropped the revolver.
+
+"It is more than thirty years since I use one of these," he said
+gently, "but I do not forget how to pull the trigger, and at this
+range I can hardly miss."
+
+Malone noticed vaguely that he was still holding hands with the second
+gunman, and that this one was trying to struggle free. Malone shrugged
+and eased off a bit, at the same time shifting his own aim. The .44
+Magnum now pointed at gunman number two, and the cabbie was aiming at
+gunman number one. The tableau was silent for some seconds.
+
+"Now," Malone said at last, "we wait. Driver, if you would sort of
+lean against your horn button, we might be able to speed things up a
+little. The light has turned green."
+
+"The local constables," the cabbie said, "do not bother with stalled
+cars in traffic these days."
+
+"But," Malone pointed out, "I have a hunch no cop could resist a taxi
+which is not only stalled and blocking traffic but is also blatting
+its horn continuously. Strike or no strike," he finished
+sententiously, "there are things beyond the power of man to ignore."
+
+"Friend," the cabbie said, "you convince me. It is a good move." He
+sagged slightly against the horn button, keeping the gun centered at
+all times on the man before him.
+
+The horn began to wail horribly.
+
+The first gunman swallowed nervously. "Hey, now, listen," he said,
+shouting slightly above the horn. "This wasn't anything. Just a gag,
+see? A little gag. We was playing a joke. On a friend."
+
+The driver addressed Malone. "Do you ever see either of these boys
+before?"
+
+"Never," Malone said.
+
+"Nor do I," the cabbie said. He eyed the gunman. "We are not your
+friend," he said. "Either of us."
+
+"No, no," the gunman said. "Not you. This friend, he ... uh ... owns a
+taxi, and we thought this was it. It was kind of a joke, see? A
+friendly joke, that's all. Believe me, the gun's not even loaded. Both
+of them aren't. Phony bullets, honest. Believe me?"
+
+"Why, naturally I believe you," the cabbie said politely. "I never
+doubt the word of a stranger, especially such an honest-appearing
+stranger as you seem to be. And since the gun is loaded with false
+bullets, as you say, all you have to do is reach over and take it away
+from me."
+
+There was a short silence.
+
+"A joke," the gunman said feebly. "Honest, just a joke."
+
+"We believe you," Malone assured him grandly. "As a matter of fact, we
+appreciate the joke so much that we want you to tell it to a panel of
+twelve citizens, a judge and a couple of lawyers, so they can
+appreciate it, too. They get little fun out of life and your joke may
+give them a few moments of happiness. Why hide your light under an
+alibi?"
+
+The horn continued its dismal wail for a few seconds more before two
+patrolmen and a sergeant came up on horses. It took somewhat more time
+than that for Malone to convince the sergeant that he didn't have time
+to go down to the station to prefer charges. He showed his
+identification and the police were suitably impressed.
+
+"Lock 'em up for violating the Sullivan Law," he said. "I'm sure they
+don't have licenses for these lovely little guns of theirs."
+
+"Probably not," the sergeant agreed. "There's been an awful lot of
+this kind of thing going on lately. But here's an idea: the cabbie
+here can come on with us."
+
+The top of the cabbie's head turned pale. "That," he said, "is the
+trouble with being a law-abiding citizen such as I have been for
+upwards of thirty years. Because I do not want to lose twenty dollars
+to these young strangers, I lose twenty dollars' worth of time in a
+precinct station, the air of which is very bad for my asthma."
+
+Malone, taking the hint, dug a twenty out of his pockets, and then
+added another to it, remembering how much he had spent in Las Vegas,
+where his money funneled slowly into the pockets of Primo Palveri. The
+cabbie took the money with haste and politeness and stowed it away.
+
+"Gentlemen," he said, "I am now prepared to spend the entire night
+signing affidavits, if enough affidavits can be dug up." He looked
+pleased.
+
+"Mr. Malone," the sergeant said wearily, "people just don't realize
+what's going on in this town. We never did have half enough cops, and
+now, with so many men resigning and getting arrested and suspended, we
+haven't got a quarter enough. People think this strike business is
+funny, but if we spent any time fiddling around with traffic and
+parking tickets, we'd never have time to stop even crimes like this,
+let alone the big jobs. As it is, though, there haven't been a lot of
+big ones. Every hood in the city's out to make a couple of bucks--but
+that's it so far, thank God."
+
+Malone nodded. "How about the FBI?" he said. "Want them to come in and
+help?"
+
+"Mr. Malone," the sergeant said, "the City of New York can take very
+good care of itself, without outside interference."
+
+Some day, Malone told himself, good old New York City was going to
+secede from the Union and form a new country entirely. Then it would
+have a war with New Jersey and probably be wiped right off the map.
+
+Viewing the traffic around him as he hunted for another cab, he wasn't
+at all sure that that was a bad idea. He began to wish vaguely that he
+had borrowed one of the policemen's horses.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Malone wasn't in the least worried about arriving at Mike Sand's
+office late. In the first place, Sand was notorious for sleeping late
+and working late to make up for it. His work schedule was somewhere
+around forty-five degrees out of phase with the rest of the world,
+which made it just about average for the National Brotherhood of
+Truckers. It had never agitated for a nine-to-five work day. A man
+driving a truck, after all, worked all sorts of odd hours--and the
+union officials did the same, maybe just to prove that they were all
+good truckers at heart.
+
+The sign over the door read:
+
+                 National Headquarters
+                  NATIONAL BROTHERHOOD
+                      OF TRUCKERS
+                   Welcome, Brother
+
+Malone pushed at the door and it swung open, revealing a rather
+dingy-looking foyer. More Good Old Truckers At Heart, he told himself.
+Mike Sand owned a quasi-palatial mansion in Puerto Rico for winter
+use, and a two-floor, completely air-conditioned apartment on Fifth
+Avenue for summer use. But the Headquarters Building looked dingy
+enough to make truckers conscience-stricken about paying back dues.
+
+Behind the reception desk there was a man whose face was the
+approximate shape and color of a slightly used waffle. He looked up
+from his crossword puzzle as Malone came in, apparently trying to
+decide whether or not this new visitor should be greeted with:
+"Welcome, Brother!"
+
+Taking pity on his indecision, Malone strode to the desk and said:
+"Tell Mike Sand he has a visitor."
+
+The waffle-faced man blinked. "Mr. Sand is busy right now," he said.
+"Who wants to talk to him?"
+
+Malone tried to look steely-eyed and tough. "You pick up the
+intercom," he said, "and you tell Sand there's a man out here who's in
+the cloak-and-suit business."
+
+"The what?"
+
+"Tell him this man is worried about a recent shipment of buttons,"
+Malone went on.
+
+"Mister," the waffle-faced man said, "you're nuts."
+
+"So I'm nuts," Malone said. "Make the call."
+
+It was put through. After a few minutes of earnest conversation the
+man turned to look at Malone again, dizzied wonder in his eyes. "Mr.
+Sand says go right up," he told the FBI Agent in a shocked voice.
+"Elevator to the third floor."
+
+Malone went over to the elevator, stepped in and pressed the
+third-floor button. As the doors closed, the familiar itch of
+precognition began to assail him again. This time he had nothing else
+to distract him. He paid very close attention to it as he was carried
+slowly and creakily upward.
+
+He looked up. There was an escape-hatch in the top of the car.
+Standing on tiptoe, he managed to lift it aside, grasp the edges of
+the resulting hole and pull himself up through the hole to the top of
+the car. He looked back down, memorizing the elevator, and then pulled
+the hatch shut again. There was a small peephole in it, and Malone put
+his eye to it and waited.
+
+About twenty seconds later, the car stopped and the doors opened. A
+little more time passed, and then a gun, closely followed by a man,
+edged around the door frame.
+
+"What the hell," the man said. "The car's empty!"
+
+Another voice said: "Let's cover the stairway."
+
+Two pairs of footsteps receded rapidly down the hall. Malone, gun in
+hand, teleported himself back to the previously memorized elevator,
+tiptoed to the door and looked out. The two men were standing at the
+far end of the hall, posted at either side of the stairwell and
+obviously waiting for him to come on up.
+
+Instead, he tiptoed out of the elevator hefting his gun, and came up
+silently behind the pair. When he was within ten feet he stopped and
+said, very politely: "Drop the guns, boys."
+
+The guns thudded to the floor and the two men turned round.
+
+"All right," Malone said, smiling into their astonished faces. "Now,
+let's go on and see Mr. Sand."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+He picked up the guns with his free hand and put them into his coat
+pockets. Together, the three men went down toward the lighted office
+at the far end of the hall.
+
+"Open it," Malone said as they came to the door. He followed them into
+the office. Behind a battered, worm-eaten desk in a dingy room sat a
+very surprised-looking Mike Sand.
+
+He was only about five feet six, but he looked as if weighed over two
+hundred pounds. He had huge shoulders and a thick neck, and his face
+was sleepy-looking. He seemed to have lost a lot of fights in his long
+career; Sand, Malone reflected, was nearing fifty now, and he was
+beginning to look his age. His short hair, once black, was turning to
+iron-gray.
+
+He didn't say anything. Malone smiled at him pleasantly. "These boys
+were carrying deadly weapons," he told Sand in a polite voice. "That's
+hardly the way to treat a brother." His precognitive warning system
+wasn't ringing any alarm bells, but he kept his gun trained on the
+pair of thugs as he walked over to Mike Sand's desk and took the two
+extra revolvers from his pocket. "You'd better keep these, Sand," he
+said. "Your boys don't know how to handle them."
+
+Sand grinned sourly, pulled open a desk drawer and swept the guns into
+it with one motion of his ham-like hand. He didn't look at Malone.
+"You guys better go downstairs and keep Jerry company," he said. "You
+can do crossword puzzles together."
+
+"Now, Mike, we--" one of them began.
+
+Mike Sand snorted. "Go on," he said. "Scram."
+
+"But he was supposed to be in the elevator, and we--"
+
+"Scram," Sand said. It sounded like a curse. The two men got out.
+"Like apes in the trees," Sand said heavily. "Ask for bright boys and
+what do you get? Everything," he went on dismally, "is going to hell."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That line, Malone reflected, was beginning to have all the persistence
+of a bass-bourdon. It droned its melancholy way through anything and
+everything else. He signed deeply, thought about a cigar and lit a
+cigarette instead. It tasted awful. "About those buttons--" he said.
+
+"I got nothing to do with buttons," Sand said.
+
+"You do with these," Malone said. "A shipment of buttons from the
+Nevada desert. You grabbed them from Palveri."
+
+"I got nothing to do with it," Sand said.
+
+Malone looked around and found a chair and an ashtray. He grabbed one
+and sat down in the other. "I'm not from Castelnuovo," he said. "Or
+Palveri, or any of the Mafia boys. If I were, you'd know it fast
+enough."
+
+Sand regarded him from under eyelids made almost entirely of
+scar-tissue. "I guess so," he said sourly at last. "But what do you
+want to know about the stuff? And who are you, anyhow?"
+
+"The name's Malone," Malone said. "You might say trouble is my
+business. Or something like that. I see an opportunity to create a
+little trouble--but not for you. That is, if you want to hear some
+more about those buttons. Of course, if you had nothing to do with
+it--"
+
+"All right," Sand said. "All right. But it was strictly a legitimate
+proposition, understand?"
+
+"Sure," Malone said. "Strictly legitimate."
+
+"Well, it was," Sand said defensively. "We got to stop scab trucking,
+don't we? And that Palveri was using nonunion boys on the trucks. We
+had to stop them; it was a service to the Brotherhood, understand?"
+
+"And the peyotl buttons?" Malone asked.
+
+Sand shrugged. "So we had to confiscate the cargo, didn't we?" he
+said. "To teach them a lesson. Nonunion drivers, that's what we're
+against."
+
+"And you're for peyotl," Malone said, "so you can make it into peyote
+and get enough money to refurbish Brotherhood Headquarters."
+
+"Now, look," Sand said. "You think you're tough and you can get away
+with a lot of wisecracks. That's a wrong idea, brother." He didn't
+move, but he suddenly seemed set to spring. Malone wondered if, just
+maybe, his precognition had blown a fuse.
+
+"O.K., let's forget it," he said. "But I've got some inside lines,
+Sand. You didn't get the real shipment."
+
+"Didn't get it?" Sand said with raised eyebrows. "I got it. It's
+right where I can put my finger on it now."
+
+"That was the fake," Malone said easily. "They knew you were after a
+shipment, Sand, so they suckered you in. They fed your spies with
+false information and sent you out after the fake shipment."
+
+"Fake shipment?" Sand said. "It's the real stuff, brother. The real
+stuff."
+
+"But not enough of it," Malone said. "Their big shipments are almost
+three times what you got. They made one while you were suckered off
+with the fake--and they're making another one next week. Interested?"
+
+Sand snorted. "The hell," he said. "Didn't you hear me say I got the
+first shipment right where I can put my finger on it?"
+
+"So?" Malone said.
+
+"So I can't get rid of it," Sand said. "What do I want with a new
+load? Every day I hold the stuff is dangerous. You never know when
+somebody's going to look for it and maybe find it."
+
+"Can't get rid of it?" Malone said. This was a new turn of events.
+"What's happening?"
+
+"Everything," Sand said tersely. "Look, you want to sell me some
+information--but you don't know the setup. Maybe when I tell you,
+you'll stop bothering me." He put his head in his hands, and his
+voice, when he spoke again, was muffled. "The contacts are gone," he
+said. "With the arrests and the resignations and everything else,
+nobody wants to take any chances; the few guys that aren't locked up
+are scared they will be. I can't make any kind of a deal for anything.
+There just isn't any action."
+
+"Things are tough, huh?" Malone said hopelessly. Apparently even Mike
+Sand wasn't going to pan out for him.
+
+"Things are terrible," Sand said. "The locals are having
+revolutions--guys there are kicking out the men from National
+Headquarters. Nobody knows where he stands any more--a lot of my
+organizers have been goofing up and getting arrested for one thing and
+another. Like apes in the trees, that's what."
+
+Malone nodded very slowly and took another puff of the cigarette.
+"Nothing's going right," he said.
+
+"Listen," Sand said. "You want to hear trouble? My account books are
+in duplicate--you know? Just to keep things nice and peaceful and
+quiet."
+
+"One for the investigators and one for the money," Malone said.
+
+"Sure," Sand said, preoccupied with trouble. "You know the setup. But
+both sets are missing. Both sets." He raised his head, the picture of
+witless agony. "I've got an idea where they are, too. I'm just waiting
+for the axe to fall."
+
+"O.K.," Malone said. "Where are they?"
+
+"The U. S. Attorney's Office," Sand said dismally. He stared down at
+his battered desk and sighed.
+
+Malone stubbed out his cigarette. "So you're not in the market for any
+more buttons?" he said.
+
+"All I'm in the market for," Sand said without raising his eyes, "is
+a nice, painless way to commit suicide."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Malone walked several blocks without noticing where he was going. He
+tried to think things over, and everything seemed to fall into a
+pattern that remained, agonizingly, just an inch or so out of his
+mental reach. The mental bursts, the trouble the United States was
+having, Palveri, Queen Elizabeth, Burris, Mike Sand, Dr. O'Connor, Sir
+Lewis Carter and even Luba Ardanko juggled and flowed in his mind like
+pieces out of a kaleidoscope. But they refused to form any pattern he
+could recognize.
+
+He uttered a short curse and managed to collide with a bulky woman
+with frazzled black hair. "Pardon me," he said politely.
+
+"The hell with it," the woman said, looking straight past him, and
+went jerkily on her way. Malone blinked and looked around him. There
+were a lot of people still on the streets, but they didn't look like
+normal New York City people. They were all curiously tense and wary,
+as if they were suspicious not only of him and each other, but even
+themselves. He caught sight of several illegal-looking bulges beneath
+men's armpits, and many heavily sagging pockets. One or two women
+appeared to be unduly solicitous of their large and heavy handbags.
+But it wasn't his job to enforce the Sullivan Law, he told himself.
+Especially while he was on vacation.
+
+A single foot patrolman stood a few feet ahead, guarding a liquor
+store with drawn revolver, his eyes scanning the passers-by warily
+while he waited for help. Behind him, the smashed plate glass and
+broken bottles and the sprawled figure just inside the door told a
+fairly complete story.
+
+Down the block, Malone saw several stores that carried _Closed_ or
+_Gone Out Of Business_ signs. The whole depressing picture gave him
+the feeling that all the tragedies of the 1930-1935 period had somehow
+been condensed into the past two weeks.
+
+Ahead there was a chain drugstore, and Malone headed for it. Two
+uniformed men wearing Special Police badges were standing near the
+door eyeing everyone with suspicion, but Malone managed to get past
+them and went on to a telephone booth. He tried dialling the
+Washington number of the FBI, but got only a continuous _beep-beep_,
+indicating a service delay. Finally he managed to get a special
+operator, who told him sorrowfully that calls to Washington were
+jamming all available trunk lines.
+
+Malone glanced around to make sure nobody was watching. Then he
+teleported himself to his apartment in Washington and, on arriving,
+headed for the phone there. Using that one, he dialed again, got
+Pelham's sad face on the screen, and asked for Thomas Boyd.
+
+Boyd didn't look any different, Malone thought, though maybe he was a
+little more tired. Henry VIII had obviously had a hard day trying to
+get his wives to stop nagging him. "Ken," he said. "I thought you were
+on vacation. What are you doing calling up the FBI, or do you just
+want to feel superior to us poor working slobs?"
+
+"I need some information," Malone said.
+
+Boyd uttered a short, mirthless laugh. "How to beat the tables, you
+mean?" he said. "How are things in good old Las Vegas?"
+
+Malone, realizing that with direct-dial phones Boyd had no idea where
+he was actually calling from, kept wisely quiet. "How about Burris?"
+he said after a second. "Has he come up with any new theories yet?"
+
+"New theories?" Boyd said. "What about?"
+
+"Everything," Malone said. "From all I see in the papers things
+haven't been quieting down any. Is it still Brubitsch, Borbitsch and
+Garbitsch putting psychodrugs in water-coolers, or has something new
+been added?"
+
+"I don't know what the chief thinks," Boyd said. "Things'll straighten
+out in a while. We're working on it--twenty-four hours a day, or damn
+near, but we're working. While you take a nice, long vacation that--"
+
+"I want you to get me something," Malone said. "Just go and get it and
+send it to me at Las Vegas."
+
+"Money?" Boyd said with raised eyebrows.
+
+"Dossiers," Malone said. "On Mike Sand and Primo Palveri."
+
+"Palveri I can understand," Boyd said. "You want to threaten him with
+exposure unless he lets you beat the roulette tables. But why Sand?
+Ken, are you working on something psionic?"
+
+"Me?" Malone said sweetly. "I'm on vacation."
+
+"The chief won't like--"
+
+"Can you send me the dossiers?" Malone interrupted.
+
+Boyd shook his head very slowly. "Ken, I can't do it without the chief
+finding out about it. If you are working on something ... hell, I'd
+like to help you. But I don't see how I can. You don't know what
+things are like here."
+
+"What are they like?" Malone said.
+
+"The full force is here," Boyd said. "As far as I know, you're the
+only vacation leave not canceled yet. And not only that, but we've got
+agents in from the Surete and New Scotland Yard, agents from Belgium
+and Germany and Holland and Japan ... Ken, we've even got three MVD
+men here working with us."
+
+"It's happening all over?" Malone said.
+
+"All over the world," Boyd said. "Ken, I'm beginning to think we've
+got a case of Martian Invaders on our hands. Or something like it." He
+paused. "But we're licking them, Ken," he went on. "Slowly but surely,
+we're licking them."
+
+"How do you mean?" Malone said.
+
+"Crime is down," Boyd said, "away down. Major crime, I mean--petty
+theft, assault, breaking and entering and that sort of thing has gone
+away up, but that's to be expected. Everything's going to--"
+
+"Skip the handbasket," Malone said. "But you're working things out?"
+
+"Sooner or later," Boyd said. "Every piece of equipment and every man
+in the FBI is working overtime; we can't be stopped forever."
+
+"I'll wave flags," Malone said bitterly. "And I wish I could join
+you."
+
+"Believe me," Boyd said, "you don't know when you're well off."
+
+Malone switched off. He looked at his watch; it was ten-thirty.
+
+
+XII
+
+That made it eight-thirty in Las Vegas. Malone opened his eyes again
+in his hotel room there. He had half an hour to spare until his dinner
+date with Luba. That gave him plenty of time to shower, shave and
+dress, and he felt pleased to have managed the timing so neatly.
+
+Two minutes later, he was soaking in the luxury of a hot tub allowing
+the warmth to relax his body while his mind turned over the facts he
+had collected. There were a lot of them, but they didn't seem to mean
+anything special.
+
+The world, he told himself, was going to hell in a handbasket. That
+was all very well and good, but just what was the handbasket made of?
+Burris' theory, the more he thought about it, was a pure case of
+mental soapsuds, with perhaps a dash of old cotton-candy to make
+confusion even worse confounded.
+
+And there wasn't any other theory, was there?
+
+Well, Malone reflected, there was one, or at least a part of one. Her
+Majesty had said that everything was somehow tied up with the mental
+bursts--and that sounded a lot more probable. Assuming that the bursts
+and the rest of the mixups were _not_ connected made, as a matter of
+fact, very little sense; it was multiplying hypotheses without reason.
+When two unusual things happen, they have at least one definite
+connection: they're both unusual. The sensible thing to do, Malone
+thought, was to look for more connections.
+
+Which meant asking who was causing the bursts, and why. Her Majesty
+had said that she didn't know, and couldn't do it herself. Obviously,
+though, some telepath or a team of telepaths was doing the job. And
+the only trouble with that, Malone reflected sadly, was that all
+telepaths were in the Yucca Flats laboratory.
+
+It was at this point that he sat upright in the tub, splashing water
+over the floor and gripping the soap with a strange excitement. Who'd
+ever said that _all_ the telepaths were in Yucca Flats? All the ones
+so far discovered were--but that, obviously, was an entirely different
+matter.
+
+Her majesty didn't know about any others, true. But Malone thought of
+his own mind-shield. If he could make himself telepathically
+"invisible," why couldn't someone else? Dr. Marshall's theories seemed
+to point the other way--but they only went for telepaths like Her
+Majesty, who were psychotic. A sane telepath, Malone thought, might
+conceivably develop such a mind-shield.
+
+All known telepaths were nuts, he told himself. Now, he began to see
+why. He'd started out, two years before, _hunting_ for nuts, and for
+idiots. But they wouldn't even know anything about sane telepaths--the
+sane ones probably wouldn't even want to communicate with them.
+
+A sane telepath was pretty much of an unknown quantity. But that,
+Malone told himself with elation, was exactly what he was looking for.
+Could a sane telepath do what an insane one couldn't--and project
+thoughts, or at least mental bursts?
+
+He got out of the cooling tub and grabbed for a terry-cloth robe. Not
+even bothering about the time, he closed his eyes. When he opened them
+again he was in the Yucca Flats apartment of Dr. Thomas O'Connor.
+
+O'Connor wasn't sleeping, exactly. He sat in a chair in his
+bare-looking living room, a book open on his lap, his head nodding
+slightly. Malone's entrance made no sounds, and O'Connor didn't move
+or look around.
+
+"Doctor," Malone said, "is it possible that--"
+
+O'Connor came up off the chair a good foot and a half. He went: "Eee,"
+and came down again, still gripping the book. His head turned.
+
+"It's me," Malone said.
+
+"Indeed," O'Connor said. "Indeed indeed. My goodness." He opened his
+mouth some more but no words came out of it. "Eee," he said again, at
+last, in a conversational tone.
+
+Malone took a deep breath. "I'm sorry I startled you," he said, "but
+this is important and it couldn't wait." O'Connor stared blankly at
+him. "Dr. O'Connor," Malone said, "it's me. Kenneth J. Malone. I want
+to talk to you."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At last O'Connor's expression returned almost to normal. "Mr. Malone,"
+he said, "you are undressed."
+
+Malone sighed. "This is important, doctor," he said. "Let's not waste
+time with all that kind of thing."
+
+"But, Mr. Malone--" O'Connor began frostily.
+
+"I need some information," Malone said, "and maybe you've got it. What
+do you know about telepathic projection?"
+
+"About what?" O'Connor said. "Do you mean nontelepaths receiving some
+sort of ... communication from telepaths?"
+
+"Right," Malone said. "Mind-to-mind communication, of course; I'm not
+interested in the United States mail or the telephone companies. How
+about it, doctor? Is it possible?"
+
+O'Connor gnawed at his lower lip for a second. "There have been cases
+reported," he said at last. "Very few have been written up with any
+accuracy, and those seem to be confined to close relatives or loved
+ones of the person projecting the message."
+
+"Is that necessary?" Malone said. "Isn't it possible that--"
+
+"Further," O'Connor said, getting back into his lecture-room stride,
+"I think you'll find that the ... ah ... message so received is one
+indicating that the projector of such a message is in dire peril. He
+has, for instance, been badly injured, or is rapidly approaching
+death, or else he has narrowly escaped death."
+
+"What does that have to do with it?" Malone said. "I mean, why should
+all those requirements be necessary?"
+
+O'Connor frowned slightly. "Because," he said, "the amount of psionic
+energy necessary for such a feat is tremendous. Usually, it is the
+final burst of energy, the outpouring of all the remaining psionic
+force immediately before death. And if death does not occur, the
+person is at the least greatly weakened; his mind, if it ever does
+recover, needs time and rest to do so."
+
+"And he reaches a relative or a loved one," Malone said, "because the
+linkage is easier; there's some thought of him in that other mind for
+him to 'tune in' on."
+
+"We assume so," O'Connor said.
+
+"Very well, then," Malone said. "I'll assume so, too. But if the
+energy is so great, then a person couldn't do this sort of thing very
+often."
+
+"Hardly," O'Connor said.
+
+Malone nodded. "It's like ... like giving blood to a blood bank," he
+said. "Giving ... oh, three quarts of blood. It might not kill you.
+But if it didn't, you'd be weak for a long time."
+
+"Exactly," O'Connor said. "A good analogy, Mr. Malone." Malone looked
+at him and felt relieved that he'd managed to get the conversation
+onto pure lecture-room science so quickly. O'Connor, easily at home in
+that world, had been able to absorb the shock of Malone's sudden
+appearance while providing the facts in his own inimitable, frozen
+manner.
+
+"So one telepath couldn't go on doing it all the time," he said.
+"But--how about several people?"
+
+"Several people?" O'Connor said.
+
+"I mean ... well, let's look at that blood bank again," Malone said.
+"You need three quarts of blood. But one person doesn't have to give
+it. Suppose twelve people gave half a pint each."
+
+"Ah," O'Connor said. "I see. Or twenty-four people, giving a
+quarter-pint each. Or--"
+
+"That's the idea," Malone said hurriedly. "I guess there'd be a point
+of diminishing returns, but that's the point. Would something like
+that be possible?"
+
+O'Connor thought for what seemed like a long time. "It might," he said
+at last. "At least theoretically. But it would take a great deal of
+mental co-ordination among the participants. They would all have to be
+telepaths, of course."
+
+"In order to mesh their thoughts right on the button, and direct them
+properly and at the correct time," Malone said. "Right?"
+
+"Ah ... correct," O'Connor said. "Given that, Mr. Malone, I imagine
+that it might possibly be done."
+
+"Wonderful," Malone said.
+
+"However," O'Connor said, apparently glad to throw even a little cold
+water on the notion, "it could not be done for very long periods of
+time, you understand. It would happen in rather short bursts."
+
+"That's right," Malone said, enjoying the crestfallen look on
+O'Connor's face. "That's exactly what I was looking for."
+
+"I'm ... ah ... glad to have been of service," O'Connor said.
+"However, Mr. Malone, I should like to request--"
+
+"Oh, don't worry," Malone said. "I won't slam the door." He vanished.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was eight-fifty. Hurriedly, he rinsed himself off, shaved and put
+on his evening clothes. But he was still late--it was two minutes
+after nine when he showed up at the door that led off the lobby to the
+Universal Joint. Luba was, surprisingly, waiting for him there.
+
+"Ready for a vast feast?" she asked pleasantly.
+
+"In about a minute and a half," Malone said. "Do you mind waiting that
+long?"
+
+"Frankly," Luba said, "in five minutes I will be gnawing holes in the
+gold paneling around here. And I do want to catch the first floor
+show, too. I understand they've got a girl who has--"
+
+"That," Malone said sternly, "should interest me more than it does
+you."
+
+"I'm always interested in what the competition is doing," Luba said.
+
+"Nevertheless," Malone began, and stopped. After a second he started
+again: "Anyhow, this is important."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"All right," she said instantly. "What is it?"
+
+He led her away from the door to an alcove in the lobby where they
+could talk without being overheard. "Can you get hold of Sir Lewis at
+this time of night?" he asked.
+
+"Sir Lewis?" she said. "If ... if it's urgent, I suppose I could."
+
+"It's urgent," Malone said. "I need all the data on telepathic
+projection I can get. The scientists have given me some of it--maybe
+Psychical Research has some more. I imagine it's all mixed up with
+ghosts and ectoplasm, but--"
+
+"Telepathic projection," Luba said. "Is that where a person projects a
+thought into somebody else's mind?"
+
+"That's it," Malone said. "Can Sir Lewis get me all the data on that
+tonight?"
+
+"Tonight?" Luba said. "It's pretty late and what with sending them
+from New York to Nevada--"
+
+"Don't bother about that," Malone said. "Just send 'em to the FBI
+Offices in New York. I'll have the boys there make copies and send the
+copies on." Instead, he thought, he would teleport to New York
+himself. But Luba definitely didn't have to know that.
+
+"He'd have to send the originals," Luba said.
+
+"I'll guarantee their safety," Malone said. "But I need the data right
+now."
+
+Luba hesitated.
+
+"Tell him to bill the FBI," Malone said. "Call him collect and he can
+bill the phone call, too."
+
+"All right, Ken," Luba said at last. "I'll try."
+
+She went off to make the call, and came back in a few minutes.
+
+"O.K.?" Malone said.
+
+She smiled at him, very gently. "O.K.," she said. "Now let's go in to
+dinner, before I get any hungrier and the Great Universal loses some
+of its paneling."
+
+Dinner, Malone told himself, was going to be wonderful. He was alone
+with Luba, and he was in a fancy, fine, expensive place. He was happy,
+and Luba was happy, and everything was going to be perfectly frabjous.
+
+It was. He had no desire whatever, when dinner and the floor show were
+over, to leave Luba. Unfortunately, he did have work to do--work that
+was more important than anything else he could imagine. He made a
+tentative date for the next day, went to his room, and from there
+teleported himself to FBI Headquarters, New York.
+
+The agent-in-charge looked up at him. "Hey," he said. "I thought you
+were on vacation, Malone."
+
+"How come everybody knows about me being on vacation?" Malone said
+sourly.
+
+The agent-in-charge shrugged. "The only leave not canceled?" he said.
+"Hell, it was all over the place in five minutes."
+
+"O.K., O.K.," Malone said. "Don't remind me. Is there a package for
+me?"
+
+The agent-in-charge produced a large box. "A messenger brought it," he
+said. "From the Psychical Research Society," he said. "What is it,
+ghosts?"
+
+"Dehydrated," Malone said. "Just add ectoplasm and out they come,
+shouting _Boo!_ at everybody."
+
+"Sounds wonderful," the agent-in-charge said. "Can I come to the
+party?"
+
+"First," Malone said judiciously, "you'd have to be dead. Of course I
+can arrange that--"
+
+"Thanks," the agent-in-charge said, leaving in a hurry. Malone went on
+down to his office and opened the box. It contained books, pamphlets
+and reports from Sir Lewis, all dealing with some area of telepathic
+projection. He spent a few minutes looking them over and trying to
+make some connected sense out of them, but finally he gave up and just
+sat and thought. The material seemed to be no help at all; it told him
+even less than Dr. O'Connor had.
+
+What he needed, he decided, was somebody to talk to. But who? He
+couldn't talk to the FBI, and nobody else knew much about what he was
+trying to investigate. He thought of Her Majesty and rejected the
+notion with a sigh. No, what he needed was somebody smart and quick,
+somebody who could be depended on, somebody with training and
+knowledge.
+
+And then, very suddenly, he knew who he wanted.
+
+"Well, now, Sir Kenneth," he said. "Let's put everything together and
+see what happens."
+
+"Indeed," said Sir Kenneth Malone, "it is high time we did so, Sirrah.
+Proceed: I shall attend."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Let's start from the beginning," Malone said. "We know there's
+confusion in all parts of the country--in all parts of the world, I
+guess. And we know that confusion is being caused by carefully timed
+accidents and errors. We also know that these errors appear to be
+accompanied by violent bursts of psionic static--violent energy. And
+we know, further, that on three specific occasions, these bursts of
+energy were immediately followed by a reversal of policy in the mind
+of the person on the receiving end."
+
+"You mean," Sir Kenneth put in, "that these gentlemen changed their
+opinions."
+
+"Correct," Malone said. "I refer, of course, to the firm of Brubitsch,
+Borbitsch and Garbitsch, Spying Done Cheap."
+
+"Indeed," Sir Kenneth said. "Then the operators of this strange force,
+whatever it may prove to be, must have some interest in allowing the
+spies' confession?"
+
+"Maybe," Malone said. "Let's leave that for later. To get back to the
+beginning of all this: it seems to me to follow that the accidents and
+errors which have caused all the confusion throughout the world happen
+because somebody's mind is changed just the right amount at the right
+time. A man does something he didn't intend to do--or else he forgets
+to do it at all."
+
+"Ah," Sir Kenneth said. "We have done those things we ought not to
+have done; we have left undone those things we ought to have done. And
+you feel, Sirrah, that a telepathic command is the cause of this
+confusion?"
+
+"A series of them," Malone said. "But we also know, from Dr. O'Connor,
+that it takes a great deal of psychic energy to perform this
+particular trick--more than a person can normally afford to expend."
+
+"Marry, now," Sir Kenneth said. "Meseemeth this is not reasonable.
+Changing the mind of a man indeed seems a small thing in comparison to
+teleportation, or psychokinesis, or levitation or any such witchery.
+And yet it take more power than any of these?"
+
+Malone thought for a second. "Sure it does," he said. "I'd say it was
+a matter of resistance. Moving an inanimate object is pretty
+simple--comparatively, anyhow--because inert matter has no mental
+resistance."
+
+"And moving oneself?" Sir Kenneth said.
+
+"There's some resistance there, probably," Malone said. "But you'll
+remember that the Fueyo system of training for teleportation involved
+overcoming your own mental resistance to the idea."
+
+"True," Sir Kenneth said. "'Tis true. Then let us agree that it takes
+great power to effect this change. Where does our course point from
+that agreement, Sirrah?"
+
+"Next," Malone said, "we have to do a little supposing. This project
+must be handled by a fairly large group, since no individual can do it
+alone. This large group has to be telepathic--and not only for the
+reasons Dr. O'Connor and I specified."
+
+"And why else?" Sir Kenneth demanded.
+
+"They've also got to know exactly when to make this victim of theirs
+change his mind," Malone said. "Right?"
+
+"Correct," Sir Kenneth said.
+
+"We've got to look for a widespread organization of telepaths," Malone
+said, "with enough mental discipline to hold onto a tough mental
+shield. Strong, trained, sane men."
+
+"A difficult assignment," Sir Kenneth commented.
+
+"Well," Malone said, "suppose you hold on for a second--don't go
+away--and let me figure something out."
+
+"I shall wait," sir Kenneth said, "without."
+
+"Without what?" Malone murmured. But there was no time for games. Now,
+then, he told himself--and sneezed.
+
+He shook his head, cursed softly and went on.
+
+Now, then....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was an organization, spread all over the Western world, and with
+what were undoubtedly secret branches in the Soviet Union. The
+organization had to be an old one--because it had to have trained
+telepaths, of a high degree of efficiency. And training took time.
+
+There was something else to consider, too. In order to organize to
+such a degree that they could wreak the complete havoc they were
+wreaking, the organization couldn't be completely secret; there are
+always leaks, always suspicious events, and a society that spent time
+covering all of those up would have no time for anything else.
+
+So the organization had to be a known one, in the Western world at
+least--a known group, masquerading as something else.
+
+So far, everything made sense. Malone frowned and tried to think.
+Where, he wondered, did he go from here?
+
+Maybe this time a list would help. He found a pencil and a piece of
+paper, and headed the paper: _Organization_. Then he started putting
+down what he knew about it, and what he'd figured out:
+
+1. Large
+2. Old
+3. Disguised
+
+It sounded, so far, just a little like Frankenstein's Monster wearing
+a red wig. But what else did he know about it?
+
+After a second's thought, he murmured: "Nothing," and put the pencil
+down.
+
+But that, he realized, wasn't quite true. He knew one more thing about
+the organization. He knew they'd probably be immune to the confusion
+everybody else was suffering from. The organization would be--had to
+be--efficient. It would be composed of intelligent, superbly
+co-operative people, who could work together as a unit without in the
+least impairing their own individuality.
+
+He reached for the pencil again, and put down:
+
+4. Efficient
+
+He looked at it. Now it didn't remind him so much of the Monster. But
+it didn't look terribly familiar, either. Who did he know, he thought,
+who was large, old, disguised and efficient?
+
+It sounded like an improbable combination. He set the paper down,
+clearing off some of the PRS books to make room for it. And then he
+stopped.
+
+The papers the PRS had sent him....
+
+And he'd gotten them so quickly, so efficiently....
+
+They were a large organization....
+
+And an old one....
+
+He looked for a desk phone, found one and grabbed at it frantically.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The girl who answered the phone looked familiar. Malone suddenly
+remembered to check the time--it was just after nine. The girl stared
+at him. She did not look terribly old, but she was large and she had
+to be disguised. There seemed to be a lot of teeth running around in
+this case, Malone thought, between the burlesque stripper in Las Vegas
+and Miss Dental Display here in New York. Nobody, he told himself,
+could have collected that many teeth honestly.
+
+"Psychical Research Society," she said. "Oh, Mr. Malone. Good
+morning."
+
+"Sir Lewis," Malone said in a rush. "Sir Lewis Carter. I want to talk
+to him. Hurry."
+
+"Sir Lewis Carter?" the girl said very slowly. "Oh, I'm sorry, Mr.
+Malone, but he won't be in at all today."
+
+"Home number," Malone said desperately. "I've got to."
+
+"Well, I can give you that, Mr. Malone," she said, "but it wouldn't do
+you any good, really. Because he went away on his vacation and when he
+does that he never tells us where. You know? He won't be back for two
+or three weeks," she added as an afterthought.
+
+Malone said: "Oog," and thought for less than a second. "Somebody
+official," he said. "Got to talk to somebody official. Now."
+
+"Oh, I can't do that either, Mr. Malone," the toothy girl said. "All
+of the executives already left on their vacation. They just left a
+skeleton force here at the office."
+
+"They're all gone?" Malone said hollowly.
+
+"That's right," the girl said with great cheer. "As a matter of fact,
+I'm in charge now. You know?"
+
+"I'm afraid I do," Malone said. "It's very important, though. You
+don't have any idea where any of them went?"
+
+"None at all," she said. "I'm sorry, but that's how it is. Maybe if
+you were me you'd ask questions, but I just follow orders and those
+were my orders. To take over until they get back. You know? They
+didn't tell me where and I just didn't ask."
+
+"Great," Malone said. He wanted to shoot himself. Everything was
+obvious now--about twenty-four hours too late. And now, they'd all
+gone--for two weeks--or for good.
+
+The girl's rancid voice broke in on his thoughts.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Malone," she said. "I'm sorry, but I just remembered they
+left a note for you."
+
+"A note?" Malone said. "For me?"
+
+"Sir Lewis said you might call," the girl said, "and he left a
+message. If you'll hold on a minute I'll read it."
+
+Malone waited tensely. The girl found a slip of paper, blinked at it
+and read:
+
+"My dear Malone, I'm afraid that what you have deduced is quite
+correct; and, as you can see, that leaves us no alternative. Sorry.
+Miss Luba A. sends her apologies to you, since she is joining us; my
+apologies are also tendered." The girl looked up. "It's signed by Sir
+Lewis," she said. "Does that mean anything to you, Mr. Malone?"
+
+"I'm afraid it does," Malone said blankly. "It means entirely too
+much."
+
+
+XIII
+
+After Miss Dental Display had faded from Malone's screen, he just sat
+there, looking at the dead, gray front of the visiphone and feeling
+about twice as dead and at least three times as gray.
+
+Things, he told himself, were terrible. But even that sentence, which
+was a good deal more cheerful than what he actually felt, did nothing
+whatever to improve his mood. All of the evidence, after all, had been
+practically living on the tip of his nose for God alone knew how long,
+and not only had he done nothing about it, he hadn't even seen it.
+
+There was the organization, staring him in the face. There was
+Luba--nobody's fool, no starry-eyed dreamer of occult dreams. She was
+part of the Psychical Research Society, why hadn't he thought to
+wonder why she was connected with it?
+
+And there was his own mind-shield. Why hadn't he wondered whether
+other telepaths might not have the same shield?
+
+He thought about Luba and told himself bitterly that from now on she
+was Miss Ardanko. Enough, he told himself, was enough. From now on he
+was calling her by her last name, formally and distantly. In his own
+mind, anyhow.
+
+Facts came tumbling in on him like the side of a mountain falling on a
+hapless traveler, during a landslide season. And, Malone told himself,
+he had never possessed less hap in all of his ill-starred life.
+
+And then, very suddenly, one more fact arrived, and pushed the rest
+out into the black night of Malone's bitter mind. He stood up, pushing
+the books away, and closed his eyes. When he opened them he went to
+the telephone in his Las Vegas hotel suite, and switched it on. A
+smiling operator appeared. Malone wanted to see him die of poison,
+slowly.
+
+"Give me Room 4-T," he snapped. "Hurry."
+
+"Room forty?" the operator asked.
+
+"Damn it," Malone said, "I said 4-T and I meant 4-T. Four as in four
+and T as in--as in China. And hurry."
+
+"Oh," the operator said. "Yes, sir." He turned away from the screen.
+"That would have been Miss Luba Ardanko's room, sir?" he said.
+
+"Right," Malone snapped. "I ... wait a minute. Would have been?"
+
+"That's correct, sir," the operator said. "She checked out, sir, early
+this morning. The room is unoccupied."
+
+Malone swallowed hard. It was all true, then. Sir Lewis' note hadn't
+simply been one last wave of the red cape before an angry bull. Luba
+was one of them.
+
+_Miss Ardanko_, he corrected himself savagely.
+
+"What time?" he said.
+
+The operator consulted an information board before him. "Approximately
+one o'clock, sir," he said.
+
+"In the morning?"
+
+"Yes, sir," the clerk said.
+
+Malone closed his eyes. "Thanks," he said.
+
+"You're quite welcome, sir," the operator said. "A courtesy of the
+Great Universal Ho--"
+
+Malone cut him off. "Ho, indeed," he said bitterly. "Not to mention ha
+and hee--hee and yippe-ki-yay. A great life." He whisked himself back
+to New York in a dismal, rainy state of mind. As he sat down again to
+the books and papers the door to the room opened.
+
+"You still here?" the agent-in-charge said. "I'm just going off duty
+and I came by to check. Don't you ever sleep?"
+
+"I'm on vacation, remember?"
+
+"Some vacation," the a-in-c said. "If you're on special assignment why
+not tell the rest of us?"
+
+"I want it to be a surprise," Malone said. "And meantime, I'd
+appreciate it if I were left entirely to my own devices."
+
+"Still conjuring up ghosts?" the a-in-c said.
+
+"That," Malone said, "I don't know. I've got some long-distance calls
+to make."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He started with the overseas calls, leaving the rest of the United
+States time for the sun to get round to them. His first call, which
+involved a lot of cursing on Malone's part and much hard work for the
+operator, who claimed plaintively that she didn't know how things had
+gotten so snarled up, but overseas calls were getting worse and worse,
+went to New Scotland Yard in London. After great difficulty, Malone
+managed to get Assistant Commissioner C. E. Teal, who promised to
+check on the inquiry at once.
+
+It seemed like years before he called back, and Malone leaped to the
+phone.
+
+"Yes?" he said.
+
+Teal, red-faced and apparently masticating a stick of gum, said: "I
+got C. I. D. Commander Gideon to follow up on that matter, Mr. Malone.
+As you know, it's after noon here--"
+
+"And they're all out to lunch," Malone said.
+
+"As a matter of fact," Teal went on, "they seem to have disappeared
+entirely. On vacation, that sort of thing. It is rather difficult
+attempting any full-scale tracing job just now; our men are terribly
+overworked. I imagine you've had reports from the New Scotland Yard
+representatives working with you there--"
+
+"Oh, certainly," Malone said. "But the hour; what does that have to do
+with anything?"
+
+"I'm afraid I was thinking of our Inspector Ottermole," Teal said. "He
+was sent to locate Dr. Carnacki, President of the Psychical Research
+Society here. On being told that Dr. Carnacki was 'out to lunch,'
+Ottermole investigated every restaurant and eating-place within ten
+blocks of the offices. Dr. Carnacki was not present; he, like the rest
+of the Society here, appears to have left for places unknown."
+
+"Thorough work," Malone said.
+
+"Ottermole's a good man," Teal said. "We've checked as quickly as
+possible, Mr. Malone. I would like to ask you a question in return."
+
+"Ask away," Malone said.
+
+Teal looked worried. "Do you people think this may have anything to do
+with the present ... ah ... trouble?" he said. "Things are quite upset
+here, as you know; so many members of Parliament have resigned or ...
+ah ... died that the realm is being run by a rather shakily assembled
+coalition government. There is even some talk of giving executive
+power to Her Majesty until a general election can be held."
+
+For one brief moment, Malone thought Teal was talking about Rose
+Thompson. Then he recalled Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, and felt
+better. Things weren't quite as bad as he'd thought.
+
+But they were bad enough. "We simply don't know yet," he said
+untruthfully. "But as soon as anything definite comes up, of course,
+you'll be informed."
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Malone," Teal said. "Of course, we'll do the same."
+And then, still masticating, he switched off.
+
+Paris was next, then Rome, Berlin and a couple more. Every one had the
+same result. From Maigret of the Paris Surete to Poirot in Belgium,
+from Berlin's strict officialdom to the cheerful Hollanders, all the
+reports were identical. The PRS of each country had gone underground.
+
+Malone buried his face in his hands, thought about a cigar and decided
+that even a cigar might make him feel worse. Where were they? What
+were they doing now? What did they plan to do?
+
+Where had they gone?
+
+"Out of the everywhere," he heard himself say in a hollow, sepulchral
+voice, "into the here."
+
+But where was the here?
+
+He tried to make up his mind whether or not that made sense.
+Superficially, it sounded like extremely bad English, but he wasn't
+sure of anything any more. Things were getting much too confused.
+
+He close his eyes wearily, and vanished.
+
+When he opened them, he was in his Washington apartment. He went over
+to the big couch and sat down, feeling that if he were going to curse
+he might as well be comfortable while he did it. But, some minutes
+later, when the air was a bright electric blue around him, he didn't
+feel any better. Cursing was not the answer.
+
+Nothing seemed to be.
+
+What was his next move?
+
+Where did he go from here?
+
+The more he thought about it, the more his mind spun. He was, he
+realized, at an absolute, total dead end.
+
+Oh, there were things he could do. Malone knew that very well. He
+could make a lot of noise and go through a lot of waste motion; that
+was what it amounted to. He could have all the homes of all the
+missing PRS members checked somehow. That would undoubtedly result in
+the startling discovery that the PRS members involved weren't home. He
+could have their dossiers sent to him, which would clutter everything
+with a great many more pieces of paper. But he felt quite sure that
+the pieces of paper would do no good at all. In general, he could
+raise all hell--and find nothing whatever.
+
+Now, he told himself sadly, he had the evidence to start the FBI in
+motion. The only trouble was that he could think of nowhere for them
+to go.
+
+And, though he had evidence that might convince Burris--the PRS
+members, after all, _had_ done a rather unusual fadeout--he had
+nowhere near enough to carry the case into court, much less make a
+try at getting the case to stand up once carried in. That was one
+thing he couldn't do, he realized, he couldn't issue warrants for the
+arrest of anybody at all.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+But, vacation or no vacation, he thought solemnly, he was an FBI
+Agent, and his motto was: "There's always a way." No normal method of
+tracking down the PRS members, or finding their present whereabouts,
+was going to work. They'd been covering themselves for such an
+emergency, undoubtedly, for a good many years--and if anyone got
+close, a burst of mental energy was quite enough to turn the seeker
+aside.
+
+Nobody, Malone told himself grimly, was perfect. There were clues
+lying around somewhere; he was sure of that. There had to be. The
+problem was simply to figure out where to look, and how to look, and
+what to look for.
+
+Somewhere, the clues were sitting quietly and waiting for him to find
+them. The thought cheered him slightly, but not very much. He stood up
+slowly and went into the kitchen to start heating water for coffee.
+There was, he told himself, a long night ahead of him. He sighed
+gently. But there was no help for it; the work had to be done--and
+done quickly.
+
+But when eight cigars had been reduced to ash, and what seemed like
+several gallons of coffee had sloshed their way into Malone's interior
+workings, his mind was as blank as a baby's. The lovely, opalescent
+dawn began to show in the East, and Malone tendered it some extremely
+rude words. Then, Haggard, red-eyed, confused, violently angry, and
+not one inch closer to a solution, he fell into a fitful doze on his
+couch.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When he awoke, the sun was high in the sky, and outside his window the
+cheerful sound of too much traffic floated in the air. Downstairs
+somebody was playing a television set too loudly, and the voice
+reached Malone's semiaware mind in a great tinny shout:
+
+"The President, taking action on the current crisis, has declared martial
+law throughout the nation," a voice said in an important-sounded
+monotone. "Exempt from this proclamation are members of the Armed
+Services, Special Agents and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The
+proclamation, issued this morning, was made public in a special news
+conference which--"
+
+Malone ripped out a particularly foul oath and sat up on the couch.
+"That," he muttered, "is a fine thing to wake up to." He focused his
+eyes, with only slight difficulty, on his watch. The time was a little
+after two.
+
+"Later developments will be reported as and when they occur," the
+announcer was saying, "and in one hour a special panel of newscasters
+will be assembled here to discuss this latest action in the light of
+present happenings. Any special rules and regulations will be
+broadcast over this station--"
+
+"Shut up," Malone said. He had wasted a lot of time doing nothing but
+sleeping, he told himself. This was no time to be listening to
+television. He got up and found, to his vague surprise, that he felt a
+lot better and clearer-headed than he had been. Maybe the sleep had
+actually done him some good.
+
+He yawned, blinked and stretched, and then padded into the bathroom
+for a shower and shave. After he'd changed he thought about a morning
+or afternoon cup of coffee, but last night's dregs appeared to have
+taken up permanent residence in his digestive tract, and he decided
+against it at last. He swallowed some orange juice and toast and
+then, heaving a great sigh of resignation and brushing crumbs off his
+shirt, he teleported himself over to his office.
+
+Now he knew that, sooner or later, he was going to have to talk to
+Burris. Burris _had_ to know, even if there was nothing to be done.
+
+And now was just as good--or as bad--a time as any.
+
+He didn't hesitate. He punched the button on his intercom for Burris'
+office and then sat back, with his eyes closed, waiting for the
+well-known voice.
+
+It didn't come.
+
+Instead, Wolf, the Director's secretary, spoke up.
+
+"Burris isn't in, Malone," he said. "He had to fly to Miami. I can get
+a call through to him on the plane, if it's urgent, but he'll be
+landing in about fifteen minutes. And he did say he'd call in this
+afternoon."
+
+"Oh," Malone said. "Sure. O.K. It isn't urgent." He was just as glad
+of the reprieve; it gave him one more chance to work matters through
+to a solution, and hand it to Burris on a silver platter. "But why
+Miami?" he added.
+
+"Don't you hear about anything any more?" Wolf asked.
+
+"I've been on vacation."
+
+"Oh," Wolf said. "Well, the Governor of Mississippi was assassinated
+yesterday, at Miami Beach."
+
+"Ah," Malone said. He thought about it for a second. "Frankly," he
+said, "this does not strike me as an irreparable loss to the nation.
+Not even to Mississippi."
+
+"You express my views precisely," Wolf said.
+
+"How about the killer?" Malone said. "I gather they haven't got him
+yet, or Burris wouldn't be on his way down."
+
+"No," Wolf said. "The killer would be on his way here instead. But you
+know how things are--everything's confused. Governor Flarion was
+walking along Collins Avenue when somebody fired at him, using a
+high-powered rifle with, I guess, a scope sight."
+
+"Professional," Malone commented.
+
+"It looks like it," Wolf said. "And he picked the right time for it,
+too--the way things are he was just one more confusion among the rest.
+Nobody even heard the sniper's shot; the governor just fell over,
+right there in the street. And by the time his bodyguards found out
+what had happened, it was impossible even to be sure just which way he
+was facing when the shot had been fired."
+
+"And as I remember Collins Avenue--" Malone started.
+
+"Right," Wolf said. "But it's even worse now, with everything going
+nuts. Out where Governor Flarion was taking his stroll, there's an
+awful lot of it to search. The boys are trying to find somebody who
+saw a man acting suspicious in any of the nearby buildings, or heard a
+shot, or saw anybody at all lurking or loitering anywhere near to the
+scene."
+
+"Lovely," Malone said. "Sounds like a nice complicated job."
+
+"You don't know the half of it," Wolf said. "There's also the Miami
+Beach Chamber of Commerce. According to them, Flarion died of a heart
+attack, and not even in Miami Beach. Everything happening down there
+isn't happening, according to them; Miami Beach is the one unsullied
+beauty spot in a mixed-up United States."
+
+"All I can say," Malone offered, "is good luck. This is the saddest
+day in American history since the assassination of Huey P. Long."
+
+"Agreed," Wolf said. "Want me to tell Burris you called?"
+
+"Right," Malone said, and switched off.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The assassination of Nemours P. Flarion, he told himself, obviously
+meant something. It pointed straight toward some entirely new kind of
+answer. Granted, old Nemours P. had been a horrible mistake, a
+paranoid, self-centered, would-be, dictator whose final act was quite
+in keeping with the rest of his official life. Who else would be in
+Miami Beach, far away from his home state, while the President was
+declaring nationwide martial law?
+
+But that, Malone told himself, wasn't the point. Or not quite the
+point, anyhow.
+
+Maybe some work would dig up more facts. Anyhow, Malone was reasonably
+sure that he could reassign himself from vacation time, at least until
+he called Burris. And he had work to do; nobody was going to hand him
+anything on a silver serving salver.
+
+He punched the intercom again and got the Records office.
+
+"Yes, sir?" a familiar voice said.
+
+"Potter," Malone said, "this is Malone. I want facsimiles of
+everything we have on the Psychical Research Society, on Sir Lewis
+Carter, and on Luba Ardanko. Both of these last are connected with the
+Society."
+
+"You're back on duty, Malone?" Potter said.
+
+"Right," Malone said. "Make that fast, will you?"
+
+Potter nodded. "Right away," he said.
+
+It didn't take long for the facsimile records to arrive, and Malone
+went right to work on them. Maybe somewhere in those records was the
+clue he had desperately needed. Where was the PRS? What were they
+doing now? What did they plan to do?
+
+And why had they started the whole row in the first place?
+
+The PRS, he saw, was even more widely spread than he had thought. It
+had branches in almost every major city in the United States, in
+Europe, South Africa, South America and Australia. There was even a
+small branch society in Greenland. True, the Communist disapproval of
+such nonmaterialistic, un-Marxian objectives as Psychical Research
+showed up in the fact that there were no registered branches in the
+Sino-Soviet bloc. But that, Malone thought, hardly mattered. Maybe in
+Russia they called themselves the Lenin Study Group, or the Better
+Borschch League. He was fairly sure, from all the evidence, that the
+PRS had some kind of organization even behind the Iron Curtain.
+
+Money backing didn't seem to be much of a problem, either. Malone
+checked for the supporters of the organization and found a microfilmed
+list that ran into the hundreds of thousands of names, most of them
+ordinary people who seemed to be interested in spiritualism and the
+like, and who donated a few dollars apiece to the PRS. Besides this
+mass of small donations, of course, there were a few large ones, from
+independently wealthy men who gave support to the organization and
+seemed actively interested in its aims.
+
+It wasn't an unusual picture; just an exceptionally big one.
+
+Malone sighed and went on to the personal dossiers.
+
+Sir Lewis Carter himself was a well-known astronomer and
+mathematician. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society, the Royal
+Astronomical Society and the Royal Mathematical Society. He had been
+knighted for his contributions in higher mathematics only two years
+before he had come to live in the United States. Malone went over the
+papers dealing with his entry into the country carefully, but they
+were all in order and they contained absolutely nothing in the way of
+usable clues.
+
+Sir Lewis' books on political and historical philosophy had been
+well-received, and he had also written a novel, "But Some Are More
+Equal," which, for a few weeks after publication, had managed to claw
+its way to the bottom of the best-seller list.
+
+And that was that. Malone tried to figure out whether all this
+information did him any good, and the answer came very quickly. The
+answer was no. He opened the second dossier.
+
+Luba Ardanko had been born in New York. Her mother had been a woman of
+Irish descent named Mary Foley, and had died in '69. Her father had
+been a Hungarian named Chris Yorgen Ardanko, and had died in the same
+year.
+
+Malone sighed. Somewhere in the dossiers, he was sure, there was a
+clue, the basic clue that would tell him everything he needed to know.
+His prescience had never been so strong; he knew perfectly well that
+he was staring at the biggest, most startling and most complete
+disclosure of all. And he couldn't see it.
+
+He stared at the folders for a long minute. What did they tell him?
+What was the clue.
+
+And then, very slowly, the soft light of a prodigal sun illuminated
+his mind.
+
+"Mr. Malone," Malone said gently, "you are a damned fool. There are
+times when it is necessary to discard the impossible after you have
+seen that the obscure is the obvious."
+
+He wasn't sure whether that meant anything, or even whether he knew
+what he was saying. But, as the entire structure of facts became
+clear, and then turned right upside down in his mind and changed into
+something else entirely--something that told him not only who, and
+where, but also why, he became absolutely sure of one thing.
+
+He knew the final answer.
+
+And it _was_ obvious. Obvious as all hell!
+
+
+XIV
+
+There was, of course, only one thing to do and only one place to go.
+Malone teleported to the New York offices of the FBI and went
+immediately downstairs to the garage, where a specially-built Lincoln
+awaited him at all times.
+
+One of the mechanics looked up curiously as Malone headed for the car.
+"Want a driver?" he said.
+
+Malone thanked his lucky stars that he didn't have to get into any
+lengthy and time-consuming argument about whether or not he was on
+vacation. "No, thanks," he said. "This is a solo job."
+
+That, he told himself, was for sure. He drove out onto the streets and
+into the heavy late-afternoon traffic of New York. The Lincoln handled
+smoothly, but Malone didn't press his luck in the traffic which he
+thought was even worse than the mess he'd driven through with the
+happy cab driver two days before. He wasn't in any hurry now, after
+all. He had all the time in the world, and he knew it. They--and, for
+once, Malone could put real names to that "they"--would still be
+waiting for him when he got there.
+
+_If_ he got there, he thought suddenly, turning a corner and being
+confronted with a great mass of automobiles wedged solidly fender to
+fender as far as the eye could see. The noise of honking horns was
+deafening, and great clouds of smoke rose up to make the scene look
+like the circle of Hell devoted to hot-rod drivers. Malone cursed and
+sweated until the line began to move, and then cursed and sweated some
+more until he was out of the city at last.
+
+It took quite a lot of time. New York traffic, in the past forty-eight
+hours, hadn't gotten better; it had gotten a lot worse. He was nearly
+exhausted by the time he finally crossed the George Washington Bridge
+and headed west. And, while he drove, he began to let his reflexes
+take over most of the automotive problems now that New York City was
+behind him.
+
+He took all his thoughts from behind the shield that had sheltered
+them and arrayed them neatly before him. They were beamed, he told
+himself firmly, to one particular group of persons and to no one else.
+Everything was perfectly clear; all he had to do now was explain it.
+
+Malone had wondered, over the years, about the detectives in books.
+They always managed to wrap everything up in the last chapter, which
+was perfectly all right by itself. But they always had a whole crowd
+of suspects listening to them, too. Malone knew perfectly well that he
+could never manage a setup like that. People would interrupt him.
+Things would happen. Two dogs would rush in and start a battle royal
+on the floor. There would be an earthquake or an invasion of little
+green Venusians, or else somebody would just decide to faint and
+cause a furor.
+
+But now, at long last, he realized, he had his chance. Nobody could
+interrupt him. And he could explain to his heart's content.
+
+Because the members of the PRS were telepathic. And Kenneth J. Malone,
+he thought happily, was not.
+
+Luba, he was sure, would be tuned in on him as he drove toward their
+Pennsylvania hiding place. At least, he wanted to think so; it made
+things much more pleasant. And he hoped that Luba, or whoever was
+really tuned in, would alert everybody else, so they could all hook in
+and hear his grand final explanation of everything.
+
+He opened his mind in that one special direction, beaming his thoughts
+to nobody else but the group he'd decided on. A second of silence
+passed.
+
+And then a sound began. Malone had passed a company of soldiers some
+yards back, but he hadn't noticed them particularly; with the country
+under martial law, soldiers were going to be as common as tree frogs.
+Now, however, something different was happening.
+
+Malone felt the car tremble slightly, and stopped. Past him, rolling
+along the side of the highway he was on, came a parade of thirty-ton
+tanks. They rumbled and roared their slow, elephantine way down the
+highway and, after what seemed about three days, disappeared from
+sight. Malone wondered what the tanks were for, and then dismissed it
+from his mind. It certainly wasn't very pleasant to think about, no
+matter how necessary it turned out to be.
+
+He started up again. There were few cars on the road, although a lot
+of them were parked along the sides. A series of _Closed_ signs on
+filling stations explained that, and Malone began to be grateful for
+the national emergency. It allowed him to drive without much
+interference, anyhow.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_And a hearty good afternoon to all, he thought--especially to Miss
+Luba Ardanko. I hope she's tuned in ... and, if she isn't, I hope
+somebody alerts her. Frankly, I'd rather talk to her than to anyone
+else I can think of at the moment. As a matter of fact, it's a little
+easier to concentrate if I talk out loud, so I think I'll do that._
+
+He swerved the car at this point, neatly avoiding a broken wooden
+crate that crouched in wait for him. "Road hog," he told it bitterly,
+and went on.
+
+"Nothing personal," he went on after a second. "I don't care if you're
+_all_ listening in, as a matter of fact. And I'm not going to hide
+anything." He thought a second, and then added: "Frankly, I'm not sure
+I've got anything to hide."
+
+He paused and, in his imagination, he could almost hear Luba's voice.
+
+_I'm listening, Kenneth,_ she said. _Go on._
+
+He fished around in his mind for a second, wondering exactly where to
+start. Then he decided, in the best traditions of the detective story,
+not to mention "Alice in Wonderland," to start at the beginning.
+
+"The dear old Psychical Research Society," he said, speaking earnestly
+to his windshield, "has been going on for a good many years now--since
+the 1880's, as a matter of fact. That's a long time and it adds up to
+a lot of Psychical Research. A lot of famous and intelligent people
+have belonged to the Society. And, with all that, it's hardly
+surprising that, after nearly a hundred years of work, something
+finally turned up."
+
+At this point, there was another interruption. A couple of sawhorses
+blocked the road ahead of Malone. As he stared at them, he felt his
+prescience begin to itch. He took out his .44 Magnum and slowed the
+car, memorizing the road as he passed it. He stopped the car before
+the sawhorses. Three enlisted men carrying M-1 rifles, and a stern,
+pale captain, his bars pointing sideways and glittering on his
+shoulders, appeared from the sides of the road.
+
+The captain's voice was a military bark. "Out of the car!"
+
+Malone began to obey.
+
+"With your hands up!" the captain snapped. Malone dropped the .44
+unobtrusively into his jacket pocket and complied. Then, as he came
+out of the car, he teleported himself back to a section of the road
+he'd memorized, ten feet behind the car. The four men were gaping,
+dumbfounded, as Malone drew his gun and shot them. Then he removed the
+sawhorses, got back in his car, reloaded the .44, put it back in his
+holster and drove on.
+
+"Now," he said in a thoughtful tone. "Where was I?"
+
+He imagined Luba's voice saying: _You were telling us how, all this
+time, it's hardly surprising--_
+
+"Oh, yes," he said. "Well, then. So you solved some of the problems,
+you'd set. You learned how to use and control telepathy and
+teleportation, maybe, long before scientific boys like Dr. O'Connor
+became interested. But you never announced it publicly. You kept the
+knowledge all to yourself. 'Is this what the common folk call
+telepathy, Lord Bromley?' 'Yes, Lady Bromley.' 'Much too good for
+them, isn't it?' And maybe it is, at that; I don't know."
+
+His thoughts, he recognized, were veering slightly. After a second he
+got back on the track.
+
+"At any rate," he went on, "you--all of your out there--are
+responsible for what's happening to this country and all of Europe and
+Asia--and, for all I know, the suburbs of Hell.
+
+"I remember one of the book facsimiles you got me, for instance," he
+said. "The writer tried for an 'expose' of the Society, in which he
+attempted to prove that Sir Lewis Carter and certain other members
+were trying to take over the world and run it to suit themselves,
+using their psionic powers to institute a rather horrible type of
+dictatorship over the world.
+
+"It was a pretty convincing book in a lot of ways. The author
+evidently know a lot about what he was dealing with."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At this point, Malone ran into another roadblock. There had been a
+fight of some kind up ahead, and a lot of cars with what looked like
+shell-holes in them were piled on one side of the road. The State
+Police were working under the confused direction of an Army major to
+straighten things out, while a bulldozer pushed the cars off the road
+onto the grass bordering it. The major stopped what he was doing and
+came to meet Malone as the car stopped.
+
+"Get off the road," the major said surlily.
+
+Malone looked up at him. "I've got some identification here," he said.
+"Mind if I get it out?"
+
+The major reached for a gun and held it. "Go ahead," he said. "Don't
+try anything funny. It's been hell up and down this road, mister."
+
+Malone flipped out his wallet and showed the identification.
+
+"FBI?" the Major said. "What're you doing out here?"
+
+"Special assignment," Malone said. "Oh ... by the way ... you might
+send some men back a ways. There are four dead mean in military
+uniforms lying on the road near a couple of sawhorses."
+
+The major stared. "Dead?" he said at last. "Dead how?"
+
+"I shot them," Malone said.
+
+"You--" The major's finger tightened on the trigger of his gun.
+
+"Now wait a minute," Malone said. "I said they were in military
+uniforms. I didn't say they were soldiers."
+
+"But--"
+
+"Three enlisted men carrying M-1 rifles?" Malone said. "When the M-1's
+out of date? And a captain with his bars on sideways? No, major.
+Those were renegades. Looters of some kind; they wanted to kill me and
+get the car and any valuables I happened to have."
+
+The major, very slowly, relaxed his grip on the gun and his arm fell
+to his side. "You did the smart thing, Mr. Malone," he said.
+
+"And I've got to go on doing it," Malone said. "I'm in a hurry."
+
+He noticed a newspaper fluttering at the side of the road, not too
+near the cars. Somehow it made everything seem even more lonely and
+strange. The headlines fluttered into sight:
+
+     MARTIAL LAW EDICT
+
+     "MUST BE OBEYED," SAYS GOVERNOR
+
+     But Riots Are Feared In Outlying Towns
+
+     MAN AND WIFE CONFESS KILLING OF RELATIVES ABOARD PRIVATE
+     PLANE:
+
+     Force Kin To Drop Off
+
+There was a photo of a woman there, too, and Malone could read just a
+little of the caption:
+
+"Obeying the edict of martial law laid down by the President, Miss
+Helen A.--"
+
+He wondered vaguely if her last name were Handbasket.
+
+The major was looking at him. "O.K., then," he said.
+
+"I can go on?" Malone said.
+
+The major looked stern. "Drive on," he said.
+
+Malone got the car going; the roadblock was lifted for him and he went
+on by.
+
+After a moment, he said: "Pardon the interruption. I trust that all
+the devoted listeners to Uncle Kenneth's Happy Hour are still tuned
+in."
+
+_Go ahead,_ said Lou's voice.
+
+"All right, let's take a look at what you've been doing. You've caused
+people to change their minds about what they've been intending to do.
+You can cause all sorts of hell to break loose that way. You have a
+lot of people you want to get rid of, so you play on their neuroses
+and concoct errors for them to fight. You rig things so that they
+quit, or get fired, or lose elections, or get arrested, or just
+generally get put out of circulation. Some of the less stable ones
+just up and did away with themselves.
+
+"Sometimes, it's individuals who have to go. Sometimes, it's whole
+groups or maybe even whole nations. And sometimes it's in between, and
+you manage to foul up organizational moves with misplaced papers,
+mis-sent messages, errors, changed minds, and everything else you can
+think of.
+
+"You know," he went on, "at first I couldn't see any pattern in what
+was going on--though I remember telling myself that there was a kind
+of justice in the way this thing was just as hard on gangsters as it
+was on businessmen and Congressmen.
+
+"The Congressman from Gahoochie County, Arkansas, gets himself in a
+jam over fraudulent election returns on the same day that the
+accountant for the Truckers Union sends Mike Sands' books to the
+Attorney General. Simple justice, I call it.
+
+"And, you know, seen from that viewpoint, this whole caper might come
+out looking pretty good. If most of the characters you've taken care
+of are just the boys who needed taking care of, I'd say more power to
+you--except for one thing. It's all right to get rid of all the fools,
+idiots, maniacs, blockheads, morons, psychopaths, paranoids,
+timidity-ridden, fear-worshipers, fanatics, thieves, and the rest of
+the general, all-round, no-good characters; I'm all for it. But not
+this way. Oh, no.
+
+"You've pressed the panic button, that's what you've done.
+
+"You've done more damage in two weeks than all those fumblebrains have
+been able to do in several myriads of lifetimes. You've loused up the
+economy of this nation and every other civilized nation. You've caused
+riots in which innocent people have died; you've caused thousands more
+to lose their businesses and their savings. And only God Himself knows
+how many more are going to die of starvation and murder before this
+thing is over.
+
+"And you can't tell me that _all_ of those people deserve to die."
+
+He slowed down as he came to a small town, and for the first time in
+many miles he focused on the road ahead with his full mind. The town,
+he saw, looked like a shambles. There were four cars tastefully
+arranged on the lawn of what appeared to be the local library. Across
+the street, a large drugstore was in flames, and surprised people were
+hurrying to put it out. There didn't seem to be any State Police or
+Army men around, but they'd passed through; Malone saw a forgotten
+overseas cap lying on the road ahead.
+
+With a shock, he realized that he was now in Pennsylvania, close to
+where he wanted to go. A signboard told him the town he was looking at
+was Milford. It was a mess, and Malone hoped fervently that it was a
+mess that could eventually be cleaned up.
+
+The town was a small one, and Malone was glad to get out of it so
+quickly.
+
+"That's the kind of thing I mean," he said aloud. Then he paused. "Are
+you there, anybody?"
+
+He imagined he heard Luba's voice saying: _Yes, Ken. Yes, I'm here.
+Listening to you._
+
+Imagination was fine but, of course, there was no way for them to get
+through to him. They were telepathic, but Kenneth J. Malone, he told
+himself sadly, was not.
+
+"Hello, out there," he went on. "I hope you've been listening so far,
+because there isn't too much more for me to say.
+
+"Just this: you've wrecked my country, and you've wrecked almost all
+of the rest of civilization. You've brought my world down around my
+ears.
+
+"I have every logical reason to hate your guts. By all the evidence I
+have, you are a group of the worst blackguards who ever existed; by
+all the evidence, I should be doing everything in my power to
+exterminate you.
+
+"But I'm not.
+
+"My prescience tells me that what you've been doing is right and
+necessary. I'm damned if I can see it, but there it is. I just hope
+you can explain it to me."
+
+
+XV
+
+Soon, he was in the midst of the countryside. It was, of course,
+filled with country. It spread around him in the shape of hills,
+birds, trees, flowers, grass, billboards and other distractions to the
+passing motorist.
+
+It took Malone better than two hours more to find the place he was
+looking for. Long before he found it, he had come to the conclusion
+that finding country estates in Pennsylvania was only a shade easier
+than finding private homes in the Borough of Brooklyn. In both cases,
+he had found himself saddled with the same frantic search down what
+seemed likely routes which turned out to lead nowhere. He had found,
+in both cases, complete ignorance of the place on the part of local
+citizens, and even strong doubts that the place could possibly have
+any sort of existence.
+
+The fact that is was growing dark didn't help much, either.
+
+But he found it at last. Rounding a curve in a narrow, blacktop road,
+he saw the home behind a grove of trees.
+
+He recognized it instantly.
+
+He had seen it so often that he felt as if he knew it intimately.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+It was a big, rambling, Colonial-type mansion, painted a blinding and
+beautiful white, with a broad, pillared porch and a great carved front
+door. The front windows were curtained in rich purples, and before the
+house was a great front garden, and tall old trees. Malone
+half-expected Scarlett O'Hara to come tripping out of the house at any
+minute shouting: "Rhett! The children's mush is on fire!" or something
+equally inappropriate.
+
+Inside it, however, if Malone were right, was not the magnetic
+Scarlett. Inside the house were some of the most important members of
+the PRS--and one person who was not a member.
+
+But it was impossible to tell from the outside. Nothing moved on the
+well-kept grounds, and the windows didn't show so much as the flutter
+of a purple curtain. There was no sound. No cars were parked around
+the house--nor, Malone realized, thinking of "Gone With the Wind,"
+were there any horses or carriages.
+
+The place looked deserted.
+
+Malone thought he knew better, but it took a few minutes for him to
+get up enough courage to go up the long driveway. He stared at the
+house. It was an old one, he knew, built long before the Civil War and
+originally commanding a huge tract of land. Now, all that remained of
+the vast acreage was the small portion that surrounded the house.
+
+But the original family still inhabited it, proud of the house and of
+their part in its past. Over the years, Malone knew, they had kept it
+up scrupulously, and the place had been both restored and modernized
+on the inside without harming the classic outlines of the
+hundred-and-fifty-year-old structure.
+
+A fence surrounded the estate, but the front gate was swinging open.
+Malone saw it and took a deep breath. Now, he told himself, or never.
+He drove the Lincoln through the opening slowly, alert for almost
+anything.
+
+There was no disturbance. Thirty yards from the front door he pulled
+the car to a cautious stop and got out. He started to walk toward the
+building. Each step seemed to take whole minutes, and everything he
+had thought raced through his mind again. Nothing seemed to move
+anywhere, except Malone himself.
+
+Was he right? Were the people he'd been beaming to really here? Or had
+he been led astray by them? Had he been manipulated, in spite of his
+shield, as easily as they had manipulated so many others?
+
+That was possible. But it wasn't the only possibility.
+
+Suppose, he thought, that he was perfectly right, and that the group
+was waiting inside. And suppose, too, that he'd misunderstood their
+motives.
+
+Suppose they were just waiting for him to get a little closer.
+
+Malone kept walking. In just a few steps, he could be close enough so
+that a bullet aimed at him from the house hadn't a real chance of
+missing him.
+
+And it didn't have to be bullets, either. They might have set a trap,
+he thought, and were waiting for him to walk into it. Then they would
+hold him prisoner while they devised ways to....
+
+To what?
+
+He didn't know. And that was even worse; it called up horrible terrors
+from the darkest depths of Malone's mind. He continued to walk
+forward.
+
+Finally he reached the steps that led up to the porch, and took them
+one at a time.
+
+He stood on the porch. A long second passed.
+
+He took a step toward the high, wide and handsome oaken door. Then he
+took another step, and another.
+
+What was waiting for him inside?
+
+He took a deep breath, and pressed the doorbell button.
+
+The door swung open immediately, and Malone involuntarily stepped
+back.
+
+The owner of the house smiled at him from the doorway. Malone let out
+his breath in one long sigh of relief.
+
+"I was hoping it would be you," he said weakly. "May I come in?"
+
+"Why, certainly, Malone. Come on in. We've been expecting you, you
+know," said Andrew J. Burris, Director of the FBI.
+
+
+XVI
+
+Malone sat, quietly relaxed and almost completely at ease, in the
+depths of a huge, comfortable, old-fashioned Morris chair. Three
+similar chairs were clustered around a squat, massive coffee table,
+made of a single slab of dark wood set on short, curved legs. Malone
+looked around at the other three with a relaxed feeling of
+recognition: Andrew J. Burris, Sir Lewis Carter and Luba Ardanko.
+
+Sir Lewis softly exhaled a cloud of smoke as he removed the briar from
+his mouth. "Malone," he asked gently, "how did you know we would be
+here?"
+
+"Well," Malone said, "I just ... I mean, it was obvious as soon as
+I--" He stopped, frowning. "I had one thing to go on, anyway," he
+said. "I figured out the PRS was responsible for all the troubles
+because it was so efficient. And then, while I was sitting and staring
+at the file reports, it suddenly came to me: the FBI was just as
+efficient. So it was obvious."
+
+"What was?" Burris said.
+
+Malone shrugged. "I thought you'd been keeping me on vacation because
+your mind was being changed," he said. "Now I can see you were doing
+it of your own free will."
+
+"Yes," Sir Lewis said. "But how did you know you'd find us _here_,
+Malone?"
+
+There was a shadow in the room, but not a visible one. Malone felt the
+chill of sudden danger. Whatever was going to happen, he realized, he
+would not be around for the finish. He, Kenneth Joseph Malone, the
+cuddly, semi-intrepid FBI Agent he had always known and loved, would
+never get out of this deadly situation. If he lived, he would be so
+changed that--
+
+He didn't even want to think about it.
+
+"What sort of logic," Sir Lewis was saying, "led you to the belief
+that we would all be here, in Andrew's house?"
+
+Malone forced his mind to consider the question. "Well," he began, "it
+isn't exactly logic, I guess."
+
+Luba smiled at him. He felt a little reassured, but not much. "You
+should have phrased that differently," she said. "It's: 'It isn't
+exactly logic. I guess.'"
+
+"Not guess," Sir Lewis said. "You know. Prescience, Malone. Your
+precognitive faculty."
+
+"All right," Malone said. "All right. So what?"
+
+"Take it easy," Burris put in. "Relax, Malone. Everything's going to
+be all right."
+
+Sir Lewis waved a hand negligently. "Let's continue," he said. "Tell
+me, Malone: if you were a mathematics professor, teaching a course in
+calculus, how would you grade a paper that had all the answers but
+didn't show the work?"
+
+"I never took calculus," Malone said. "But I imagine I'd flunk him."
+
+"Why?" Sir Lewis said.
+
+"Because if he can't back up his answer," Malone said slowly, "then
+it's no better than a layman's guess. He has to give reasons for his
+answers; otherwise nobody else can understand him."
+
+"Fine," Sir Lewis said. "Perfectly fine. Now--" he puffed at his
+pipe--"can you give me a logical reason for arriving at the decision
+you made a few hours ago?"
+
+The danger was coming closer, Malone realized. He didn't know what it
+was or how to guard himself against it. All he could do was answer,
+and play for time.
+
+"While I was driving up here," he said, "I sent you a message. I told
+you what I knew and what I believed about the whole world picture as
+it stands now. I don't know if you received it, but I--"
+
+Luba spoke without the trace of a smile. "You mean you didn't know?"
+she said. "You didn't know I was answering you?"
+
+That was the first pebble of the avalanche, Malone knew suddenly--the
+avalanche that was somehow going to destroy him. "You forced your
+thoughts into my mind, then," he said as coolly as he could. "Just as
+you forced decision on the rest of society."
+
+"Now, dammit, Malone!" Burris said suddenly. "You know those bursts
+take a lot of energy, and only last for a fraction of a second!"
+
+Malone blinked. "Then you ... didn't--"
+
+_Of course I didn't force anything on you, Kenneth. I can't. Not all
+the power of the entire PRS could force anything through your shield.
+But you opened it to me._
+
+It was Luba's mental "voice." Malone opened his mouth, shut it and
+then, belatedly, snapped shut the channel through which he'd contacted
+her. Luba gave him a wry look, but said nothing. "You mean I'm a
+telepath?" Malone asked weakly.
+
+"Certainly," Sir Lewis snapped. "At the moment, you can only pick up
+Luba--but you are certainly capable of picking up anyone, eventually.
+Just as you learned to teleport, you can learn to be a telepath.
+You--"
+
+The room was whirling, but Malone tried to keep his mind steady. "Wait
+a minute," he said. "If you received what I sent, then you know I've
+got a question to ask."
+
+There was a little silence.
+
+Finally Sir Lewis looked up. "You want to know why you felt we--the
+PRS--were innocent of the crimes you want to charge us with. Very
+well." He paused. "We have wrecked civilization: granted. We could
+have done it more smoothly: granted."
+
+"Then--"
+
+Sir Lewis' face was serious and steady. Malone tensed.
+
+"Malone," Sir Lewis said, "do you think you're the only one with a
+mental shield?"
+
+Malone shook his head. "I guess stress--fixity of mind or
+purpose--could develop it in anyone," he said. "At least, in some
+people."
+
+"Very well," Sir Lewis said. "Now, among the various people of the
+world who have, through one necessity or another, managed to develop
+such shields--"
+
+Burris broke in impatiently. His words rang, and then echoed in the
+old house.
+
+"Some fool," he said flatly, "was going to start the Last War."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"So you had to stop it," Malone said after a long second. "But I still
+don't see--"
+
+"Of course you don't," Sir Lewis said. "But you've got to understand
+why you don't see it first."
+
+"Because I'm stupid," Malone said.
+
+Luba was shaking her head. Malone turned to face her. "Not stupid,"
+she said. "But some people, Kenneth, have certain talents. Others
+have--other talents. There's no way of equating these talents; all are
+useful, each performs a different function."
+
+"And my talent," Malone said, "is stupidity. But--"
+
+She lit a cigarette daintily. "Not at all," she said. "You've done a
+really tremendous job, Kenneth. I was trained ever since I was a baby
+to use my psionic abilities--the PRS has known how to train children
+in that line ever since 1970. Only Mike Fueyo developed a system for
+instruction independently; the boy was, and is, a genius, as you've
+noticed."
+
+"Agreed," Malone said. "But--"
+
+"You, however," Luba said, "have the distinction of being the first
+human being who has, as an adult, achieved his full powers without
+childhood training. In addition, you're the only human being who has
+ever developed to the extent you have--in precognition, too."
+
+She puffed on the cigarette. Malone waited.
+
+"But what you don't have," she said at last, very carefully, "is the
+ability to reason out the steps you've taken, after you've reached the
+proper conclusion."
+
+"Like the calculus student," Malone said. "I flunk." Something inside
+him grated over the marrow in his bones. It was as though someone had
+decided that the best cure for worry was coarse emery in the joints,
+and he, Kenneth J. Malone, had been picked for the first experiment.
+
+"You're not flunking," Luba said. "You're a very long way from
+flunking, Kenneth."
+
+Burris cleared his throat suddenly. Malone turned to him. The Head of
+the FBI stuck an unlighted cigar into his mouth, chewed it a little,
+and then said: "Malone, we've been keeping tabs on you. Your shield
+was unbreakable--but we have been able to reach the minds of people
+you've talked to: Mike Sands, Primo Palveri, and so on. And Her
+Majesty, of course: you opened up a gap in your shield to talk to her,
+and you haven't closed it down. Until you started broadcasting here on
+the way up, naturally."
+
+"All right," Malone said, waiting with as much patience as possible
+for the point.
+
+"I tried to take you off the case," Burris went on, "because Sir Lewis
+and the others felt you were getting too close to the truth. Which you
+were, Malone, which you were." He lit his cigar and looked obscurely
+pleased. "But they didn't know how you'd take it," he said. "They ...
+we ... felt that a man who hadn't been trained since childhood to
+accept the extrasensory abilities of the human mind couldn't possibly
+learn to accept the reality of the job the PRS has to do."
+
+"I still don't," Malone said. "I'm stupid. I flunk. Remember?"
+
+"Now, now," Burris said helplessly. "Not at all, Malone. But we were
+worried. I lied to you about those three spies--I put the drug in the
+water-cooler. I tried to keep you from learning the Fueyo method of
+teleportation. I didn't want you to learn that you were telepathic."
+
+"But I did," Malone said, "And what does that make me?"
+
+"That," Sir Lewis cut in, "is what we're attempting to find out."
+
+Malone felt suitably crushed, but he wasn't sure by what. "I've got
+some questions," he said after a second. "I want to know three
+things."
+
+"Go ahead," Sir Lewis said.
+
+"One:" Malone said, "How come Her Majesty and the other nutty
+telepaths didn't spot you? Two: How come you sent me out on these jobs
+when you were afraid I was dangerous? And three: What was it that was
+so safe about busting up civilization? How did that save us from the
+Last War?"
+
+Sir Lewis nodded. "First," he said, "we've developed a technique of
+throwing up a shield and screening it with a surface of innocuous
+thoughts--like hiding behind a movie screen. Second ... well, we had
+to get the jobs done, Malone. And Andrew thought you were the most
+capable, dangerous or not. For one thing, we wanted to get all the
+insane telepaths in one place; it's difficult to work when the
+atmosphere's full of such telepathic ravings."
+
+"But wrecking the world because of a man with a mind-shield--why not
+just work things so his underlings wouldn't obey him?" Malone shook
+his head. "That sounds more reasonable."
+
+"It may," Sir Lewis said. "But it wouldn't work. As a matter of fact,
+it was tried, and it didn't work. You see, the Sino-Soviet top men
+were smart enough to see that their underlings were being tampered
+with. And they've developed a system, partly depending on automatic
+firing systems, partly on individuals with mind-blocks--that is,
+people who aren't being tampered with--which we can't disrupt
+directly. So we had to smash them."
+
+"And the United States at the same time," Burris said. "The economic
+balance had to be kept; a strong America would be forced in to fill
+the power vacuum otherwise, and that would make for an even worse
+catastrophe. And if we weren't in trouble, the Sino-Soviet Bloc would
+blame their mess on us. And that would start the Last War before
+collapse could get started. Right, Malone?"
+
+"I see," Malone said, thinking that he almost did. He told himself he
+could feel happy now; the danger--which hadn't been danger to him,
+really, but danger from him toward the PRS, toward civilization--was
+over. But he didn't feel happy. He didn't feel anything.
+
+"There's a crisis building in New York," Sir Lewis said suddenly,
+"that's going to take all our attention. Malone, why don't you ...
+well, go home and get some rest? We're going to be busy for a while,
+and you'll want to be fresh for the work coming up."
+
+"Sure," Malone said listlessly. "Sure."
+
+As the others rose, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Then
+he vanished.
+
+
+XVII
+
+Two hours passed, somehow. Bourbon and soda helped them pass, Malone
+discovered; he drank two high-balls slowly, trying not to think about
+anything. He felt terrible. After a while he made himself a third
+high-ball and started on it. Maybe this would make him feel better.
+Maybe he thought, he ought to break out his cigars and celebrate.
+
+But there didn't seem to be very much to celebrate somehow. He felt
+like an amoeba on a slide being congratulated on having successfully
+conquered the world.
+
+He drank some more bourbon-and-soda. Amoebae, he told himself, didn't
+drink bourbon-and-soda. He was better off than an amoeba. He was
+happier than an amoeba. But somehow he couldn't imagine any amoeba in
+the world, no matter how heart-broken, feeling any worse than Kenneth
+J. Malone.
+
+He looked up. There was another amoeba in the room.
+
+Then he frowned. She wasn't an amoeba, he thought. She was the
+scientist the amoeba was supposed to fall in love with, so the
+scientist could report on everything he did, so all the other
+scien--psiontists could know all about him. But whoever heard of a
+scien--psiontist--falling in love with an amoeba? Nobody. It was fate.
+And fate was awful. Malone had often suspected it, but now he was
+sure. Now he was looking at things from the amoeba's side, and fate
+was terrible.
+
+"No, Ken," the psiontist said. "It needn't be at all like that."
+
+"Oh, yes, it need," Malone said positively. "It need be even worse.
+When I have some more to drink, it'll _be_ even worse. Wait and see."
+
+"Ken," Luba said softly, "you don't have to suffer this way."
+
+"No," Malone said agreeably, "I don't. You could shoot me and then I'd
+be dead. Just quit all this amoebing around, O.K.?"
+
+"You're already half shot," Luba said sharply. "Now be quiet and
+listen. You're angry because you've fallen in love with me and you're
+all choked up over the futility of it all."
+
+"Exactly," Malone said. "Ex-positively-actly. You're a psionic
+super-man--woman. You can figure things out in your own little head
+instead of just getting along on dum psionic luck like us amoebae.
+You're too far above me."
+
+"Ken, listen!" Luba snapped. "Look into my mind. You can link up with
+me: go ahead and do it. You can read me clear down to the subconscious
+if you want to."
+
+Malone blinked.
+
+"Now, Ken!" Luba said.
+
+Malone looked. For a long time.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Half an hour later, Kenneth J. Malone, alone in his room, was humming
+happily to himself as he brushed a few specks of dust from the top of
+his best royal blue bowler. He faced the mirror on the wall, puffed on
+the cigar clenched between his teeth, and adjusted the bowler to just
+the right angle.
+
+There was a knock on the door. He went and opened it, carefully
+disposing of the cigar first. "Oh," he said. "What are you doing
+here?"
+
+"Just saying hello," Thomas Boyd grinned. "Back at work?"
+
+Boyd didn't know, of course, what had happened. Nor need he ever know.
+"Just about," Malone said. "Spending the evening relaxing, though."
+
+"Hm-m-m," Boyd said. "Let me guess. Her name begins with L?"
+
+"It does not," Malone said flatly.
+
+"But--" Boyd began.
+
+Malone cast about in his mind for an explanation. Telling Boyd the
+truth--that Luba and Kenneth J. Malone just weren't equals as far as
+social intercourse went--would leave him exactly nowhere. But,
+somehow, it had to be said. "Tom," he said, "suppose you met a
+beautiful girl--charming, wonderful, brilliant."
+
+"Great," Boyd said. "I like it already."
+
+"Suppose she looked about ... oh ... twenty-three," Malone went on.
+
+"Do any more supposing," Boyd said, "and I'll be pawing the ground."
+
+"And then," Malone said, very carefully, "suppose you found out, after
+you'd been out with her ... well, when you took her out, say, you met
+your grandmother."
+
+"My grandmother," Boyd said virtuously, "doesn't go to joints like
+that."
+
+"Use your imagination," Malone snapped. "And suppose your grandmother
+recognized the girl as an old schoolmate of hers."
+
+Boyd swallowed hard. "As a what?"
+
+"An old schoolmate," Malone said. "Suppose this girl were so charming
+and everything just because she'd had ... oh, ninety years or so to
+practice in."
+
+"Malone," Boyd said in a depressed tone, "you can spoil more ideas--"
+
+"Well," Malone said, "would you go out with her again?"
+
+"You kidding?" Boyd said. "Of course not."
+
+"But she's the same girl," Malone said. "You've just found out
+something new about her, that's all."
+
+Boyd nodded. "So," he said, "you found out something new about Luba.
+Like, maybe, she's ninety years old?"
+
+"No," Malone said. "Nothing like that. Just--something." He remembered
+Queen Elizabeth's theory of politeness toward superiors: people, she'd
+said, act as if they believed their bosses were superior to them, but
+they didn't believe it.
+
+On the other hand, he thought, when a man knows and believes that
+someone actually _is_ superior--then, he doesn't mind at all. He can
+depend on that superiority to help him. And love, ordinary
+man-and-woman love, just can't exist.
+
+Nor, Malone told himself, would anyone want it to. It would, after
+all, be damned uncomfortable.
+
+"So who's the girl?" Boyd said. "And where? The clubs are all closed,
+and the streets probably aren't very safe just now."
+
+"Barbara Wilson," Malone said, "and Yucca Flats. I ought to be able to
+get a fast plane." He shrugged. "Or maybe teleport," he added.
+
+"Sure," Boyd said. "But on a night with so many troubles--"
+
+"Oh, King Henry," Malone said, "hearken. A man who looks as historical
+as you do ought to know a little history."
+
+"Such as?" Boyd said, bristling slightly.
+
+"There have always been troubles," Malone said. "In the Eighth
+Century, it was Saracens; in the Fourteenth, the Black Death. Then
+there was the Reformation, and the Prussians in 1870, and the Spanish
+in 1898, and--"
+
+"And?" Boyd said.
+
+Malone took a deep breath. He could almost feel the court dress
+flowing over him, as the court manners did. Lady Barbara, after all,
+attendant to Her Majesty, would expect a certain character from him.
+
+After a second, he had it.
+
+"In 1914, it was enemy aliens," said Sir Kenneth Malone.
+
+
+THE END
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
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+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Occasion for Disaster, by
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