elf 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 s