aid. "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 i