side, 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