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 hi