same timing as they did in Charlie's case--or even the same
sort of timing."

"I don't quite follow you," Malone said. Truthfully, he felt about three
miles behind. But perhaps everything would clear up soon. He hoped so.
On top of everything else, his feet were now hurting a lot more.

"Perhaps if I describe one of the tests we ran," Dr. O'Connor said,
"things will be somewhat clearer." He leaned back in his chair. Malone
shifted his feet again and transferred his hat from his right hand to
his left hand.

"We put one of our test subjects in the insulated room," Dr. O'Connor
said, "and connected him to the detector. He was to read from a book--a
book that was not too common. This was, of course, to obviate the chance
that some other person nearby might be reading it, or might have read it
in the past. We picked 'The Blood is the Death,' by Hieronymus
Melanchthon, which, as you may know, is a very rare book indeed."

"Sure," Malone said. He had never heard of the book, but he was, after
all, willing to take Dr. O'Connor's word for it.

The telepathy expert went on: "Our test subject read it carefully,
scanning rather than skimming. Cameras recorded the movements of his
eyes in order for us to tell just what he was reading at any given
moment, in order to correlate what was going on in his mind with the
reactions of the machine's indicators, if you follow me."

Malone nodded helplessly.

"At the same time," Dr. O'Connor continued blithely, "we had Charlie in
a nearby room, recording his babblings. Every so often, he would come
out with quotations from 'The Blood is the Death,' and these quotations
corresponded exactly with what our test subject was reading at the time,
and also corresponded with the abnormal fluctuations of the detector."

* * * * *

Dr. O'Connor paused. Something, Malone realized, was expected of him. He
thought of several responses and chose one. "I see," he said.

"But the important thing here," Dr. O'Connor said, "is the timing. You
see, Charlie was incapable of continued concentration. He could not keep
his mind focused on another mind for very long, before he hopped to
still another. The actual amount of time concentrated on any given mind
at any single given period varied from a minimum of one point three
seconds to a maximum of two point six. The timing samples, when plotted
graphically over a period of several months, formed a skewed bell curve
with a mo