r didn't make him
feel quite so much like a first-year law student talking to an
egomaniacal professor.

"When can you deliver them?" O'Connor said.

"Well," Malone said carefully, "that depends." O'Connor seemed to
view the teleports as pieces of equipment, he thought. "I can't
deliver them until I catch them," he said. "And that's why I wanted to
talk to you."

"Some slight delay," Dr. O'Connor said, "will be quite
understandable." His face left no doubt that he didn't like the
necessity of understanding anything that was going to keep him and the
eight teleports apart for even thirty seconds longer, now that he knew
about them.

"You see," Malone said, "they're kids. Juvenile delinquents, or
something like that. But they are teleports, that's for sure."

"I see," Dr. O'Connor said.

"So we've got to nab them," Malone said. "And for that I need all the
information I can get."

Dr. O'Connor nodded slowly. "I'll be happy," he said, "to give you any
information I can provide."

Malone took a deep breath, and plunged. "How does this teleportation
bit work, anyhow?" he said.

"You've asked a very delicate question," Dr. O'Connor said. "Actually,
we can't be quite positive." His expression showed just how little he
wanted to make this admission. "However," he went on, brightening,
"there is some evidence which seems to show that it is basically the
same process as psychokinesis. And we do have quite a bit of empirical
data on psychokinesis." He scribbled something on a sheet of paper and
said, "For instance, there's this." He held the paper up to the screen
so that Malone could read it.

It said:

(m*d)/(f*t**2) = 1/k

Malone looked at it for some seconds. At last he said, "It's very
pretty. What the hell is it?"

"This," Dr. O'Connor said, in a condescending tone of voice that
meant, You should have known all along, but you're just hopeless, "is
the basic formula for the phenomenon, where _m_ is the mass in grams,
_d_ is the distance in centimeters, _f_ is the force in dynes, and _t_
is the time in seconds. _K_ is a constant whose value is not yet
known, and the numeral 1 is unity."

Malone said, "Hmm," and stared at the equation again. Somehow, the
explanation was not very helpful. The numeral 1 was unity. He
understood that much, all right, but it didn't seem to do him any
good.

"As you can see," Dr. O'Connor went on, "the greater the force, and
the longer time it is applied, the greater distance