his fingertips together, then shrugged impatiently. "Well,
hell, I don't think we're getting anywhere on this. I'll turn it over to
the C.I.D. and let them worry about it."

"So what happens now?" I asked. "What am I supposed to do?"

"Take a vacation. But hang on to that defense mech. Stay in Palm Beach
and contact me pronto if anything happens. Buzz me at least once a day,
even if anything doesn't happen."

He started to put down the mike, then lifted it again. "How's the SRI?"

"Oh, that. I'll whip out a story on it in a couple of days."

"No hurry. Find out all you can about it. Give you something to do while
you're waiting around."

He put down the mike and faded from the screen.

* * * * *

So I promptly did my damnedest to forget all about Isaac Grogan and
telenosis. I spent the rest of the day at the beach, sprawled out on the
hot sand with the defense mech beside me and an army of people--humans
and aliens--surrounding me. Only once, at about four o'clock, did the
defense mech start going _click-click-click_. I timed it. It lasted
three minutes and then quit.

When I got back to the hotel, at about five, a man fell into step with
me as soon as I entered the lobby.

"Name's Maxwell," he told me. "C.I.D. I'm one of your bodyguards for a
while."

"How many others do I rate?" I asked.

He was a tall, heavily built young man in his middle twenties. He
carried a briefcase. We headed for the elevator.

"Only one," he replied, "but he'll stay pretty much out of sight. He'll
join us in your room after a while. We have to ask you a lot of
questions."

The other bodyguard, who slipped into my room without knocking twenty
minutes later, was shorter, thinner and older. He was bald except for a
gray fringe, and his name was Johnson.

The C.I.D. men spent a half-hour checking for hidden mikes and cameras
before they said much of anything. Then they plopped down on the edge of
the bed, and the young man opened his briefcase.

The older one said, "Have your dinner sent up here. We'll get started on
some of these questions right away."

The questions were both exhaustive and exhausting. The older man,
Johnson, fired the questions, and Maxwell wrote down the answers,
occasionally inserting an inquiry of his own. They wanted to know
everything--not only about my telenosis experiences and my knowledge of
and contacts with Isaac Grogan, but everything I had done, said or
thought