owing away a few bread crumbs could be considered
sabotage.

So Rafe Poe found himself a quiet corner near the Lenin Soviet People's
Laboratories, took out a small bag of dried breadcrumbs, and was soon
surrounded by pigeons.

Dr. Malekrinova was carefully calibrating and balancing the electronic
circuits that energized and activated and controlled the output of the
newly-installed beam generator--a ring of specially-made greenish glass
that had a small cylinder of the same glass projecting out at a tangent.
Her assistant, Alexis, a man of small scientific ability but a gifted
mechanic, worked stolidly with her. It was not an easy job for Alexis;
Sonya Borisovna was by no means an easy woman to work with. There was, as
there should have been, a fifty-fifty division in all things--a proper
state of affairs in a People's Republic. Alexis Andreyevich did half the
physical work, got all the blame when things went wrong, and none of the
credit when things went right. Sonya Borisovna got the remaining fifty
percent.

Sonya Borisovna Malekrinova had been pushing herself too hard, and she
knew it. But, she told herself, for the glory of the Soviet peoples, the
work must go on.

After spending two hours taking down instrument readings, she took the
results to her office and began to correlate them.

_Have to replace that 140-9.0 micromicrofarad frequency control on stage
two with something more sensitive_, she thought. _And the field modulation
coils require closer adjustment._

She took off her glasses and rubbed at her tired eyes while she thought.
_Perhaps the 25 microfarad, 12 volt electrolytic condenser could be used
to feed the pigeons, substituting a breadcrumb capacitor in the sidewalk
circuit._

She opened her eyes suddenly and stared at the blank wall in front of her.
"Pigeons?" she said wonderingly. "_Breadcrumb_ capacitor? Am I losing my
mind? What kind of nonsense is that?"

She looked back down at her notes, then replaced her glasses so that she
could read them. Determined not to let her mind wander in that erratic
fashion again, she returned her attention to the work at hand.

She found herself wondering if it might not be better to chuck the whole
job and get out while the getting was good. _The old gal_, she thought,
_is actually tapping my mind! She's picking up everything!_

Sonya Borisovna sat bolt upright in her chair, staring at the blank wall
again. "Why am I thinking such nonsense?" she said a