so," Malone said.

"And in order to do that, you'd have to be telepathic," Her Majesty
said. "Am I correct?"

"Correct," Malone said.

"Well, then," Her Majesty said with satisfaction, and beamed at him.

A second passed.

"Well, then, what?" Malone said in confusion.

"Telepathy," Her Majesty said patiently, "is an extremely complex
affair. It involves a sort of meshing with the mind of this other
person. It has nothing, absolutely nothing, in common with this simple
'squirting' of thoughts across space, as if they were orange pips you
were trying to put into a wastebasket. No, Sir Kenneth, I cannot
believe in what Mr. Taylor says."

"But it's still possible," Malone said.

"Oh," Her Majesty said, "it's certainly possible. But I should think
that if any telepaths were around, and if they were changing people's
minds by 'squirting' at them, I would know it."

Malone frowned. "Maybe you would at that," he said. "I guess you
would."

"Not to mention," Boyd put in, "that if you were going to control
everything we've come across like that you'd need an awful lot of
telepathic operators."

"That's true," Malone admitted. "And the objections seem to make some
sense. But what else is there to go on?"

"I don't know," Boyd said. "I haven't the faintest idea. And I'm
rapidly approaching the stage where I don't care."

"Well," Malone said, heaving a sigh, "let's keep looking."

He bent down and picked up another sheaf of copies from the Psychical
Research Society.

"After all," he said, without much hope, "you never know."

* * * * *

Malone looked around the office of Andrew J. Burris as if he'd never
seen it before. He felt tired, and worn out, and depressed; it had
been a long night, and here it was morning and the head of the FBI was
giving him instructions. It was, Malone told himself, a hell of a
life.

"Now, Malone," Burris said, "this is a very ticklish situation. You've
got to handle it with great care."

"I can see that," Malone said apprehensively. "It certainly looks
ticklish. And unusual."

"Well, we don't want any trouble," Burris said. "We have enough
trouble now."

"Sometimes I think we have too much," Malone said.

"That's our job," Burris said, looking grim.

Malone blinked. "What is?" he said.

"Having trouble," Burris said.

There was a short silence. Malone broke it. "Anyhow," he said, "you
feel we have enough trouble, so we're trying to make things easy for
everybody."