nfused.

He felt as if his head were on just a little crooked. Or as if, maybe,
he had a small hole in it somewhere and facts were leaking out onto
the sidewalk.

If he only looked at the problem in the right way, he told himself, he
would see just what was going on.

But what was the right way?

"That," Malone murmured as he hailed a cab for the ride back to 69th
Street, "is the big, sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. And how much
time do I have for an answer?"

11

"Boyd?" the agent-in-charge said. "He went out to talk to Mike Sand
down at the ITU a while ago, and he hasn't come back yet."

"Fine," Malone said. "I'll be in my office if he wants me."

The agent-in-charge picked up a small package. "A messenger brought
this," he said. "It's from the Psychical Research Society, and if it's
ghosts, they're much smaller than last time."

"Dehydrated," Malone said. "Just add ectoplasm and out they come,
shouting _boo_ at everybody and dancing all over the world."

"Sounds wonderful," the agent-in-charge said. "Can I come to the
party?"

"First," Malone said judiciously, "you'd have to be dead. Of course, I
can arrange that--"

"Thanks," the agent-in-charge said, leaving in a hurry. Malone went on
down to his office and opened the package. It contained more
facsimiles from Sir Lewis Carter, all dealing with telepathic
projection. He spent a few minutes looking them over and trying to
make some connected sense out of them, and then he just sat and
thought for awhile.

Finally he picked up the phone. In a few minutes he was talking to Dr.
Thomas O'Connor, at Yucca Flats.

"Telepathic projection?" O'Connor said when Malone asked him the
question he'd thought of. "Well, now. I should say that--no. First,
Mr. Malone, tell me what evidence you have for this phenomenon."

Malone felt almost happy, as if he had done all his homework before
the instructor called on him. "According to what I've been able to get
from the PRS," he said, "ordinary people--people who aren't
telepaths--occasionally receive some sort of messages from other
people."

"I assume," O'Connor said frostily, "that you are speaking of
telepathic messages?"

Malone nodded guiltily. "I didn't mean the phone," he said, "or
letters or things like that. Telepathic messages, or something very
like it."

"Indeed," O'Connor said. "Mr. Malone, I believe you will find that
such occurrences, when accurately reported, are confined to close
relati