at," Malone said. He wanted to shoot himself.

Lou was one of them. Of course she was; that was obvious now, when he
thought about it. Lou was one of the secret group that was sabotaging
practically everything.

And now they'd all gone. For two weeks--or for good.

The girl's voice broke in on his thoughts.

"Oh, Mr. Malone," she said, "I'm sorry, but I just remembered. They
left a note for you."

"A note?" Malone said.

"Sir Lewis said you might call," the girl said, "and he left a
message. If you'll hold on a minute I'll read it to you."

Malone waited tensely. The girl found a slip of paper, blinked at it
and read:

"My dear Malone, I'm afraid you are perfectly correct in your
deductions; and, as you can see, that leaves us no alternative. Sorry.
Miss G. sends her apologies to you, as do I." The girl looked up.
"It's signed by Sir Lewis," she said. "Does that mean anything to you,
Mr. Malone?"

"I'm afraid it does," Malone said bleakly. "It means entirely too
much."

12

After the great mass of teeth, vaguely surrounded by a face, had faded
from Malone's screen, he just sat there, looking at the dead, grey
screen of the visiphone and feeling about twice as dead and at least
three times as grey.

Things, he told himself, were terrible. But even that sentence, which
was a good deal more cheerful than what he actually felt, didn't do
anything to improve his mood. All of the evidence, after all, had been
practically living on the tip of his nose for nearly twenty-four
hours, and not only had he done nothing about it, but he hadn't even
seen it.

Two or three times, for instance, he'd doubted the possibility of
teleporting another human being. All his logic had told him it wasn't
so. But, he'd thought, he and Her Majesty had teleported Lou, and so,
obviously, his logic was wrong.

No, it wasn't, he thought now. There _would_ be too much mental
resistance, even if the person were unconscious. Teleportation of
another human being _would_ be impossible.

Unless, of course, the other human being was able to teleport on her
own.

True, she had been no more than semiconscious. She probably couldn't
have teleported on her own. But Malone and Her Majesty had, ever so
kindly and ever so mistakenly, helped her, and Lou had managed to
teleport to the plane.

And that wasn't all, he thought dismally. That was far from all.

"Let's take another for-instance," he said savagely, in what he
thought was a cari