window the
cheerful sound of traffic floated in the air. Downstairs somebody was
playing a television set too loudly, and the voice reached Malone's
semi-aware mind in a great tinny shout:

"And now, the makers of Bon-Ton B-Complex Bolsters--the blanket of
health--present Mother Kohler's Chit-Chat Hour!"

The invisible audience screamed and howled. Malone ripped out a
particularly foul oath and sat up on the couch. "That," he muttered,
"is a fine thing to wake up to." He focused his eyes, with only
slight difficulty, on his watch. The time was exactly noon.

"But first," the announcer burbled downstairs, "a word from Mother
Kohler herself, about the brand new special B-Complex _Irradiated_
Bolster you can get at your neighborhood stores..."

"Shut up," Malone said. He had wasted a lot of time doing nothing but
sleeping, he told himself. This was no time to be listening to
television. He got up and found, to his vague surprise, that he felt a
lot better and more clear-headed than he'd been feeling. Maybe the
sleep had done him some good.

He yawned, blinked and stretched, and then he padded into the
bathroom, showered and shaved and put on fresh clothes. He thought
about having a morning cup of coffee, but last night's dregs appeared
to have taken up permanent residence in his digestive tract, and he
decided against it at last. He swallowed some orange juice and toast
and then, heaving a great sigh of resignation and brushing crumbs off
his shirt, he teleported himself over to his office.

He was going to have to face Burris eventually, he knew.

And now was just as good, or as bad, a time as any.

Malone didn't hesitate. He punched the button on his intercom for
Burris' office and then sat back, with his eyes closed, for the
well-known voice.

It didn't come.

Instead, Wolf, the director's secretary, spoke up.

"Burris isn't in, Malone," he said. "He had to fly to Miami. I can get
a call through to him on the plane, if it's urgent, but he'll be
landing in about fifteen minutes. And he did say he'd call this
afternoon."

"Oh," Malone said. "Sure. Okay. It isn't urgent." He was just as glad
of the reprieve; it gave him one more chance to work matters through
to a solution, and report success instead of failure. "But what's
going on in Miami?" he added.

"Don't you read the papers?" Wolf asked.

Everybody, Malone reflected, seemed to be asking him that lately. "I
haven't had time," he said.

"The gove