ked up again. "Yes?" he said. He'd had plenty of practice
in watching people appear and disappear, between Malone and the
specimens Malone had brought him; he was beyond surprise or shock by
now.

"I came here to talk to you," Malone began again.

O'Connor nodded, a trifle impatiently. "Yes," he said. "I know that."

"Well--" Malone thought fast. Presenting the case to O'Connor was
impossible; it was too complicated, and it might violate governmental
secrecy somewhere along the line. He decided to wrap it up in a
hypothetical situation. "Doctor," he said, "I know that all the
various manifestations of the _psi_ powers were investigated and named
long before responsible scientists became interested in the subject."

"That," O'Connor said with some reluctance, "is true." He looked sad,
as if he wished they'd waited on naming some of the psionic
manifestations until he'd been born and started investigating them.
Malone tried to imagine a person doing something called O'Connorizing,
and decided he was grateful for history.

"Well, then--" he said.

"At least," O'Connor cut in, "it is true in a rather vague and general
way. You see, Mr. Malone, any precise description of a psionic
manifestation must wait until a metalanguage has grown up to encompass
it; that is, until understanding and knowledge have reached the point
where careful and accurate description can take place."

"Oh," Malone said helplessly. "Sure." He wondered if what O'Connor had
said meant anything, and decided that it probably did, but he didn't
want to know about it.

"While we have not yet reached that point," O'Connor said, "we are
approaching it in our experiments. I am hopeful that, in the near
future--"

"Well," Malone cut in desperately, "sure. Of course. Naturally."

Dr. O'Connor looked miffed. The temperature of the room seemed to drop
several degrees, and Malone swallowed hard and tried to look
ingratiating and helpful, like a student with nothing but A's on his
record.

Before O'Connor could pick up the thread of his sentence, Malone went
on: "What I mean is something like this. Picking up the mental
activity of another person is called telepathy. Floating in the air is
called levitation. Moving objects around is psychokinesis. Going from
one place to another instantaneously is teleportation. And so on."

"The language you use," O'Connor said, still miffed, "is extremely
loose. I might go so far as to say that the statements you hav