or as it usually did, not even when he made a brave, if
foolhardy stab at the Melchior accent. Slowly, he began to realize
that he was bothered.

He climbed out of the shower and started drying himself. Up to now, he
thought, he had depended on Dr. Thomas O'Connor for edifying,
trustworthy and reasonably complete information about psionics and
_psi_ phenomena in general. He had looked on O'Connor as a sort of
living version of an extremely good edition of the Britannica, always
available for reference.

And now O'Connor had failed him. That, Malone thought, was hardly
fair. O'Connor had no business failing him, particularly when there
was no place else to go.

The scientist had been right, of course, Malone knew. There was no
other scientist who knew as much about psionics as O'Connor, and if
O'Connor said there were no books, then that was that: there were no
books.

He reached for a drawer in his dresser, opened it and pulled out some
underclothes, humming tunelessly under his breath as he dressed. If
there was no one to ask, he thought, and if there were no books...

He stopped with a sock in his hand, and stared at it in wonder.
O'Connor hadn't said there were no books. As a matter of fact, Malone
realized, he'd said exactly the opposite.

There were books. But they were "crackpot" books. O'Connor had never
read them. He had, he said, probably never even heard of many of them.

"Crackpot" was a fighting word to O'Connor. But to Malone it had all
the sweetness of flattery. After all, he'd found telepaths in insane
asylums, and teleports among the juvenile delinquents of New York.
"Crackpot" was a word that was rapidly ceasing to have any meaning at
all in Malone's mind.

He realized that he was still staring at the sock, which was black
with a pink clock. Hurriedly, he put it on, and finished dressing. He
reached for the phone and made a few fast calls, and then teleported
himself to his locked office in FBI Headquarters, on East 69th Street
in New York. He let himself out, and strolled down the corridor. The
agent-in-charge looked up from his desk as Malone passed, blinked, and
said, "Hello, Malone. What's up now?"

"I'm going prowling," Malone said. "But there won't be any work for
you, as far as I can see."

"Oh?"

"Just relax," Malone said. "Breathe easy."

"I'll try to," the agent-in-charge said, a little sadly. "But every
time you show up, I think about that wave of red Cadillacs you
started. I