mation I can get."

Dr. O'Connor nodded slowly. "I'll be happy," he said, "to give you any
information I can provide."

* * * * *

Malone took a deep breath, and plunged. "How does this teleportation bit
work, anyhow?" he said.

"You've asked a very delicate question," Dr. O'Connor said. "Actually,
we can't be quite positive." His expression showed just how little he
wanted to make this admission. "However," he went on, brightening,
"there is some evidence which seems to show that it is basically the
same process as psychokinesis. And we do have quite a bit of empirical
data on psychokinesis." He scribbled something on a sheet of paper and
said: "For instance, there's this." He held the paper up to the screen
so that Malone could read it.

It said:

md
----- = K
ft2

Malone looked at it for some seconds. At last he said: "It's very
pretty. What is it?"

"This," Dr. O'Connor said, in the tone of voice that meant You Should
Have Known All Along, But You're Just Hopeless, "is the basic formula
for the phenomenon, where _m_ is the mass in grams, _d_ is the distance
in centimeters, _f_ is the force in dynes and _t_ is the time in
seconds. _K_ is a constant whose value is not yet known."

Malone said: "Hm-m-m," and stared at the equation again. Somehow, the
explanation was not very helpful. The value of _K_ was unknown. He
understood that much, all right but it didn't seem to do him any good.

"As you can see," Dr. O'Connor went on, "the greater the force, and the
longer time it is applied, the greater distance any mass can be moved.
Or, contrariwise, the more mass, the greater mass, that is, the easier
it is to move it any given distance. This is, as you undoubtedly
understand, not at all in contradistinction to physical phenomena."

"Ah," Malone said, feeling that something was expected of him, but not
being quite sure what.

Dr. O'Connor frowned. "I must admit," he said, "that the uncertainty as
to the constant _k_, and the lack of any real knowledge as to just what
kind of force is being applied, have held up our work so far." Then his
face smoothed out. "Of course, when we have the teleports to work with,
we may derive a full set of laws which--"

"Never mind that now," Malone said.

"But our work is most important, Mr. Malone," Dr. O'Connor said with a
motion of his eyebrows. "As I'm sure you must understand."

"Oh," Malone said, feeling as if he'd been caught wi