out.

* * * * *

Malone blinked and jerked his head up from the notebook. "What hap--" he
began.

And then he stopped.

He was no longer in his hotel room at the Statler-Hilton. He was
standing in the middle of his office at FBI headquarters, Washington,
D.C.

It had worked!

Malone walked over to the wall switch and turned on the lights in the
darkened room. He looked around. He was definitely in his office.

He was a teleport.

He blinked and wondered briefly if he were dreaming. He pinched himself,
said: "Ow," and decided that the pain offered no certain proof.

But he didn't feel like part of a dream.

He felt real. So did the office.

Just as he had promised Dorothea, he went to the phone and dialed the
Statler-Hilton.

It took a minute for the long-distance circuits to connect him with
Manhattan. Then the pretty operator at the hotel was smiling at him from
the screen. "Statler-Hilton Hotel," she said. "May we help you?"

"Ring Room 814," Malone said. "I'm probably asleep in it."

"What?" the operator said.

"Never mind," Malone said. "Just ring it."

"Yes, sir." The screen went blank.

The screen stayed blank for a long time.

And then the operator was back. "I'm sorry, sir," she said. "That room
doesn't answer."

"You're sure?" Malone said.

"Certainly."

"Try it again," Malone said.

The operator did so. She returned with the same answer.

Malone frowned and hung up. It didn't sound right. Even a dream was
supposed to make more sense than this was making. There was something
wrong.

He had to get back to the hotel room.

There was only one trouble. He didn't have a picture of the room in his
notebook.

Dorothea had said that it was almost impossible to go to a place one
hadn't been to before. Mike Fueyo had been able to pick up any red
Cadillac in the city because he'd concentrated solely on the symbol of a
red Cadillac. But he never knew which Cadillac he'd end up at.

Malone closed his eyes and tried to remember the hotel room. He
half-wished he had a photograph of it, but Dorothea had told him that
photos wouldn't work. They were too complete; they required no effort of
the mind. Only a symbol would do.

Of course, the job could be done without a symbol by somebody who'd had
plenty of practice. But Malone had made exactly one jump. Could he do
it the second time with nothing to work with except his own recollection
and visualization of t