he room?

He didn't know, but he was certainly going to try. He had to.

Something was wrong; something had happened to Dorothea.

He tried to imagine what it could be, and then realized that such
thoughts were only delaying him by distracting his mind from its main
job.

He kept his eyes tightly closed and tried to form the picture in his
mind. The couch--there. The dresser--over there. The easy-chair, the
rug, the walls, the table--wait a minute: he was losing the couch.
There. Now. The table, the desk--all there. In color. And in detail.

Slowly they came, and he held them in place, visualizing his hotel room
just as he had visualized his office minutes before. He concentrated.
Harder. Harder. _Harder._ HAR--

"Sir Kenneth!" a voice said. "Will you please stop standing there with
your eyes closed and help me with this poor child? She's fainted."

Malone's eyes popped open, but for a minute he wasn't entirely sure he'd
opened them. His visualization blended almost perfectly with the reality
of the room around him. There was only one jarring difference.

He had certainly never visualized the richly-dressed figure of Queen
Elizabeth I standing in the center of the room.

"Now, now," she said. "Thinking like that can only lead to confusion.
Come over here and help me."

* * * * *

Dorothea was on the couch. Between them, they managed to wake her
gently, and she sat up and stared around at them and the room. "I'm
sorry," she said dazedly. "It's just that I didn't expect you to turn
into a little old lady in Elizabethan costume. Just a bit
disconcerting." She blinked. "By the way, who is she?"

"This," Malone said with a sense of some foreboding, "is Queen Elizabeth
I."

"She's dead," Dorothea said decisively.

"Not really, my dear," the Queen said. "Actually, you see ... well, it's
too long to explain now." She gave everybody a bland smile.

"She's nuts, then," Dorothea said. "She is nuts, isn't she? Because if
she isn't, I am."

"You're not crazy," Malone told her diplomatically. "But she--" He
stopped. How could he explain everything, in front of the Queen herself?

"Don't worry about it," Her Majesty said. "Dorothea is a little
confused--but it hardly matters. Perhaps there are other things to do."

"Sure," Malone said uncertainly. "By the way, how did you get here?"

"Now, why do you ask that?" the Queen said. "You've already figured it
all out, Sir Kenneth."

"I