nd
sat down at the desk. "I've been selected as chairman of this
committee; I believe I'm presiding here. Start the recorder,
somebody."

One of the other trustees went to the sound recorder beside the
desk--a larger but probably not more efficient instrument than the one
Weill had concealed in his briefcase--and flipped a switch. Then he
and his companions dragged up chairs to flank Dacre's, and the rest
seated themselves around the room. Old Pottgeiter took a seat next to
Chalmers. Weill opened the case on his lap, reached inside, and closed
it again.

"What are they trying to do, Ed?" Pottgeiter asked, in a loud whisper.
"Throw you off the faculty? They can't do that, can they?"

"I don't know, Max. We'll see...."

"This isn't any formal hearing, and nobody's on trial here," Dacre was
saying. "Any action will have to be taken by the board of trustees as
a whole, at a regularly scheduled meeting. All we're trying to do is
find out just what's happened here, and who, if anybody, is
responsible...."

"Well, there's the man who's responsible!" Whitburn cried, pointing at
Chalmers. "This whole thing grew out of his behavior in class a month
ago, and I'll remind you that at the time I demanded his resignation!"

"I thought it was Doctor Fitch, here, who gave the story to the
newspapers," one of the trustees, a man with red hair and a thin,
eyeglassed face, objected.

"Doctor Fitch acted as any scientist should, in making public what he
believed to be an important scientific discovery," the elder of the
two Parapsychology men said. "He believed, and so do we, that he had
discovered a significant instance of precognition--a case of real
prior knowledge of a future event. He made a careful and systematic
record of Professor Chalmers' statements, at least two weeks before
the occurrence of the event to which they referred. It is entirely due
to him that we know exactly what Professor Chalmers said and when he
said it."

"Yes," his younger colleague added, "and in all my experience I've
never heard anything more preposterous than this man Whitburn's
attempt, yesterday, to deny the fact."

"Well, we're convinced that Doctor Chalmers did in fact say what he's
alleged to have said, last month," Dacre began.

"Jim, I think we ought to get that established, for the record,"
another of the trustees put in. "Doctor Chalmers, is it true that you
spoke, in the past tense, about the death of Khalid ib'n Hussein in
one of y