f hand. After all, this isn't an
investigation of the actuality of precognition as a psychic
phenomenon. What I'd like to hear, and what I haven't heard yet, is
Doctor Whitburn's explanation of his contradictory statements that he
knew about my client's alleged remarks on the evening after they were
supposed to have been made and that, at the same time, the whole thing
was a hoax concocted by his students."

"Are you implying that I'm a liar?" Whitburn bristled.

"I'm pointing out that you made a pair of contradictory statements,
and I'm asking how you could do that knowingly and honestly," Weill
retorted.

"What I meant," Whitburn began, with exaggerated slowness, as though
speaking to an idiot, "was that yesterday, when those infernal
reporters were badgering me, I really thought that some of Professor
Chalmers' students had gotten together and given the _Valley Times_ an
exaggerated story about his insane maunderings a month ago. I hadn't
imagined that a member of the faculty had been so lacking in loyalty
to the college...."

"You couldn't imagine anybody with any more intellectual integrity
than you have!" Fitch fairly yelled at him.

"You're as crazy as Chalmers!" Whitburn yelled back. He turned to the
trustees. "You see the position I'm in, here, with this infernal
Higher Education Faculty Tenure Act? I have a madman on my faculty,
and can I get rid of him? No! I demand his resignation, and he laughs
at me and goes running for his lawyer! And he is a madman! Nobody but
a madman would talk the way he does. You think this Khalid ib'n
Hussein business is the only time he's done anything like this? Why, I
have a list of a dozen occasions when he's done something just as bad,
only he didn't have a lucky coincidence to back him up. Trying to get
books that don't exist out of the library, and then insisting that
they're standard textbooks. Talking about the revolt of the colonies
on Mars and Venus. Talking about something he calls the Terran
Federation, some kind of a world empire. Or something he calls
Operation Triple Cross, that saved the country during some fantastic
war he imagined...."

"_What did you say?_"

The question cracked out like a string of pistol shots. Everybody
turned. The quiet man in the brown tweed suit had spoken; now he
looked as though he were very much regretting it.

"Is there such a thing as Operation Triple Cross?" Fitch was asking.

"No, no. I never heard anything about that; th