'what direction?' That's how fat-headed I am."

"Yes?" Something was beginning to form, now.

"I--led you on, Steve."

That blinkoed me. The phrase didn't jell. The half a minute she'd spent
bawling on my shoulder with my arms around her had been the first
physical contact I'd ever had with Nurse Farrow. It didn't seem--

"No, Steve. Not that way. I couldn't see you for Thorndyke any more than
you could see me for Catherine." Her telepathy had returned, obviously;
she was in better control of herself. "Steve," she said, "I led you on;
did everything that Thorndyke told me to. You fell into it like a rock.
Oh--it was going to be a big thing. All I had to do was to haul you
deeper into this mess, then I'd disappear strangely. Then we'd
be--tog--ether--we'd be--"

She started to come unglued again but stopped the dissolving process
just before the wet and gooey stage set in. She seemed to put a set in
her shoulders, and then she looked down at me with pity. "Poor esper,"
she said softly, "you couldn't really know--"

"Know what?" I asked harshly.

"He fooled me--too," she said, in what sounded like a complete
irrelevancy.

"Look, Farrow, try and make a bit of sense to a poor perceptive who
can't read a mind. Keep it running in one direction, please?"

Again, as apparently irrelevant, she said, "He's a top grade telepath;
he knows control--"

"Control--?" I asked blankly.

"You don't know," she said. "But a good telepath can think in patterns
that prevent lesser telepaths from really digging deep. Thorndyke is
brilliant, of scholar grade, really. He--"

"Let's get back to it, Farrow. What's cooking?"

Sternly she tossed her head. It was an angry motion, one that showed her
disdain for her own tears and her own weakness. "Your own sweet
Catherine."

I eyed her, not coldly but with a growing puzzlement. I tried to
formulate my own idea but she went on, briskly, "That accident of yours
was one of the luckiest things that ever happened to you, Steve."

"How long have I been known to be a Mekstrom Carrier?" I asked bluntly.

"No more than three weeks before you met Catherine Lewis," she told me
as bluntly. "It took the Medical Center that long to work her into a
position to meet you, Steve."

That put the icing on the cake. If nothing else, it explained why
Catherine was here willingly. I didn't really believe it because no one
can turn one hundred and eighty degrees without effort, but I couldn't
deny the