n when Peno Rose had first
visored me from Lake Tahoe. I had told him "No." Too busy, _much_ too
busy, with TK surgery at Memorial Hospital. It didn't mean a thing to me
that some cross-roader with plenty of TK was stealing the Sky Hi Club's
casino blind. But Peno had known me from my days on the Crap Patrol, and
wasn't much impressed that I'd reached the thirty-third degree. He'd
gotten the Senior United States senator from Nevada to put heat on the
Lodge.

When Maragon first visored me on it, I simply refused to discuss it and
switched off. That was the big mistake. I had an obligation to the Lodge
for my TK training, and there was no honorable way I could turn my back
on it. The Grand Master is a patient, if deadly, old goat, and he came
after me in person.

I'd just walked out of surgery, and was still in mask and gown. The
surgeon who had done the cutting while I had put TK clamps on the
inaccessible arteries was at my side, breathing a sigh of relief that
the patient hadn't died on the table. He'd still die, I figured, but not
on the table. I'd felt the fluttery rasp of his heart muscle as it had
strained against my lift. He didn't have too long.

"Thank God for a dry field," the scalpel surgeon said, politely holding
out his left hand to me. I shook it with my left. That's why I hadn't
done the cutting, too. There aren't any one-handed surgeons. My right
arm looks fine. It just hasn't any strength. Old Maragon had told me
once that my TK powers were a pure case of compensation for a useless
arm. The surgeon dropped my hand. "You're the best, Wally Bupp," he
said. He's too good a friend of mine to call me "Lefty" and remind me
that I'm a cripple.

It was Maragon who did that. I hadn't noticed him, but somebody gave me
the grip, and I looked around. He was back against the wall, short, gray
and square. I gave his ear lobe a TK tug in return, harder, perhaps,
than was necessary, and nodded for him to follow both of us to my
office.

"We'll have to talk about it, Lefty," he said, as he closed the door
against the smell of iodoform.

"No, we don't," I said. "I don't care who is losing how much money at
Peno Rose's Sky Hi Club. Right here in this hospital people are dying.
Ask old Thousand Cuts," I went on, nodding to the scalpel surgeon. "We
just pulled one out of the fire. When does this come in second best to
saving the skin of some tinhorn gambler?"

"Your Lodge obligations come first," he said quietly. "W