The look he received made all the previous conversation seem as warm and
friendly as a Christmas party by comparison. It was a look that froze
the air of the room into a solid chunk, Malone thought, a chunk you
could have chipped pieces from, for souvenirs, later, when Dr. O'Connor
had gone and you could get into the room without any danger of being
quick-frozen by the man's unfriendly eye.
"Mr. Burris," Dr. O'Connor said in a voice that matched the temperature
of his gaze, "please. Remember our slogan."
* * * * *
Malone sighed. He fished in his pocket for a pack of cigarettes, found
one, and extracted a single cigarette. He stuck it in his mouth and
started fishing in various pockets for his lighter.
He sighed again. He preferred cigars, a habit he'd acquired from the
days when he'd filched them from his father's cigar case, but his mental
picture of the fearless and alert young FBI agent didn't include a
cigar. Somehow, remembering his father as neither fearless nor, exactly,
alert--anyway, not the way the movies and the TV screens liked to
picture the words--he had the impression that cigars looked out of place
on FBI agents.
And it was, in any case, a small sacrifice to make. He found his lighter
and shielded it from the brisk wind. He looked out over water at the
Jefferson Memorial, and was surprised that he'd managed to walk as far
as he had. Then he stopped thinking about walking, and took a puff of
his cigarette, and forced himself to think about the job in hand.
Naturally, the Westinghouse gadget had been declared Ultra Top Secret as
soon as it had been worked out. Virtually everything was, these days.
And the whole group involved in the machine and its workings had been
transferred without delay to the United States Laboratories out in Yucca
Flats, Nevada.
Out there in the desert, there just wasn't much to do, Malone supposed,
except to play with the machine. And, of course, look at the scenery.
But when you've seen one desert, Malone thought confusedly, you've seen
them all.
So, the scientists ran experiments on the machine, and they made a
discovery of a kind they hadn't been looking for.
Somebody, they discovered, was picking the brains of the scientists
there.
Not the brains of the people working with the telepathy machine.
And not the brains of the people working on the several other
Earth-limited projects at Yucca Flats.
They'd been reading the minds of some of the scientists working on the
new and highly classified non-rocket space drive.
In other words, the Yucca Flats plant was infested with a telepathic
spy. And how do you go about finding a telepath? Malone sighed. Spies
that got information in any of the usual ways were tough enough to
locate. A telepathic spy was a lot tougher proposition.
Well, one thing about Andrew J. Burris--he had an answer for everything.
Malone thought of what his chief had said: "It takes a thief to catch a
thief. And if the Westinghouse machine won't locate a telepathic spy, I
know what will."
"What?" Malone had asked.
"It's simple," Burris had said. "Another telepath. There has to be one
around somewhere. Westinghouse _did_ have one, after all, and the
Russians _still_ have one. Malone, that's your job: go out and find me a
telepath."
Burris had an answer for everything, all right, Malone thought. But he
couldn't see where the answer did him very much good. After all, if it
takes a telepath to catch a telepath, how do you catch the telepath
you're going to use to catch the first telepath?
[Illustration]
Malone ran that through his mind again, and then gave it up. It sounded
as if it should have made sense, somehow, but it just didn't, and that
was all there was to that.
He dropped his cigarette to the ground and mashed it out with the toe
of his shoe. Then he looked up.
Out there, over the water, was the Jefferson Memorial. It stood, white
in the floodlights, beautiful and untouchable in the darkness. Malone
stared at it. What would Thomas Jefferson have done in a crisis like
this?
Jefferson, he told himself without much conviction, would have been just
as confused as he was.
But he'd have had to find a telepath, Malone thought. Malone determined
that he would do likewise. If Thomas Jefferson could do it, the least
he, Malone, could do was to give it a good try.
There was only one little problem:
_Where_, Malone thought, _do I start looking?_