're trying to do becomes something that can't happen. Hm-m-m. ... You
can't spin a copper disk in a magnetic field when it melts. You can't
commit a murder in a certain kind of psi field when probability goes
hog-wild. Any other thing can happen to anybody else--to you, for
example--but no violence can happen to the thing or person you're trying
to do something violent to. The psi field has melted down ordinary
probabilities. The violence you intend has become the most improbable of
all conceivable things. You see?"

"I'm beginnin'," said Detective Sergeant Fitzgerald dizzily, "I'm
beginnin' to get a toehold on what you mean. I'd hate to have to testify
about it in court, but I'm receptive."

"So my special kind of luck," said Brink, "comes from antiviolence psi
fields, set up in psi units of suitable material. They don't use up
energy any more than a magnet does. But they transfer it, like a magnet
does. My brother-in-law thought he had to lose his business because Big
Jake threatened violent things. I offered to take it over and protect
it--with psi units. So far, I have. When four hoods intended to shoot up
the place and moved to do it, they were warned. Psi 'eddy currents' made
their eyelids twitch. They went ahead. Probability changed. Quite
unlikely things became more likely than not. They were obstinate about
it, and what they intended became perhaps the only thing in the world
that simply couldn't happen. So they crashed into a telephone pole. That
wasn't violence. That was accident."

The detective blinked, and then nodded, somehow painfully.

"I see," he said uncertainly.

* * * * *

"Somebody set a bomb in my delivery truck," added Brink. "I'm sure his
eyelids twitched, but he didn't stop. So probability changed. The
explosion of that bomb in my truck became the most unlikely of all
possible things. In fact, it became impossible. So some electric
connection went bad, and it didn't go off. Again, when Jacaro intended
to plant a time fire-bomb to set the plant on fire--why--his eyelids
must have twitched but he didn't give up the intention. So the psi unit
naturally made the burning of the plant impossible. For it to be
impossible, the fire-bomb had to go off where it would do next to no
harm. Jacaro lost his pants."

He stopped. Detective Sergeant Fitzgerald swallowed carefully.

"I don't question it," he said dizzily, "even if I don't believe it.
Will you now tell me th