as sure; there had to be. More was happening in the
good old United States inside of twenty-four hours than ordinarily
happened in a couple of months. The big trouble was that some of it
was, doubtless, completely unconnected with the work of Malone's
psychological individual. It was equally certain that some of it
wasn't; no normal workings of chance could account for the spate of
resignations, deaths, arrests of high officials, freak accidents and
everything else he'd just seen.

But there was no way of telling which was which. The only one he was
reasonably sure he could leave out of his calculations was Hollywood's
good old Wonder Dog. And when he looked at the rest all he could see
was that confusion was rampant. Which was exactly what he'd known
before.

He remembered once, when he was a boy, his mother had taken him to an
astronomical observatory, and he had looked at Mars through the big
telescope, hoping to see the canals he'd heard so much about. Sure,
enough, there had been a blurred pattern of some kind. It might have
represented canals--but he'd been completely unable to trace any given
line. It was like looking at a spiderweb through a sheet of frosted
glass.

He needed a clearer view, and there wasn't any way to get it without
finding some more information. Sooner or later, he told himself,
everything would fall into one simple pattern, and he would give a cry
of "Eureka!"

There was, at any rate, no need to go to the scene of the crime. He
was right in the middle of it--and would have been, apparently, no
matter where he'd been. The big question was: where were all the facts
he needed?

He certainly wasn't going to find them all alone in his room, he
decided. Mingling with the Las Vegas crowds might give him some sort
of a lead--and, besides, he had to act like a man on vacation, didn't
he? Satisfied of this, Malone began to change into his dress suit.
People who came to Las Vegas, he told himself while fiddling with what
seemed to be a left-hand-thread cufflink of a peculiarly nasty
disposition, were usually rich. Rich people would be worried about the
way the good old United States was acting up, just like anybody else,
but they'd have access to various sources both of information and
rumor. Rumor was more valuable than might at first appear, Malone
thought sententiously, sneaking up on the cufflink and fastening it
securely. He finished dressing with what was almost an air of hope.

He survey