s talents; they'd just
happened to him.

Nobody, though, seemed to believe that. He heaved a little sigh and
stepped into the waiting elevator.

There were, after all, he thought, compensations. He'd had some good
times, and the talents did come in handy. And he did have his pick of
the vacation schedule lately. And he'd met some lovely girls--

And besides, he told himself savagely as the elevator shot upward, he
wasn't going to do anything except return to his office and read some
reports and listen to some tapes. And then he was going to go home and
sleep all night, peacefully. And in the morning Mitchell was going to
call him up and tell him that the computer-secretaries needed nothing
more than a little repair. He'd say they were getting old, and he'd be
a little pathetic about it; but it wouldn't be anything serious.
Malone would send out orders to get the machines repaired, and that
would be that. And then the next case would be something both normal
and exciting, like a bank robbery or a kidnapping involving a gorgeous
blonde who would be so grateful to Malone that--

He had stepped out of the elevator and gone down the corridor without
noticing it. He pushed at his own office door and walked into the
outer room. The train of thought he had been following was very nice,
and sounded very attractive indeed, he told himself.

Unfortunately, he didn't believe it. His prescient ability,
functioning with its usual efficient aplomb, told Malone that things
would not be better, or simpler, in the morning. They would be worse,
and more complicated.

They would be quite a lot worse.

And, as usual, that prescience was perfectly accurate.

II

The telephone, Malone realized belatedly, had had a particularly
nasty-sounding ring. He might have known it would be bad news.

As a matter of fact, he told himself sadly, he had known.

"Nothing at all wrong?" he said into the mouthpiece. "Not with any of
the computers?" He blinked. "Not even one of them?"

"Not a thing," Mitchell said. "I'll be sending a report up to you in a
little while. You read it; we put them through every test, and it's
all detailed there."

"I'm sure you were very thorough," Malone said helplessly.

"Of course we were," Mitchell said. "Of course. And the machines
passed every single test. Every one. Malone, it was beautiful."

"Goody," Malone said at random. "But there's got to be something--"

"There is, Malone," Fred said. "There is.