reat sigh of resignation and brushing crumbs off his
shirt, he teleported himself over to his office.

Now he knew that, sooner or later, he was going to have to talk to
Burris. Burris _had_ to know, even if there was nothing to be done.

And now was just as good--or as bad--a time as any.

He didn't hesitate. He punched the button on his intercom for Burris'
office and then sat back, with his eyes closed, waiting for the
well-known voice.

It didn't come.

Instead, Wolf, the Director's secretary, spoke up.

"Burris isn't in, Malone," he said. "He had to fly to Miami. I can get
a call through to him on the plane, if it's urgent, but he'll be
landing in about fifteen minutes. And he did say he'd call in this
afternoon."

"Oh," Malone said. "Sure. O.K. It isn't urgent." He was just as glad
of the reprieve; it gave him one more chance to work matters through
to a solution, and hand it to Burris on a silver platter. "But why
Miami?" he added.

"Don't you hear about anything any more?" Wolf asked.

"I've been on vacation."

"Oh," Wolf said. "Well, the Governor of Mississippi was assassinated
yesterday, at Miami Beach."

"Ah," Malone said. He thought about it for a second. "Frankly," he
said, "this does not strike me as an irreparable loss to the nation.
Not even to Mississippi."

"You express my views precisely," Wolf said.

"How about the killer?" Malone said. "I gather they haven't got him
yet, or Burris wouldn't be on his way down."

"No," Wolf said. "The killer would be on his way here instead. But you
know how things are--everything's confused. Governor Flarion was
walking along Collins Avenue when somebody fired at him, using a
high-powered rifle with, I guess, a scope sight."

"Professional," Malone commented.

"It looks like it," Wolf said. "And he picked the right time for it,
too--the way things are he was just one more confusion among the rest.
Nobody even heard the sniper's shot; the governor just fell over,
right there in the street. And by the time his bodyguards found out
what had happened, it was impossible even to be sure just which way he
was facing when the shot had been fired."

"And as I remember Collins Avenue--" Malone started.

"Right," Wolf said. "But it's even worse now, with everything going
nuts. Out where Governor Flarion was taking his stroll, there's an
awful lot of it to search. The boys are trying to find somebody who
saw a man acting suspicious in any of the nearby bu