hat lab.

Her first look at me was one of surprise, but it softened to one
of concern, which might have been cheering on some other
occasion. "What has happened, Tex?" she asked.

"Nothing," I said, keeping calm. "Not a thing."

"Outside of seeing a ghost, eh?" she said. "_Stop_ grinding your
teeth like that. You'll give me the creeps. Sit down. Sit down!
Do you hear me? Relax!"

I guess I found the chair across from her at the desk. "Do I have
psi powers?" I asked her. "Either TK or PC? Test me, Shari."

"What happened?" she insisted.

I shook my head. "I'd rather not talk about it--not until I know
the result of your test," I said.

Shari thought about it for a while, tapping her desk with an
irritated finger, and finally got a set of cards from the lab
table against the wall. She shuffled them slowly on her desk
blotter. "Cards are your strong point," she observed. "If you
have any psi powers, they're most likely to show up with cards. I
take it you will do your utmost to be right?"

"Who would double-cross himself?" I said tightly.

"Most people," Shari said. "When it comes to psi. But we'll
assume, for a starter, that you are on the level." She stacked
the cards in her hand. "We'll keep it simple," Shari suggested.
"I'll deal the cards one at a time. All you have to do is tell me
whether the next card will be red or black. Fair?"

"Sure," I said. "Deal!"

She was a lousy dealer. Or maybe it was because it was a
one-handed operation. She was scoring my hits and misses with the
little counter in her other hand.

She ran the deck ten times for me. I got thirty-eight right on my
best attempt and thirty-seven wrong on my worst. In total, of
five hundred and twenty chances, I was right on two hundred and
seventy-three, or fifty-two point two per cent of the time,
according to Shari's slide rule.

"Oh, no," I said dismally. "I _do_ have a little edge on the
cards!"

"As a statistician, you'll make a great biochemist," Shari said,
putting the deck away. "That would only be true if I hadn't let
you see your hits and misses as each deal proceeded. You made
succeeding guesses in the knowledge of what had already been
dealt. Actually, your score was below average for trained
observers without psi powers." She heaved a sigh, which somehow
seemed to be of relief. "And now, you crazy cowpoke," she said,
"tell me what this is all about."

"I'm not a psi?" I demanded.

"Not if you were really trying," she sa