ng. You
see, Charlie was incapable of continued concentration. He could not
keep his mind focused on another mind for very long, before he hopped
to still another. The actual amount of time concentrated on any given
mind at any single given period varied from a minimum of one point
three seconds to a maximum of two point six. The timing samples, when
plotted graphically over a period of several months, formed a skewed
bell curve with a mode at two point oh seconds."

"Ah," Malone said, wondering if a skewed ball curve was the same thing
as a belled skew curve, and if not, why not?

"It was, in fact," Dr. O'Connor continued relentlessly, "a sudden
variation in those timings which convinced us that there was another
telepath somewhere in the vicinity. We were conducting a second set of
reading experiments, in precisely the same manner as the first set,
and, for the first part of the experiment, our figures were
substantially the same. But--" He stopped.

"Yes?" Malone said, shifting his feet and trying to take some weight
off his left foot by standing on his right leg. Then he stood on his
left leg. It didn't seem to do any good.

"I should explain," Dr. O'Connor said, "that we were conducting this
series with a new set of test subjects: some of the scientists here at
Yucca Flats. We wanted to see if the intelligence quotients of the
subjects affected the time of contact which Charlie was able to
maintain. Naturally, we picked the men here with the highest IQ's, the
two men we have who are in the top echelon of the creative genius
class." He cleared his throat. "I did not include myself, of course,
since I wished to remain an impartial observer, as much as possible."

"Of course," Malone said without surprise.

"The other two geniuses," Dr. O'Connor said, "the other two geniuses
both happen to be connected with the project known as Project Isle--an
operation whose function I neither know, nor care to know, anything at
all about."

Malone nodded. Project Isle was the non-rocket spaceship. Classified.
Top Secret. Ultra Secret. And, he thought, just about anything else
you could think of.

"At first," Dr. O'Connor was saying, "our detector recorded the time
periods of--ah--mental invasion as being the same as before. Then, one
day, anomalies began to appear. The detector showed that the minds of
our subjects were being held for as long as two or three minutes. But
the phrases repeated by Charlie during these period