case was there a single shred of evidence to substantiate the
claim.

At the end of the second week, Malone was just about convinced that
his idea had been a total washout. He himself had been locked up in a
padded cell, and other agents had spent a full fortnight digging up
imbeciles, while the spy at Yucca Flats had been going right on his
merry way, scooping information out of the men at Project Isle as
though he were scooping beans out of a pot. And, very likely, laughing
himself silly at the feeble efforts of the FBI.

Who could he be?

Anyone, Malone told himself unhappily. Anyone at all. He could be the
janitor who swept out the buildings, one of the guards at the gate,
one of the minor technicians on another project, or even some old
prospector wandering around the desert with a scintillation counter.

Is there any limit to telepathic range?

The spy could even be sitting quietly in an armchair in the Kremlin,
probing through several thousand miles of solid earth to peep into the
brains of the men on Project Isle.

That was, to say the very least, a depressing idea.

Malone found he had to assume that the spy was in the United States--
that, in other words, there was some effective range to telepathic
communication. Otherwise, there was no point in bothering to continue
the search.

Therefore, he found one other thing to do. He alerted every agent to
the job of discovering how the spy was getting his information out of
the country.

He doubted that it would turn up anything, but it was a chance. And
Malone hoped desperately for it, because he was beginning to be sure
that the field agents were never going to turn up any telepathic
imbeciles.

He was right. They never did.

3

The telephone rang.

Malone rolled over on the couch and muttered four words under his
breath. Was it absolutely necessary for someone to call him at seven
in the morning?

He grabbed at the receiver with one hand, and picked up his cigar from
the ashtray with the other. It was bad enough to be awakened from a
sound sleep--but when a man hadn't been sleeping at all, it was even
worse.

He'd been sitting up since before five that morning, worrying about
the telepathic spy, and at the moment he wanted sleep more than he
wanted phone calls.

"Gur?" he said, sleepily and angrily, thankful that he'd never had a
visiphone installed in his apartment. A taste for blondes was
apparently he