f he were here. Or there. Or anywhere at all, in fact.

A familiar voice came tinnily out of the receiver. "Malone, get down
here right away!"

The voice belonged to Andrew J. Burris. Malone sighed deeply and felt
grateful, for the fiftieth time, that he had never had a TV pickup
installed in the intercom. He didn't want the FBI chief to see him
looking as horrible as he did now, all rippled and everything. It
wasn't--well, it wasn't professional, that was all.

"I'll get dressed right away," he assured the intercom. "I should be
there in--"

"Don't bother to get dressed," Burris snapped. "This is an emergency!"

"But, Chief--"

"And don't call me Chief!"

"Okay," Malone said. "Sure. You want me to come down in my pyjamas.
Right?"

"I want you to--" Burris stopped. "All right, Malone. If you want to
waste time while our country's life is at stake, you go ahead. Get
dressed. After all, Malone, when I say something is an emergency--"

"I won't get dressed, then," Malone said. "Whatever you say."

"Just do something!" Burris told him desperately. "Your country needs
you. Pyjamas and all. Malone, it's a crisis!"

Conversations with Burris, Malone told himself, were bound to be a
little confusing. "I'll be right down," he said.

"Fine," Burris said, and hesitated. Then he added: "Malone, do you
wear the tops or the bottoms?"

"The what?"

"Of your pyjamas," Burris explained hurriedly. "The top part or the
bottom part?"

"Oh," Malone said. "As a matter of fact, I wear both."

"Good," Burris said with satisfaction. "I wouldn't want an agent of
mine arrested for indecent exposure." He rang off.

Malone blinked at the intercom for a minute, shut it off and then,
ignoring the trip-hammers in his skull and the Eagle Scouts on his
nerves, began to get dressed. Somehow, in spite of Burris' feelings of
crisis, he couldn't see himself trying to flag a taxi on the streets
of Washington in his pyjamas. Anyhow, not while he was awake. I
dreamed I was an FBI agent, he thought sadly, in my drafty BVDs.

Besides, it was probably nothing important. These things, he told
himself severely, have a way of evaporating as soon as a clear, cold
intelligence got hold of them.

Then he began wondering where in hell he was going to find a clear,
cold intelligence. Or even, for that matter, what one was.

1

"They could be anywhere," Burris said, with an expression which
bordered on exaspe