* * * *

Dale V. Lawrence needed a lawyer urgently. Not that he hadn't a score
of legal minds at his disposal; a corporation president must maintain
a sizable legal staff. You can't build an industrial empire without
treading on people's toes. And you need lawyers when you tread.

He sat behind his massive mahogany desk, a stocky, slightly-balding,
stern-looking man of middle age who was psychosomatically creating
another ulcer as he worried about the business transaction which he
could not handle personally because of the ulcer operation he was
about to have. Neither the business transaction nor the operation
could be delayed.

He needed a particularly clever lawyer, one not connected with the
corporation. Not that he had committed or that he contemplated
committing a crime. But the eyes of the law and the minds of the psis
of the government's Business Ethics Bureau were equally keen. Anyone
in the business of commercially applied atomics was automatically and
immediately investigated in any proposed transaction as soon as BEB
had knowledge thereof. There was still the fear that someone somewhere
might attempt, secretly, to build a war weapon again.

Lawrence had an idea, a great, burning, impossible-to-discard idea.
Lawrence Applied Atomics, Inc., had been his first great idea--the
idea that had made him a multi-millionaire. But through some devious
financing he had lost control of the corporation. And although his
ideas invariably realized millions, the other major stockholders were
becoming cautious about risking their profits. Overly cautious, he
thought. And on this new idea he knew they would never support him.
They'd consider it a wild risk. He could blame BEB with its psis for
that. BEB was too inquisitive. A business man just couldn't take a
decent gamble any longer.

The real estate firm in Los Angeles was secretly securing options from
individual landowners. Fortunately the firm employed a psi, one of the
few known psis not in government service. Lawrence had wondered why
this psi was not working for the government, but decided the 'why'
didn't matter if there were positive results.

Lawrence knew a little about psis. He knew, of course, what was
commonly known--that they possessed wide and very varied talents, that
they were categorized as plain psis, psi-espers, esper-psis, telepaths
and other things. They weren't numerous; the Business Ethics Bureau
which employed at least sixty