touch seemed
somehow familiar, but it wasn't Joyce. He knew it wasn't Joyce; there
was something unsure and tentative about the whisper of thought.

Black psionically cut in the outer office visiphone connection. The
bell rang almost immediately. He switched on the inner office
instrument and a familiar face came in sync on the screen--that of
Peter Dodson, the principal administrative officer of the BEB psis.

Dodson's blondly handsome face showed concern. He said, "I wanted
visiphone contact, Black, because of an unfavorable report I've
received on you. I'll get to that in a minute. First, I'd like to
explain the background. As you may have learned from the news this
morning, we're investigating Lawrence Applied Atomics because of a tip
we'd received from Los Angeles that Lawrence is engaged in a venture
which will eventually affect corporation funds without proper advance
authorization.

"Finding that Lawrence had some dealings with Standskill in the past,
we thought that Standskill might be able to shed some light on the new
venture. When we were unable to contact Standskill, we sought to
contact you psionically last night, but found that your mind was a
completely unreadable jumble of nightmares, filled with phobias and
instabilities. We stopped probing then, realizing that you might be
seriously ill."

Apparently visual examination had convinced Dodson that Black wasn't
as ill as had been thought. Black felt the feather touch of a probe
coming now and he blocked, his thin face expressionless.

"I did have a rather bad night," Black said. "Association. Semantic
instability." He felt the tentacle of thought that was sweeping across
his mind.

"Well," Dodson said, his eyes probing from the screen, "it's obvious
_you_ know nothing of the Lawrence deal. Strange, though, since
there's a record of a call placed to that office by Lawrence
yesterday, and as far as we have been able to determine only you were
there and only you could have answered. How do you explain that?"

Easy now! The block is most difficult to maintain when you're lying.
Easy....

"There was a call," Black admitted, "from someone I don't know, a
fellow who wanted Standskill. Wouldn't say why or give his name. The
moment I told him Standskill was in Paris he said with some reluctance
that he would have to contact another law firm. The caller was
probably Lawrence. If you could describe him--"

"So Standskill's in Paris! The answering servic