ere turned to the black of infinity.

And moments later lights blazed over a table in a realty office in Los
Angeles where no one sat. But pens lifted and wrote....

"_D. V. Lawrence by Martin J. Black, his attorney-in-fact._"

"_J. F. Cadigan Realty Corporation by Richard Joyce, Vice-President._"

Another pen lifted with the invisible but delicate twist of a feminine
psi-touch.

"_Before me this ninth day of September in the year Nineteen Hundred
and Seventy-six Anno Domini psionically appeared...._"

The options were psigned, come what may!

VI

An oak-panelled conference room. Lawrence's first vice-president
reading the proposal. The board of directors. The major stockholders.
Smaller ones. Attorneys-in-fact for both Lawrence and Black.

And _Bob Standskill_!

What was Standskill doing here?

But the first vice-president had finished reading the proposal and was
asking for a vote.

Lawrence--forty-five thousand shares--_yes_!

Maryk--twenty thousand shares--_no_!

Carrese--nine thousand shares--_no_!

Tonemont--seven thousand shares--_no_!

Black--four thousand shares--_yes_!

Turitz--five thousand shares--_no_!

And the smaller stockholders, one by one--_no_, _no_, _no_!

Forty-nine thousand shares--_no_! Forty-nine thousand shares--_yes_!

Black felt ill. His hovering consciousness almost fled from its
invisible vantage point above the conference table back to the mansion
on Riverside Drive, back where the memories of Martha Black
remained.... But it wavered, stabilized....

Standskill rising, so implacable, so sure and saying, "Two thousand
shares--yes!"

Black probed Standskill's mind almost involuntarily then, realizing
instantly that he should have disregarded Ethics and probed before.
Standskill was a psi, a _non-service psi_! And Black knew then that
when his consciousness had flitted through association to _Le Cheval
Fatigue_ in Montmarte, Paris, and had fixed there for a brief unstable
moment it had yielded to Standskill all knowledge of the Lawrence
deal, persuading Standskill to order his brokers to buy the
corporation's stock for the trust....

Black's consciousness sped to join Joyce's in a law office in
Oklahoma. It watched the landowners signing the deeds even as it
signed psionically the checks which represented the good and valuable
considerations.

The deal was closed.

VII

_Joyce, tell me--did you, to your knowledge, tip off the BEB psis?_

_Yes. Inadverte