ajesty was Queen Elizabeth I, and he hoped
fervently that he never would. But he did have a great deal of respect
for her, and more affection than he had believed possible at first.
She was the grandmother Malone had never known; she was good, and
kind, and he wanted to keep her happy and contented. There had been
nothing at all phony in the solemn toast he had proposed, nor in the
righteous indignation he had felt against anyone who was giving Her
Majesty even a minute's worth of discomfort.

And Boyd, surprisingly enough, seemed to feel the same way. Malone
felt good about that; Her Majesty needed all the loyal supporters she
could get.

But all of this was later. At the time, Malone was doing nothing
except what came naturally. Nor, apparently, was Boyd. After the
glasses had been thrown, with a terrifying crash, into the metal
wastebasket, and the reverberations of that second had stopped ringing
in their ears, a moment of silence had followed.

Then Boyd turned, briskly rubbing his hands. "All right," he said.
"Let's get back to work."

Malone looked at the proud, happy look on Her Majesty's face; he saw
the glimmer of a tear in the corner of each eye. But he gave no
indication that he had noticed anything at all out of the ordinary.

"Fine," he said. "Now, getting on back to the facts, we've established
something, anyhow. Some agency is causing flashes of telepathic static
all over the place. And those flashes are somehow connected with the
confusion that's going on all around us. Somehow, these flashes have
an effect on the minds of people."

"And we know at least one manifestation of that effect," Boyd said.
"It makes spies blab all their secrets when they're exposed to it."

"These three spies, anyhow," Malone said.

"If spies is the right word," Boyd said.

"Okay," Malone said. "And now we've got another obvious question."

"It seems to me we've got about twelve," Boyd said.

"I mean, who's doing it?" Malone said. "Who is causing these
telepathic flashes?"

"Maybe it's just happening," Boyd said. "Out of thin air."

"Maybe," Malone said. "But let's go on the assumption that there's a
human cause. The other way, we can't do a thing except sit back and
watch the world go to hell."

Boyd nodded. "It doesn't seem to be the Russians," he said. "Although,
of course, it might be a Red herring."

"What do you mean?" Malone said.

"Well," Boyd said, "they might have known we were on to Brubitsch,
B