is what I
have read. One gets the idea that these writers must know something of
the job, the way they write about it. But once you're faced with it
yourself, you realize that the writer has planted his own clues."

Miss Farrow nodded. "One thing," she suggested, "have you talked to the
people who got you out from under your car yet?"

"No, I haven't. The police talked to them and claimed they knew nothing.
I doubt that I can ask them anything that the police have not satisfied
themselves about."

Miss Farrow looked up at me sidewise. "You won't find anything by asking
people who have never heard of you."

"I suppose not."

A coptercab came along at that moment, and probably sensing my
intention, he gave his horn a tap. I'd have liked to talk longer with
Miss Farrow, but a cab was what I wanted, so with a wave I took it and
she went on down the steps to her own business.

I had to pause long enough to buy a new car, but a few hours afterward I
was rolling along that same highway with my esper extended as far as I
could in all directions. I was driving slowly, this time both alert and
ready.

I went past the scene of the accident slowly and shut my mind off as I
saw the black-burned patch. The block was still hanging from an overhead
branch, and the rope that had burned off was still dangling, about two
feet of it, looped through the pulleys and ending in a tapered, burned
end.

I turned left into a driveway toward the home of the Harrisons and went
along a winding dirt road, growing more and more conscious of a dead
area ahead of me.

It was not a real dead zone, because I could still penetrate some of the
region. But as far as really digging any of the details of the rambling
Harrison house, I could get more from my eyesight than from any sense of
perception. But even if they couldn't find a really dead area, the
Harrisons had done very well in finding one that made my sense of
perception ineffective. It was sort of like looking through a light fog,
and the closer I got to the house the thicker it became.

Just about the point where the dead area was first beginning to make its
effect tell, I came upon a tall, browned man of about twenty-four who
had been probing into the interior of a tractor up to the time he heard
my car. He waved, and I stopped.

"Mr. Harrison?"

"I'm Phillip. And you are Mr. Cornell."

"Call me Steve like everybody else," I said. "How'd you guess?"

"Recognized you," he said wit