laughed cheerfully. "Your Christine is in fine shape. She is
still here because she wouldn't leave until you were well out of danger.
Now stop fretting. You'll see her soon enough."

Her laugh was light but strained. It sounded off-key because it was as
off-key as a ten-yard-strip of baldfaced perjury. She left in a hurry
and I was able to esper as far as outside the door, where she leaned
back against the wood and began to cry. She was hating herself because
she had blown her lines and she knew that I knew it.

And Catherine had never been in this hospital, because if she had been
brought in with me, the nurse would have known the right name.

Not that it mattered to me now, but Miss Farrow was no esper or she'd
have dug my belongings and found Catherine's name on the license. Miss
Farrow was a telepath; I'd not called my girl by name, only by an
affectionate mental image.

II

I was fighting my body upright when Doctor Thorndyke came running.
"Easy, Steve," he said with a quiet gesture. He pushed me gently back
down in the bed with hands that were as soft as a mother's, but as firm
as the kind that tie bow knots in half-inch bars. "Easy," he repeated
soothingly.

"Catherine?" I croaked pleadingly.

Thorndyke fingered the call button in some code or other before he
answered me. "Steve," he said honestly, "you can't be kept in ignorance
forever. We hoped it would be a little longer, when you were stronger--"

"Stop beating around!" I yelled. At least it felt like I was yelling,
but maybe it was only my mind welling.

"Easy, Steve. You've had a rough time. Shock--" The door opened and a
nurse came in with a hypo all loaded, its needle buried in a fluff of
cotton. Thorndyke eyed it professionally and took it; the nurse faded
quietly from the room. "Take it easy, Steve. This will--"

"No! Not until I know--"

"Easy," he repeated. He held the needle up before my eyes. "Steve," he
said, "I don't know whether you have enough esper training to dig the
contents of this needle, but if you haven't, will you please trust me?
This contains a neurohypnotic. It won't put you under. It will leave you
as wide awake as you are now, but it will disconnect your running gear
and keep you from blowing a fuse." Then with swift deftness that amazed
me, the doctor slid the needle into my arm and let me have the full
load.

I was feeling the excitement rise in me because something was wrong, but
I could also feel the stu