out, each for his own reasons, I guess,
leaving Rose behind in the cube of glass on the roof, looking like he
was going to turn belly-up and take a bite out of the PBX on his desk.

* * * * *

I wasn't exactly shadowed, but I knew somebody had his eye on me as I
wandered about the crowded casino, looking for Sniffles. As far as I
could make out, she had vamoosed without trying to hustle another
sucker. Her percentage of my winnings had certainly been a
disappointment to her.

At last I went down the ersatz wooden steps into the neon-gashed night
and started across the nearly deserted main drag toward the motel where
I had registered. A powerful turbine howled as a car pulled away from
the curb, perhaps a hundred yards up the way. His lights came on and
snapped up to bright. I had a perfect flash of PC--I _do_ have moments
of it, no matter what the Lodge thinks. The car was going to take a dive
into the fountain pool in front of my motel. But it sure didn't act like
it. I froze in the middle of the road, hearing rubber scream as the
driver floored the throttle and hurled the automobile right at me. He
might as well have been on tracks. There was no place to go--I was in
the middle of a six-lane boulevard, and could never make either curb
before he ran me down.

This is when it pays to be a perceptive. I've talked to many TK's about
how they visualize their lifts. We all conceive of it differently. With
me a real strain is like shining a bright beam of light on the spot
you're lifting.

Be glad, Wally Bupp, I had time to tell myself. Be glad for a mechanical
mind. Where do you lift four thousand pounds of car aimed right at you?
Well, there is a small valve, can't weigh half an ounce, lightly
spring-loaded, that is in the power-steering mechanism. I seared a lift
at it. You know what happened.

The feedback of the power-steering wrenched the wheel from the driver's
hand--it was ten times as strong as he was, dragging its power as it did
from a four-hundred horsepower shaft turning 30,000 rpm. The car
careened and skidded across the curb. It took out a small marble rail
around the fountain pool and dived in, still screaming rubber. The
fountain went over with a crash and then the racket dwindled off in the
shriek of twisted buckets. The turbine had gotten what for in the
collision.

I didn't hang around to see what had happened to the driver. He was just
some heavy who had the job of