was no way to censor the information, either,
although it was known that the Nipe relied on them for planning his
raids. But since there was no way of knowing, even after years of
observation, what sort of thing the Nipe would be wanting next, there
was no way of knowing which information should be removed from the
tapped channels.

And, most certainly, removing _all_ information about every possible
material that the Nipe might want would make him even more suspicious
than simply shutting down the channels altogether. To shut them down
would only indicate that the human government had detected his taps; to
censor them heavily would indicate that a trap was being laid.

It was even impossible to censor out news about the Nipe. That, too,
would have invited suspicion. So a special corps of men had been set up,
a group whose sole job was to investigate every raid of the Nipe. Every
raid produced a flurry of activity by this special group. They rushed
out to look over the scene of the raid, prowled around, and did
everything that might be expected of an investigative body. Their
reports were sent in over the usual channels. All the actual data they
came up with was sent straight through the normal channels--but the
conclusions they reached from that data were not. Always, in spite of
everything, the messages indicated that the police were as baffled as
before.

All other information relating to the Nipe went through special channels
known to be untapped by the Nipe.

And yet, there was no way to be absolutely certain of the sum total of
the information that the Nipe received. Believing, as he did, in the
existence of Real People, he would necessarily assume that _their_
communication systems were hidden from him, and the more difficult they
were to find, the more certain he would be that they existed. And it was
impossible to know what information the Nipe picked up when he was out
on a raid, away from the spying devices that had been hidden in his
tunnels.

Mannheim walked across the small living room to the sideboard that stood
against one wall and opened a door. Fresh ice, soda, and a bottle of
Scotch were waiting for him. He took one of the ten-ounce glasses,
dropped in three of the hard-frozen cubes of ice, added a precisely
measured ounce and a half of Scotch, and filled the glass to within an
inch of the brim with soda. Holding the glass in one hand, he walked
around the little apartment, checking everything