"The Congress can allow for a short suspension," Malone said. "Anyhow, they can now--or as soon as I get the word to them. Suppose you check all the machines first, and then get around to the repair work." "It's not the best way," Fred demurred. Malone discovered that it was his turn to sigh. "Is it the fastest?" he said. Fred nodded. "Then it's the best," Malone said. "How long?" Fred rolled his eyes to the ceiling and calculated silently for a second. "Tomorrow morning," he announced, returning his gaze to Malone. "Fine," Malone said. "Fine." "But--" "Never mind the buts," Malone said hurriedly. "I'll count on hearing from you tomorrow morning." "Oh--" Fred said. "All right." "And if it looks like sabotage," Malone added, "if the errors aren't caused by normal wear and tear on the machines--you let me know right away. Phone me. Don't waste an instant." [Illustration] "I'll ... I'll start right away," Fred said heavily. He looked sadly at the mechanism he had been working on, and put his screwdriver down next to it. It looked to Malone as if he were putting flowers on the grave of a dear departed. "I'll get a team together," Fred added. He gave the mechanism and screwdriver one last fond parting look. Malone looked after him for a second, thinking of nothing in particular, and then turned in the opposite direction and headed back toward the elevator. As he walked, he began to feel more and more pleased with himself. After all, he'd gotten the investigation started, hadn't he? And now all he had to do was go back to his office and read some reports and listen to some interview tapes, and then he could go home. The reports and the interview tapes didn't exactly sound like fun, Malone thought, but at the same time they seemed fairly innocent. He would work his way through them grimly, and maybe he would even indulge his most secret vice and smoke a cigar or two to make the work pass more pleasantly. Soon enough, he told himself, they would be finished with. Sometimes, though, he regretted the reputation he'd gotten. It had been bad enough in the old days--the pre-1971 days when Malone had thought he was just lucky. Burris had called him a Boy Wonder then, when he'd cracked three difficult cases in a row. Being just lucky had made it a little tough to live with the Boy Wonder label--after all, Malone thought, it wasn't actually as if he'd done anything. But since 1971 and the case of the Telepathic Spy, things had gotten worse. Much worse. Now Malone wasn't just lucky any more. Instead, he could teleport and he could even foretell the future a little, in a dim sort of way. He'd caught the Telepathic Spy that way, and when the case of the Teleporting Juvenile Delinquents had come up he'd been assigned to that one too, and he'd cracked it. Now Burris seemed to think of him as a kind of god, and gave him all the tough dirty jobs.