"I found," Dr. O'Connor said, "on interrogating the subjects more closely, that they were, in effect, thinking on two levels. They were reading the book mechanically, noting the words and sense, but simply shuttling the material directly into their memories without actually thinking about it. The actual thinking portions of their minds were concentrating on aspects of Project Isle." * * * * * "In other words," Malone said, "someone was spying on them for information about Project Isle?" "Precisely," Dr. O'Connor said with a frosty, teacher-to-student smile. "And whoever it was had a much higher concentration time than Charlie had ever attained. He seems to be able to retain contact as long as he can find useful information flowing in the mind being read." "Wait a minute," Malone said. "Wait a minute. If this spy is so clever, how come he didn't read _your_ mind?" "It is very likely that he has," O'Connor said. "What does that have to do with it?" "Well," Malone said, "if he knows you and your group are working on telepathy and can detect what he's doing, why didn't he just hold off on the minds of those geniuses when they were being tested in your machine?" Dr. O'Connor frowned. "I'm afraid that I can't be sure," he said, and it was clear from his tone that, if Dr. Thomas O'Connor wasn't sure, no one in the entire world was, had been, or ever would be. "I do have a theory, however," he said, brightening up a trifle. Malone waited patiently. "He must know our limitations," Dr. O'Connor said at last. "He must be perfectly well aware that there's not a single thing we can _do_ about him. He must know that we can neither find nor stop him. Why should he worry? He can afford to ignore us--or even bait us. We're helpless, and he knows it." That, Malone thought, was about the most cheerless thought he had heard in some time. "You mentioned that you had an insulated room," the FBI agent said after a while. "Couldn't you let your men think in there?" Dr. O'Connor sighed. "The room is shielded against magnetic fields and electromagnetic radiation. It is perfectly transparent to psionic phenomena, just as it is to gravitational fields." "Oh," Malone said. He realized rapidly that his question had been a little silly to begin with, since the insulated room had been the place where all the tests had been conducted in the first place. "I don't want to take up too much of your time, doctor," he said after a pause, "but there are a couple of other questions." "Go right ahead," Dr. O'Connor said. "I'm sure I'll be able to help you." Malone thought of mentioning how little help the doctor had been to date, but decided against it. Why antagonize a perfectly good scientist without any reason? Instead, he selected his first question, and asked it. "Have you got any idea how we might lay our hands on another telepath? Preferably one that's not an imbecile, of course."