There was a moment of chill. Eyes closed, rocking a little on his special chair, Howson waited to feel Singh hear the answer. He had no wish to investigate Miss Moreno’s mind if she had refused him contact previously.

Then: “How did you know ? My office was under orders not to tell you. I think I made it pretty clear to Howson that I—”

“I didn’t have to be told!” Singh waved the words aside with an impatient gesture. “I’ve seen better than two hundred telepathists, sick and well, trained and novice. I still want an answer, though. How is it you don’t know that Gerry is the one and only living man who can get Choong back ?”

“Because—” There was a pause, coloured by the gathering of will-power towards a decision. “Because Choong scares me, if I’ve got to be frank! Ever since Vargas discovered the catapathic linkage, out of — I don’t know — frustration, maladjustment… Oh, skip that. Ever since, anyway, it’s been a standing temptation to all of us. You’re probably an exception if you’ve worked with so many telepathists, but most people imagine the talent is absolutely rewarding and satisfying. For all the careful propaganda to the contrary, they get jealous.” The words were bitter now. “Well, a telepathist can be frustrated, or depressed, or lose heart. And any of us could say at any time, ‘Let the world go to blazes! I can make my own!’ But we’re held back. We think, ‘It’s the weaklings who give in !’

“But Choong has done it now. A weakling? Him? Never! He apparently went into fugue by simple choice, in full possession of his faculties. Is that where I’m going to end up ? Or Howson ? Or all of us ? I’ve been refusing rapport with Gerry Howson, doctor. I know it’s upsetting him. But you see… I’m afraid that if I find he’s as tempted as I am, and if he finds I’m tempted, we’ll have lost not only Choong, but him, and me as well.”

Singh had no answer. He merely bowed his head.

So there it was, in all its nakedness: the fear. Abruptly Howson didn’t dislike Miss Moreno any longer. She had meant well. She had simply not realized that it was more help to him to know that his terror was shared, rather than a product of his individual plight.

How had Marlowe put it in the mouth of Mephistopheles ? Something about it being sweet to have companions in adversity? He couldn’t remember. It didn’t matter. The principle applied, and he felt comforted.

His hand went to the switch of the intercom. A pause, and then Deirdre van Osterbeck spoke.

“Yes?”

“Gerry here, Deirdre. Send me the background on the Choong case, please. I’m ready to start work on it now.”

Usually he relied at least in part on inspiration to achieve his ultimate success. Many times in the past he had brought about a swift and drastic disruption of a catapathic grouping by exploiting a weakness revealed only in the fantasy itself, never previously admitted by the telepathist even to his analyst, even to his wife. If he had a wife; rather few telepathists bothered to marry, in view of the unlikelihood of their having children with the gift.

This time, however, nothing was left to last-moment improvisation. He employed every trick in the book.

First there were the long, long hours under the hood: the close-fitting device combining microfilm viewer, microphone and audible commentary outputs. He used a mild stimulant to help him fix the endless facts in his brain, and came out from each session limp and sweating.

Then there were the direct investigations. They brought him anyone and everyone they could find who had known Choong at all closely: former schoolfellows, elderly relatives, ex-girl-friends, professional colleagues, in all more than two hundred minds for him to dip into, sift, pick clues and hints from.

Last, they brought Choong’s wife.

He had not wanted to face her. He had tried to tell himself, her, and Singh that it wasn’t necessary — he had enough material to satisfy him. But in the end he had to accept the ordeal. She herself insisted. She wanted her husband back, and if her memory held anything of use to Howson, she wanted him to have it.

She was a small woman, podgy, not very attractive, a receptive telepathist of fair accomplishment. Her ancestors were mostly Polynesian, but her present work was largely concerned with cultural adjustment in New Guinea, cushioning the impact of modern technology on people whose grandfathers had been born in the Stone Age. She had been away working for more than three months, and had not expected to see her husband again for another six weeks.

When Howson first probed her, he was already convinced what he would find. Here if anywhere must be the intolerable situation Choong was running from, surely! He looked for the signs of marital, probably sexual, strain — and was bewildered.

They weren’t there. He found only a hurt puzzlement, a mute question: why did he go without me?

And she didn’t know the answer, even when he burrowed into the chaos of her subconscious. To all outward and inward appearance, Choong was the best-adjusted telepathist Howson had ever run across, and his adjustment to his wife was as good as any other part of his existence.

Shaken, he resisted the growing impulse to cut short his preparations. He knew Lockspeiser and Ho were getting anxious, he knew even Singh, whose confidence in him was tremendous had started to wonder whether these elaborate precautions were necessary or just an attempt to postpone the eventual therapy. Not even if the Sino-Indonesian crisis flared into violence would he dare to face Choong without knowing his weak points.

And since Choong didn’t have any, to speak of, that left his companions.

Here the task was infinitely easier. Although none of these nine people would have succumbed to escapist fantasy of their own accord, they had required little persuading to join with Choong. Consequently he found hopeful indications in their psychological records.

This man: repressed will-to-power, king-and-slave fantasies revealed in analysis a few years earlier.

And this man: a childhood history of lying, petty theft and furniture-breaking.

And this woman: attempted suicide after an unhappy love-affair.

I’m a ghoul, Howson thought, not for the first time. Here are people at the end of their tethers, and in despair they’ve tried to break loose. So what do I do? I play on their private misery, and make even escape unbearable.

“Set them up, Deirdre. I’m on my way down now.”

“Good! We’ll be ready when you arrive — I’ve had staff standing by all day.”

Howson turned off the intercom, got to his feet, and stretched. He wished he could stretch completely, and tense the withered muscles of his back which had never been drawn out. Still… wishing was futile. He ought to have learnt that by now.

His mind buzzed with the information he had packed into it over the past few days as he limped through the corridors towards the room where his patient waited. It was like being pursued by hornets.

Moreover, there was memory to dog his footsteps. Maybe it was a mistake that he had never moved from the room he was first assigned when he came here. Maybe he should have gone to an apartment out in the city. Then he wouldn’t now be walking the same route as he had followed, blind with tears, when Ilse Kronstadt came so near to death in her encounter with Pericles Phranakis.

Was this his own hour of crisis? Ilse too had had an unblemished record, until (what had she compared it to?) the bullet-sized tumour in her brain weakened her. His physical powers were no worse than they had ever been, but his control had none the less been subtly undermined, for just the reasons Miss Moreno had confided to Pandit Singh. He was embarking, scared, on an enterprise in which only the most sublime confidence in his own ability could uphold him. And there was no reluctant novice to come storming to his rescue at the eleventh hour.