Malone shrugged. "I didn"t mean to be--" He paused. "Anyhow, I didn"t mean to be funny," he went on. "But I would like to have another idea of what"s causing all this."
"Scientific theories," O"Connor said sternly, "are not invented on the spur of the moment. Only after long, careful thought."
"You mean you can"t think of anything," Malone said.
"There must be some other explanation," O"Connor said. "Naturally, since the facts have only now been presented to me, it is impossible for me to display at once a fully-constructed theory."
Malone nodded slowly. "Okay," he said. "Have you got any hints, then?
Any ideas at all?"
O"Connor shook his head. "I have not," he said. "But I strongly suggest, Mr. Malone, that you recheck your data. The fault may very well lie in your own interpretations of the actual facts."
"I don"t think so," Malone said.
O"Connor grimaced. "I do," he said firmly.
Malone sighed, very faintly. He shifted in the chair and began to realize, for the first time, just how uncomfortable it really was. He also felt a little chilly, and the chill was growing. That, he told himself, was the effect of Dr. O"Connor. He no longer regretted wearing his hat. As a matter of fact, he thought wistfully for a second of a small, light overcoat.
O"Connor, he told himself, was definitely not the warm, friendly type.
"Well, then," he said, conquering the chilly feeling for a second, "maybe there"s somebody else. Somebody who knows something more about psionics, and who might have some other ideas about--"
"Please, Mr. Malone," O"Connor said. "The United States Government would hardly have chosen me had I not been uniquely qualified in my field."
Malone sighed again. "I mean, maybe there are some books on the subject," he said quietly, hoping he sounded tactful. "Maybe there"s something I could look up."
"Mr. Malone." The temperature of the office, Malone realized, was definitely lowering. O"Connor"s built-in freezer coils were working overtime, he told himself. "The field of psionics is so young that I can say, without qualification, that I am acquainted with everything written on the subject. By that, of course, I mean scientific works. I do not doubt that the American Society for Psychical Research, for instance, has hundreds of crackpot books which I have never read, or even heard of. But in the strictly scientific field, I must say that--"
He broke off, looking narrowly at Malone with what might have been concern, but looked more like discouragement and boredom.
"Mr. Malone," he said, "are you ill?"
Malone thought about it. He wasn"t quite sure, he discovered. The chill in the office was bothering him more and more, and as it grew he began to doubt that it was all due to the O"Connor influence. Suddenly a distinct shudder started somewhere in the vicinity of his shoulders and rippled its way down his body.
Another one followed it, and then a third.
"Mr. Malone," O"Connor said.
"Me?" Malone said. "I"m--I"m all right."
"You seem to have contracted a chill," O"Connor said.
A fourth shudder followed the other three.
"I--guess so," Malone said. "I d-d--I do s-seem to be r-r-rather chilly."
O"Connor nodded. "Ah," he said. "I thought so. Although a chill is certainly odd at seventy-two degrees Fahrenheit." He looked at the thermometer just outside the window of his office, then turned back to Malone. "Pardon me," he said. "Seventy-one point six."
"Is--is that all it is?" Malone said. Seventy-one point six degrees, or even seventy-two, hardly sounded like the broiling Nevada desert he"d expected.
"Of course," O"Connor said. "At nine o"clock in the morning, one would hardly expect great temperatures. The desert becomes quite hot during the day, but cools off rapidly; I a.s.sume you are familiar with the laws covering the system."
"Sure," Malone said. "S-sure."
The chills were not getting any better. They continued to travel up and down his body with the dignified regularity of Pennsylvania Railroad commuter trains.
O"Connor frowned for a second. It was obvious that his keen scientific eye was sizing up the phenomenon, and reporting events to his keen scientific brain. In a second or less, the keen scientific brain had come up with an answer, and Dr. O"Connor spoke in his very keenest scientific voice.
"I should have warned you," he said, without an audible trace of regret. "The answer is childishly simple, Mr. Malone. You left Washington at noon."
"Just a little before noon," Malone said. Remembering the burning sun, he added: "High noon. Very high."
"Just so," O"Connor said. "And not only the heat was intense; the humidity, I a.s.sume, was also high."
"Very," Malone said, thinking back. He shivered again.
"In Washington," O"Connor said, "it was noon. Here it is nine o"clock, and hardly as warm. The atmosphere is quite arid, and about twenty degrees below that obtaining in Washington."
Malone thought about it, trying to ignore the chills. "Oh," he said at last. "And all the time I thought it was you."
"What?" O"Connor leaned forward.
"Nothing," Malone said hastily. "Nothing at all."
"My suggestion," O"Connor said, putting his fingertips together again, "is that you take off your clothes, which are undoubtedly damp, and--"
Naturally, Malone had not brought any clothes to Yucca Flats to change into. And when he tried to picture himself in a spare suit of Dr.
O"Connor"s, the picture just wouldn"t come. Besides, the idea of doing a modified striptease in, or near, the O"Connor office was thoroughly unattractive.
"Well," he said slowly, "thanks a lot, Doctor, but no thanks. I really have a better idea."
"Better?" O"Connor said.
"Well, I--" Malone took a deep breath and shut his eyes.
He heard Dr. O"Connor say: "Well, Mr. Malone, goodbye. And good luck."
Then the office in Yucca Flats was gone, and Malone was standing in the bedroom of his own apartment, on the fringes of Washington, D.C.
4
He walked over to the wall control and shut off the air-conditioning in a hurry. He threw open a window and breathed great gulps of the hot, humid air from the streets. In a small corner at the back of his mind, he wondered why he was grateful for the air he had suffered under only a few minutes before. But that, he reflected, was life. And a very silly kind of life, too, he told himself without rancor.
In a few minutes he left the window, somewhat restored, and headed for the shower. When it was running nicely and he was under it, he started to sing. But his voice didn"t sound as much like the voice of Lauritz Melchior as it usually did, not even when he made a brave, if foolhardy stab at the Melchior accent. Slowly, he began to realize that he was bothered.
He climbed out of the shower and started drying himself. Up to now, he thought, he had depended on Dr. Thomas O"Connor for edifying, trustworthy and reasonably complete information about psionics and _psi_ phenomena in general. He had looked on O"Connor as a sort of living version of an extremely good edition of the Britannica, always available for reference.