am, to be honest. What if nothing happens at the end of sixty days? The President isn't one of us, and he's only gone along with the Society's recommendations so far because we've been able to produce results. But"—he gestured outside, indicating the newly-landed ship—"all this extra expense isn't going to set well with him if we goof this once."

"I know," said the civilian. "But have you ever known Brian Taggert to be wrong?"

General Layton grinned. "No. And in a lesser man, that sort of omniscience could be infernally irritating. How is he progressing with Forsythe?"

The civilian frowned. "We've got plenty of data so far, and the method seems to be working well, but we don't have enough to theorize yet.

"Forsythe just sits in his office and gives 'readings,' or whatever you want to call them, to the subjects who come in. The Metaphysicist has been running an ad asking for volunteers, so we have all kinds of people calling up for appointments. Forsythe is as happy as a kid."

"How about his predictions?"

"Donna Tedesco is running data processing on them. She's in constant mental contact with him. So are Hughes and Matson, in the office above. The three of them are meshed together with each other—don't ask me how; I'm no telepath—and they're getting a pretty good idea of what's going on in Forsythe's mind.

"Every once in a while, he gets a real flash of something, and it apparently comes pretty fast. The team is trying to analyze the fine-grain structure of the process now.

"The rest of the time, he simply gives out with the old guff that phony crystal-ball gazers have been giving out for centuries. Even when he gets a real flash, he piles on a lot of intuitive extrapolation. And the farther he gets from that central flash, the less reliable the predictions are."

"Do you think we'll get theory and symbology worked out before that meteor is supposed to hit Moonbase One?" asked the general.

The civilian shrugged. "Who knows? We'll have to take a lot on faith if we do, because there won't be enough time to check all his predictions. Each subject is being given a report sheet with his forecast on it, and he's supposed to check the accuracy of it as it happens. And our agents are making spot checks on them just to make sure. It'll take time. All we can do is hope."

"I suppose." General Layton took a quick look through the periscope again. The ship's air lock still hadn't opened; the air and ground were still too hot. He looked back at the civilian. "What about the espionage reports?"

The civilian tapped his briefcase. "I can give it to you in a capsule, verbally. You can look these over later."

"Shoot."

"The Soviets are getting worried, to put it bluntly. We can't hide those rockets, you know. Their own Luna-based radar has been picking up every one of them as they come in and leave. They're wondering why we're making so many trips all of a sudden."

"Have they done any theorizing?" the general asked worriedly.

"They have." The civilian chuckled sardonically. "They've decided we're trying for another Mars shot—a big one, this time."

The general exhaled sharply. "That's too close for comfort. How do they figure?"

"They figure we're amassing material at Moonbase One. They figure we intend to build the ship there, with the loads of stuff that we're sending up in the rockets."

"What?" General Layton opened his mouth, then closed it. Then he began to laugh.

The civilian joined him.

Donna Tedesco pushed the papers across Brian Taggert's desk. "Check them yourself, Brian. I've gone over them six ways from Septuagesima, and I still can't see any other answer."

Taggert frowned at the papers and tapped them with a thoughtful finger, but he didn't pick them up. "I'll take your word for it, Donna. At least for right now. If we get completely balled up, we'll go over them together."

"If you ask me, we've already completely balled up."

"You think it's that bad?"

She looked at him pleadingly. "Can you think of any other explanation?"

"Not just yet," Brian Taggert admitted.

"Nor can I. There it is. Every single one of his valid predictions, every single one of his precognitive intuitions—without exception—has been based on the actions of human beings. He can predict stock market fluctuations, and family squabbles, and South American election results. His disaster predictions, every one of them, were due to human error, human failure—not Acts of God. He failed to predict the earthquake in Los Angeles; he missed the flood in the Yangtze Valley; he knew nothing of the eruption of Stromboli. All of these were disasters that took human lives in the past three weeks, and he missed every one of them. And yet, he managed to get nearly every major ship, airplane, and even automobile accident connected with his subjects.

"Seven of his subjects had relatives or friends who were hurt or killed in the earthquake-flood-eruption sequence, but he didn't see them. Yet he could pick up such small things as a nephew of one of the men getting a bad scald on his arm.

"In the face of that, how can we rely on his one prediction about a meteor striking Moonbase One?"

Taggert rubbed his forehead thoughtfully. "I don't know," he said slowly. "There must be a connection somehow."

"Oh, Brian, Brian!" Her eyes were glistening with as yet unshed tears. "I've never seen you go off on a wild tangent like this before! On the word of an old fraud like Forsythe, a man who lies about half the time, you talk the Administration into sinking hundreds of millions of dollars into the biggest space lift in history!

"Oh, sure; I know. The old fraud is convinced he was telling the truth. But were you tapping his mind when the prediction flash came? No! Was anyone? No! And he's perfectly capable of lying to himself, and you know it!

"And what will happen if it doesn't come off? We're past the first deadline already. If that meteor doesn't hit within the next twenty-eight days, the Society will be right back where it was ten years ago! Or worse!

"And all because you trusted the word of Mr. Phony-Doctor Forsythe!"

"Donna," Taggert said softly, "do you really think I'm that big a fool?" He handed her a handkerchief.

"N-no," she answered, wiping at her eyes. "Of c-course I don't. It's just that it makes me so d-darn mad to see everything go wrong like this."

"Nothing's gone wrong yet. I suggest you go take a good look at Forsythe's mind again and really try to understand the old boy. Maybe you'll get more of the fine-grain structure of it if you'll try for more understanding."

"What do you mean?" she asked, sniffing.

"Look. Forsythe has made his living being a fraud, right? And yet he sent out those warning free—and anonymously. He had no thought of any reward or recompense, you know that. Why? Because he is basically a kind, decent human being. He wanted to do all he could to stop any injury or loss of life.

"Why, then, would he send out a fraudulent warning? He wouldn't. He didn't. Every one of those warnings—including the last one—was sent out because he knew that something was going to happen.

"Evidently, once he gets a flash about a certain event, he can't get any more data on that particular area of the future, or we could get more data on the Moonbase accident. I think, if we can boost his basic understanding up past the critical point, we'll have a man with controlled prescience, and we need that man.

"But, Donna, the only way we're ever going to do that—the only way we'll ever whip this problem—is for you to increase your understanding of him.

"You're past the critical point—way past it—in general understanding. But you've got to keep an eye on the little specific instances, too."

She nodded contritely. "I know. I'm sorry. Sometimes a person can get too near a