"And Plass—that booboo he made?"
Ray dismissed Plass with a gesture. He was looking a little restive; another debate was under way down below, with Punchy and Leigh MacKean vociferously presenting the case for psychokinesis, and being expertly heckled by owlish little M. C. (Hotfoot) Burncloth's echo-chamber voice. "It's too much," I said quickly. "There's too many of them left. We'll never—"
"It's perfectly simple!" Ray said incisively. He counted on his fingers again. "Burgeon—Kley—Duchamp—Bierce—Burncloth—MacKean—Jibless. Eight people."
"One of the visitors?" I objected.
He shook his head. "I know who all these people are, generally," he said. "It's got to be one of those eight. I'll take Kley, Bierce, Jibless and MacKean—you watch the other four. Sooner or later they'll give themselves away."
I had been watching. I did it some more.
A wave of neck-clutching passed over the crowd. Cold breezes, I expect. Or hot ones, in some cases. Tom Jones leaped up with a cry and sat down again abruptly.
"Did you see anything?" Ray asked.
I shook my head. Where, I wondered, was the good old science fiction cameraderie? If I'd been the lucky one, I would have let the crowd in—well, a few of them, anyway—given them jobs and palaces and things. Not that they would have been grateful, probably, the treacherous, undependable, neurotic bums....