He was so tired.... Fatigué. The French for tired. Funny, he did remember some of the French from school. Standskill was in Paris. Association. Fatigué. The word stuck. That club—Bob Standskill's favorite—Le Cheval Fatigué in Montmartre. The Tired Horse. Tired....
Sleep closed in.... He drifted ... and came to with a sudden start as a hand roughly shook his shoulder. It seemed as though he had been hovering mentally in a dimly-lighted cellar cafe, where there was a babel of voices speaking continental languages, and Standskill was there.
But, no! he couldn't have been in Paris any more than he had been on the meteor-pounded wastes of the moon! It was ridiculous. As far as he knew, no psi had ever been known consciously to flit to the moon—or unconsciously, for that matter—or to the other side of an ocean!
Standskill's partner, G. D. Rich, was shaking his shoulder. "What's the matter, Marty? Big night?"
"Big day," Black said. "Why don't you fellows stick around and take care of your business? I'm not even supposed to answer the telephone, you know, but someone has to!"
"Can I help it that the Legal Secretaries Guild has called a three-day convention? There's not a secretary present in any law office in New York right now! I personally cut the phone in to the answering service before I left for court."
"Inadvertence, I guess," Black said thoughtfully.
"Inadvertence?" Rich said quickly.
"Mine. I must have cut it back."
He didn't tell Rich that he hadn't stirred from the desk since Rich had left. The switch was in the outer office. Had he with his consciousness floating high over New York sensed subconsciously that Lawrence was about to call and so cut in the switch? Had he built into himself something of the pattern of his mother, something of pre-vision or prescience, or call it what you will? Was a latent hunch power coming out in him now, something that would manifest itself by acts not consciously controlled? He hoped not! Semantic instability was bad enough!