"It is very likely that he has," O'Connor said. "What does that have to do with it?"
"Well," Malone said, "if he knows you and your group are working on telepathy and can detect what he's doing, why didn't he just hold off on the minds of those geniuses when they were being tested in your machine?"
Dr. O'Connor frowned. "I'm afraid that I can't be sure," he said, and it was clear from his tone that, if Dr. Thomas O'Connor wasn't sure, no one in the entire world was, had been, or ever would be. "I do have a theory, however," he said, brightening up a trifle.
Malone waited patiently.
"He must know our limitations," Dr. O'Connor said at last. "He must be perfectly well aware that there's not a single thing we can do about him. He must know that we can neither find nor stop him. Why should he worry? He can afford to ignore us—or even bait us. We're helpless, and he knows it."
That, Malone thought, was about the most cheerless thought he had heard in some time.
"You mentioned that you had an insulated room," the FBI agent said after a while. "Couldn't you let your men think in there?"
Dr. O'Connor sighed. "The room is shielded against magnetic fields and electromagnetic radiation. It is perfectly transparent to psionic phenomena, just as it is to gravitational fields."
"Oh," Malone said. He realized rapidly that his question had been a little silly to begin with, since the insulated room had been the place where all the tests had been conducted in the first place. "I don't want to take up too much of your time, doctor," he said after a pause, "but there are a couple of other questions."
"Go right ahead," Dr. O'Connor said. "I'm sure I'll be able to help you."