sistent, is not original with Miss Lje.”
“That sums up the case as well as if I’d coached you, Dr.
Wald,” Dana said. “I’d like to point out one more thing. If
I can read the future, then ‘J. Shelby Stevens’ never had any
need for a staff of field operatives, and he never needed to
send a single Dirac message which you might intercept. All he
needed to do was to make predictions from his readings,
which he knew to be infallible; no private espionage network
had to be involved.”
“I see that,” Weinbaum said dryly. “All right, Dana, let’s
put the proposition this way: / do not believe you. Much of
what you say is probably true, but in totality I believe it
to be false. On the other hand, if you’re telling the whole
truth, you certainly deserve a place on the bureau staffit
would be dangerous as hell not to have you with usand
the marriage is a more or less minor matter, except to you
and me. You can have that with no strings attached; I don’t
want to be bought, any more than you would.
“So: if you will tell me where the leak is, we will consider
that part of the question closed. I make that condition not as
a price, but because I don’t want to get myself engaged to
somebody who might be shot as a spy within a month.”
“Fair enough,” Dana said. “Robin, your leak is Margaret
Soames. She is an Erskine operative, and nobody’s bubble-
brain. She’s a highly trained technician.”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Weinbaum said in astonishment.
“Then she’s already flown the coopshe was the one who
first told me we’d identified you. She must have taken on that