IT DIDN’T SIT WELL WITH OSCAR. He was angry at his boss, Dr. Spencer, for leaving him -- his assigned Presidential Aide -- to go off with a woman -- his girlfriend and self-appointed Investigative Assistant. The only difference Oscar could see in their qualifications was gender, and he came "this close" to filing a report against Dr. Spencer for sexual discrimination. It angered him even further that Brad was not keeping in contact, not even keeping his Aide informed.

Seeing no reason why he should stay cooped up in a dreary library reading all there was to know about potassium while Dr. Spencer was out having fun, Oscar planned some fun of his own. They had said they were going to Malibu. What for? What was in Malibu? Didn’t Sylvia say she had been staying at the Grand Hotel? A call to the Grand Hotel led him not to Sylvia but to her husband, Roger Watergate, an attorney who lived with his wife Sylvia in Beverly Hills.

Making a mental note of this, in case he decided to file a discrimination case, Oscar went on to his next contact, Dr. Spencer’s socialite mother, Lydia Spencer, who was infinitely more helpful than the hotel desk clerk. Lydia had done her own homework and was able to confirm for Oscar that Sylvia was not only the wife of Roger Watergate of the Prince, Damon & Watergate, P.A. law firm, but she was also the daughter of Hiram Chandler, the newspaper magnate. And, not to be overlooked, she was also a close friend with the eminent Mindal Scientist Dr. Wilhelm Blackstone’s daughter, Audley, a one-time reporter for the Silent Majority who happened to own a studio in Malibu. Oscar was on his way.

In Malibu, Audley’s house sitter Eugene admitted to Oscar that Dr. Spencer and Sylvia had been there with a fancy metal detector they brought with them to do a reading. He made a note of this and asked several more questions. Yes, they did detect high traces of potassium. No, Eugene didn’t know where they were now. Audley? She supposedly went to Spain but should have been back by now. Perhaps her father, Doc Will, would know more about the current whereabouts of his daughter or Sylvia or Dr. Spencer.

Having previously been to Doc Will’s Santa Barbara estate, Oscar had no trouble getting information from Martha. Eager for company with Doc Will gone, she greeted Oscar as a long-lost friend and fed him a lunch he would not soon forget. Ever anxious to oblige, she was quick to tell him that as far as she knew, they had all gone to Gateway. All? Yes, all: Brad, Sylvia, Dr. Blackstone, Audley and Lanon Zenton.

Oscar the whiz kid had earlier cracked the code for Sam and copiously studied Brad’s notes. Of course, he had gotten into the files and found the lab report on Sylvia’s soil samples as well as the "For Your Eyes Only" communique referencing a recent potassium explosion in the galaxy. He now used every telecommunications system available to Sam and to Uncle Sam but could find no reference anywhere to a Lanon Zenton. He found a file in general records on one Lanon Zentonovitch; it was a remarkably unenlightening document.

Before approaching Gateway to confront Dr. Spencer, Oscar investigated and studied in depth all recorded data about the Zooids of the Jural Colony Project, an obscure, registered not-for-profit undertaking that was condoned by the government but carefully observed for potential subversive actions.

It was not Oscar’s conclusion but it was his strong suspicion that the August 14^th East Coast blackout was caused, somehow, by a foreign potentate in collusion with the communist sympathizer JCP. Fired by his ambition to lead his boss to discover this subversive plot against the government, he advised Lassater, on behalf of Brad, then set out for Gateway in Nevada.