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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30304 ***
+
+                         Transcriber's Note:
+
+  This etext was produced from Analog Science Fact & Fiction October 1960.
+  Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright
+  on this publication was renewed.
+
+
+                              PSICHOPATH
+
+
+                         By DARREL T. LANGART
+
+
+
+     _Given psi powers like clairvoyance and telepathy, solving
+     problems of sabotage would be easy, of course. That is, it
+     seems that way at first thought!_
+
+
+                      Illustrated by van Dongen
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+The man in the pastel blue topcoat walked with steady purpose, but
+without haste, through the chill, wind-swirled drizzle that filled the
+air above the streets of Arlington, Virginia. His matching blue
+cap-hood was pulled low over his forehead, and the clear, infrared
+radiating face mask had been flipped down to protect his chubby cheeks
+and round nose from the icy wind.
+
+No one noticed him particularly. He was just another average man who
+blended in with all the others who walked the streets that day. No one
+recognized him; his face did not appear often in public places, except
+in his own state, and, even so, it was a thoroughly ordinary face.
+But, as he walked, Senator John Peter Gonzales was keeping a mental,
+fine-webbed, four-dimensional net around him, feeling for the
+slightest touch of recognition. He wanted no one to connect him in any
+way with his intended destination.
+
+It was not his first visit to the six-floor brick building that stood
+on a street in a lower-middle-class district of Arlington. Actually,
+government business took him there more often than would have been
+safe for the average man-on-the-street. For Senator Gonzales, the
+process of remaining incognito was so elementary that it was almost
+subconscious.
+
+Arriving at his destination, he paused on the sidewalk to light a
+cigarette, shielding it against the wind and drizzle with cupped
+hands while his mind made one last check on the surroundings. Then he
+strode quickly up the five steps to the double doors which were
+marked: _The Society For Mystical And Metaphysical Research, Inc._
+
+Just as he stepped in, he flipped the face shield up and put on an
+old-fashioned pair of thick-lensed, black-rimmed spectacles. Then, his
+face assuming a bland smile that would have been completely out of
+place on Senator Gonzales, he went from the foyer into the front
+office.
+
+"Good afternoon, Mrs. Jesser," he said, in a high, smooth, slightly
+accented voice that was not his own. "I perceive by your aura that you
+are feeling well. Your normal aura-color is tinged with a positive
+golden hue."
+
+Mrs. Jesser, a well-rounded matron in her early forties, rose to the
+bait like a porpoise being hand-fed at a Florida zoo. "_Dear_ Swami
+Chandra! How perfectly wonderful to see you again! You're looking
+_very_ well your-_self_."
+
+The Swami, whose Indian blood was of the Aztec rather than the Brahmin
+variety, nonetheless managed to radiate all the mystery of the East.
+"My well-being, dear Mrs. Jesser, is due to the fact that I have been
+communing for the past three months with my very good friend, the
+Fifth Dalai Lama. A most refreshingly wise person." Senator Gonzales
+was fond of the Society's crackpot receptionist, and he knew exactly
+what kind of hokum would please her most.
+
+"Oh, I _do_ hope you will find time to tell me _all_ about it," she
+said effusively. "Mr. Balfour isn't in the city just now," she went
+on. "He's lecturing in New York on the history of flying saucer
+sightings. Do you realize that this is the fortieth anniversary of the
+first saucer sighting, back in 1944?"
+
+"The first _photographed_ sighting," the Swami corrected
+condescendingly. "Our friends have been watching and guiding us for
+far longer than that, and were sighted many times before they were
+photographed."
+
+Mrs. Jesser nodded briskly. "Of course. You're right, as always,
+Swami."
+
+"I am sorry to hear," the Swami continued smoothly, "that I will not
+be able to see Mr. Balfour. However, I came at the call of Mr. Brian
+Taggert, who is expecting me."
+
+Mrs. Jesser glanced down at her appointment sheet. "He didn't mention
+an appointment to me. However--" She punched a button on the intercom.
+"Mr. Taggert? Swami Chandra is here to see you. He says he has an
+appointment."
+
+Brian Taggert's deep voice came over the instrument. "The Swami, as
+usual, is very astute. I have been thinking about calling him. Send
+him right up."
+
+"You may go up, Swami," said Mrs. Jesser, wide-eyed. She watched in
+awe as the Swami marched regally through the inner door and began to
+climb the stairs toward the sixth floor.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One way to hide an ex-officio agency of the United States Government
+was to label it truthfully--_The Society For Mystical And Metaphysical
+Research_. In spite of the fact that the label was literally true, it
+sounded so crackpot that no one but a crackpot would bother to look
+into it. As a consequence, better than ninety per cent of the
+membership of the Society was composed of just such people. Only a few
+members of the "core" knew the organization's true function and
+purpose. And as long as such scatter-brains as Mrs. Jesser and Mr.
+Balfour were in there pitching, no one would ever penetrate to the
+actual core of the Society.
+
+The senator had already pocketed the exaggerated glasses by the time
+he reached the sixth floor, and his face had lost its bland,
+overly-wise smile. He pushed open the door to Taggert's office.
+
+"Have you got any ideas yet?" he asked quickly.
+
+Brian Taggert, a heavily-muscled man with dark eyes and black,
+slightly wavy hair, sat on the edge of a couch in one corner of the
+room. His desk across the room was there for paperwork only, and
+Taggert had precious little of that to bother with.
+
+He took a puff from his heavy-bowled briar. "We're going to have to
+send an agent in there. Someone who can be on the spot. Someone who
+can get the feel of the situation first hand."
+
+"That'll be difficult. We can't just suddenly stick an unknown in
+there and have an excuse for his being there. Couldn't Donahue or
+Reeves--"
+
+Taggert shook his head. "Impossible, John. Extrasensory perception
+can't replace sight, any more than sight can replace hearing. You know
+that."
+
+"Certainly. But I thought we could get enough information that way to
+tell us who our saboteur is. No dice, eh?"
+
+"No dice," said Taggert. "Look at the situation we've got there. The
+purpose of the Redford Research Team is to test the Meson Ultimate
+Decay Theory of Dr. Theodore Nordred. Now, if we--"
+
+Senator Gonzales, walking across the room toward Taggert, gestured
+with one hand. "I know! I know! Give me _some_ credit for
+intelligence! But we _do_ have one suspect, don't we? What about
+_him_?"
+
+Taggert chuckled through a wreath of smoke. "Calm down, John. Or are
+you trying to give me your impression of Mrs. Jesser in a conversation
+with a saucerite?"
+
+The senator laughed and sat down in a nearby chair. "All right. Sorry.
+But this whole thing is lousing up our entire space program. First
+off, we nearly lose Dr. Ch'ien, and, with him gone, the interstellar
+drive project would've been shot. Now, if this sabotage keeps up, the
+Redford project _will_ be shot, and that means we might have to stick
+to the old-fashioned rocket to get off-planet. Brian, we _need_
+antigravity, and, so far, Nordred's theory is our only clue."
+
+"Agreed," said Taggert.
+
+"Well, we're never going to get it if equipment keeps mysteriously
+burning itself out, breaking down, and just generally goofing up. This
+morning, the primary exciter on the new ultracosmotron went haywire,
+and the beam of sodium nuclei burned through part of the accelerator
+tube wall. It'll take a month to get it back in working order."
+
+Taggert took his pipe out of his mouth and tapped the dottle into a
+nearby ash disposal unit. "And you want to pick up our pet spy?"
+
+Senator Gonzales scowled. "Well, I'd certainly call him our prime
+suspect." But there was a certain lack of conviction in his manner.
+
+Brian Taggert didn't flatly contradict the senator. "Maybe. But you
+know, John, there's one thing that bothers me about these accidents."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"The fact that we have not one shred of evidence that points to
+sabotage."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In a room on the fifth floor, directly below Brian Taggert's office, a
+young man was half sitting, half reclining in a thickly upholstered
+adjustable chair. He had dropped the back of the chair to a forty-five
+degree angle and lifted up the footrest; now he was leaning back in
+lazy comfort, his ankles crossed, his right hand holding a slowly
+smoldering cigarette, his eyes contemplating the ceiling. Or, rather,
+they seemed to be contemplating something _beyond_ the ceiling.
+
+It was pure coincidence that the focus of his thoughts happened to be
+located in about the same volume of space that his eyes seemed to be
+focused on. If Brian Taggert and Senator Gonzales had been in the room
+below, his eyes would still be looking at the ceiling.
+
+In repose, his face looked even younger than his twenty-eight years
+would have led one to expect. His close-cropped brown hair added to
+the impression of youth, and the well-tailored suit on his slim,
+muscular body added to the effect. At any top-flight university, he
+could have passes for a well-bred, sophisticated, intelligent student
+who had money enough to indulge himself and sense enough not to overdo
+it.
+
+He was beginning to understand the pattern that was being woven in the
+room above--beginning to feel it in depth.
+
+Senator Gonzalez was mildly telepathic, inasmuch as he could pick up
+thoughts in the prevocal stage--the stage at which thought becomes
+definitely organized into words, phrases, and sentences. He could go a
+little deeper, into the selectivity stage, where the linking processes
+of logic took over from the nonlogical but rational processes of the
+preconscious--but only if he knew the person well. Where the senator
+excelled was in detecting emotional tone and manipulating emotional
+processes, both within himself and within others.
+
+Brian Taggert was an analyzer, an originator, a motivator--and more.
+The young man found himself avoiding too deep a probe into the mind of
+Brian Taggert; he knew that he had not yet achieved the maturity to
+understand the multilayered depths of a mind like that. Eventually,
+perhaps....
+
+Not that Senator Gonzales was a child, nor that he was emotionally or
+intellectually shallow. It was merely that he was not of Taggert's
+caliber.
+
+The young man absently took another drag from his cigarette. Taggert
+had explained the basic problem to him, but he was getting a wider
+picture from the additional information that Senator Gonzales had
+brought.
+
+Dr. Theodore Nordred, a mathematical physicist and one of the
+top-flight, high-powered, original minds in the field, had shown that
+Einstein's final equations only held in a universe composed entirely
+of normal matter. Since the great Einstein had died before the
+Principle of Parity had been overthrown in the mid-fifties, he had
+been unable to incorporate the information into his Unified Field
+Theory. Nordred had been able to show, mathematically, that Einstein's
+equations were valid only for a completely "dexter," or right-handed
+universe, or for a completely "sinister" or left-handed universe.
+
+Although the universe in which Man lived was predominantly
+dexter--arbitrarily so designated--it was not completely so. It had a
+"sinister" component amounting to approximately one one-hundred-thousandth
+of one per cent. On the average, one atom out of every ten million in the
+universe was an atom of antimatter. The distribution was unequal of course;
+antimatter could not exist in contact with ordinary matter. Most of it was
+distributed throughout interstellar space in the form of individual atoms,
+freely floating in space, a long way from any large mass of normal matter.
+
+But that minute fraction of a per cent was enough to show that the
+known universe was not totally Einsteinian. In a purely Einsteinian
+universe, antigravity was impossible, but if the equations of Dr.
+Theodore Nordred were actually a closer approximation to true reality
+than those of Einstein, then antigravity _might_ be a practical
+reality.
+
+And that was the problem the Redford Research Team was working on. It
+was a parallel project to the interstellar drive problem, being
+carried on elsewhere.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The "pet spy," as Taggert had called him, was Dr. Konrad Bern, a
+middle-aged Negro from Tanganyika, who was convinced that only under
+Communism could the colored races of the world achieve the
+technological organization and living standard of the white man. He
+had been trained as a "sleeper"; not even the exhaustive
+investigations of the FBI had turned up any relationship between Bern
+and the Soviets. It had taken the telepathic probing of the S.M.M.R.
+agents to uncover his real purposes. Known, he constituted no danger.
+
+There was no denying that he was a highly competent, if not brilliant,
+physicist. And, since it was quite impossible for him to get any
+information on the Redford Project into the hands of the
+opposition--it was no longer fashionable to call Communists "the
+enemy"--there was no reason why he shouldn't be allowed to contribute
+to the American efforts to bridge space.
+
+Three times in the five months since Bern had joined the project,
+agents of the Soviet government had made attempts to contact the
+physicist. Three times the FBI, warned by S.M.M.R. agents, had quietly
+blocked the contact. Konrad Bern had been effectively isolated.
+
+But, at the project site itself, equipment failure had become
+increasingly more frequent, all out of proportion to the normal
+accident rate in any well-regulated laboratory. The work of the
+project had practically come to a standstill; the ultra-secret project
+reports to the President were beginning to show less and less progress
+in the basic research, and more and more progress in repairing damaged
+equipment. Apparently, though, increasing efficiency in repair work
+was self-neutralizing; repairing an instrument in half the time merely
+meant that it could break down twice as often.
+
+It had to be sabotage. And yet, not even the S.M.M.R. agents could
+find any trace of intentional damage nor any thought patterns that
+would indicate deliberate damage.
+
+And Senator John Peter Gonzales quite evidently did _not_ want to face
+the implications of _that_ particular fact.
+
+"We're going to have to send an agent in," Taggert repeated.
+
+(_That's my cue_, thought the young man on the fifth floor as he
+crushed out his cigarette and got up from the chair.)
+
+"I don't know how we're going to manage it," said the senator. "What
+excuse do we have for putting a new man on the Redford team?"
+
+Brian Taggert grinned. "What they need is an expert repair
+technician--a man who knows how to build and repair complex research
+instruments. He doesn't have to know anything about the purpose of the
+team itself, all he has to do is keep the equipment in good shape."
+
+Senator Gonzalez let a slow smile spread over his face. "You've been
+gulling me, you snake. All right; I deserved it. Tell him to come in."
+
+As the door opened, Taggert said: "Senator Gonzales, may I present Mr.
+David MacHeath? He's our man, I think."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+David MacHeath watched a blue line wriggle its way erratically across
+the face of an oscilloscope. "The wave form is way off," he said
+flatly, "and the frequency is slithering all over the place."
+
+He squinted at the line for a moment then spoke to the man standing
+nearby. "Signal Harry to back her off two degrees, then run her up
+slowly, ten minutes at a time."
+
+The other man flickered the key on the side of the small
+carbide-Welsbach lamp. The shutters blinked, sending pulses of light
+down the length of the ten-foot diameter glass-walled tube in which
+the men were working. Far down the tube, MacHeath could see the
+answering flicker from Harry, a mile and a half away in the darkness.
+
+MacHeath watched the screen again. After a few seconds, he said:
+"O.K.! Hold it!"
+
+Again the lamp flashed.
+
+"Well, it isn't perfect," MacHeath said, "but it's all we can do from
+here. We'll have to evacuate the tube to get her in perfect balance.
+Tell Harry to knock off for the day."
+
+While the welcome message was being flashed, MacHeath shut off the
+testing instruments and disconnected them. It was possible to
+compensate a little for the testing equipment, but a telephone, or
+even an electric flashlight, would simply add to the burden.
+
+Bill Griffin shoved down the key on the lamp he was holding and locked
+it into place. The shutters remained open, and the lamp shed a beam of
+white light along the shining walls of the cylindrical tube. "How much
+longer do you figure it'll take, Dave?" he asked.
+
+"Another shift, at least," said MacHeath, picking up the compact,
+shielded instrument case. "You want to carry that mat?"
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Griffin picked up the thick sponge-rubber mat that the instrument case
+had been sitting on, and the two men started off down the tube,
+walking silently on the sponge-rubber-soled shoes which would not
+scratch the glass underfoot.
+
+"Any indication yet as to who our saboteur is?" Griffin asked.
+
+"I'm not sure," MacHeath admitted. "I've picked up a couple of leads,
+but I don't know if they mean anything or not."
+
+"I wonder if there _is_ a saboteur," Griffin said musingly. "Maybe
+it's just a run of bad luck. It could happen, you know. A statistical
+run of--"
+
+"You don't believe that, any more than I do," MacHeath said.
+
+"No. But I find it even harder to believe that a materialistic
+philosophy like Communism could evolve any workable psionic
+discipline."
+
+"So do I," agreed MacHeath.
+
+"But it can't be physical sabotage," Griffin argued. "There's not a
+trace of it--anywhere. It _has_ to be psionic."
+
+"Right," said MacHeath, grinning as he saw what was coming next.
+
+"But we've already eliminated that. So?" Griffin nodded firmly as if
+in full agreement with himself. "So we follow the dictum of the
+Master: 'Eliminate the impossible; whatever is left, no matter how
+improbable, is the truth.' And, since there is absolutely nothing
+left, there is no truth. At the bottom, the whole thing is merely a
+matter of mental delusion."
+
+"Sherlock Holmes would be proud of you, Bill," MacHeath said. "And so
+am I."
+
+Griffin looked at MacHeath oddly. "I wish I was a halfway decent
+telepath, I'd like to know what's going on in your preconscious."
+
+"You'd have to dig deeper than that, I'm afraid," MacHeath said
+ruefully. "As soon as my subconscious has solved the problem, I'll let
+you know."
+
+"I've changed my mind," said Griffin cheerfully. "I don't envy your
+telepathy. I don't envy a guy who has to TP his own subconscious to
+find out what he's thinking."
+
+MacHeath chuckled softly as he turned the bolt that opened the door in
+the "gun" end of the stripped-nuclei accelerator. The seals broke with
+a soft hiss. Evidently, the barometric pressure outside the
+two-mile-long underground tube had changed slightly during the time
+they had been down there.
+
+"It'll be a week before we can test it," MacHeath said in a tired
+voice. "Even after we get it partly in balance. It'll take that long
+to evacuate the tube and sweep it clean."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was the first sentence he had spoken in the past hour or so, and it
+was purely for the edification of the man who was standing on the
+other side of the air lock, although neither Griffin nor MacHeath had
+actually seen him as yet.
+
+Griffin was not a telepath in the sense that the S.M.M.R. used the
+word, but to a non-psionicist, he would have appeared to be one.
+Membership in the "core" group of the _Society for Mystical and
+Metaphysical Research_ required, above all, _understanding_. And, with
+that understanding, a conversation between two members need consist
+only of an occasional gesture and a key word now and then.
+
+The word "understanding" needs emphasis. Without understanding of
+another human mind, no human mind can be completely effective. Without
+that understanding, no human being can be completely free.
+
+And yet, the English word "understanding" is only an approximation to
+the actual process that must take place. _Total_ understanding, in one
+sense, would require that a person actually _become_ another
+person--that he be able to feel, completely and absolutely, every
+emotion, every thought, every bodily sensation, every twinge of
+memory, every judgment, every decision, and every sense of personal
+identity that is felt by the other person, no more and no less.
+
+Such totality is, obviously, neither attainable nor desirable. The
+result would be a merger of identities, a total unification. And, as a
+consequence, a complete loss of one of the human beings involved.
+
+Optimum "understanding" requires that a judgment be made, and that, in
+turn, requires _two_ minds--not a fusion of identity. There must be
+one to judge and another to be judged, and each mind plays both
+roles.
+
+_Love thy neighbor as thyself._ But the original Greek word would
+translate better as "respect and understand" than as the modern
+English "love." The founders of our modern religions were not fools;
+they simply did not have the tools at hand to formulate their
+knowledge properly. As understanding increases, a critical point is
+reached, which causes a qualitative change in the human mind.
+
+First, self-understanding must come. The human mind operates through
+similarities, and the thing most similar to any human mind is itself.
+The next most similar thing is another human mind.
+
+From that point on, all objects, processes, and patterns in the
+universe can be graded according to their similarity to each other,
+and, ultimately, to their similarity to the human mind.
+
+Two given entities may seem utterly dissimilar, but they can always be
+linked by a _tertium quid_--a "third thing" which is similar to both.
+This third thing, be it a material object or a product of the human
+imagination, is called a symbol. Symbols are the bridges by which the
+human mind can reach and manipulate the universe in which it exists.
+With the proper symbols and the understanding to use them, the human
+mind is limited only by its own inherent structural restrictions.
+
+One of the most active research projects of the S.M.M.R. was the
+construction of a more powerful symbology. Psionics had made
+tremendous strides in the previous four decades, but it was still in
+the alchemy stage. So far, symbols for various processes could only be
+worked out by cut-and-try, rule-of-thumb methods, using symbols
+already established, including languages and mathematics. None were
+completely satisfactory, but they worked fairly well within their
+narrow limits.
+
+As far as communication was concerned, the hashed-together symbology
+used by the S.M.M.R. was better than any conceivable code. The
+understanding required to "break" the "code" was well beyond the
+critical point. Anyone who could break it was, _ipso facto_, a member
+of the S.M.M.R.
+
+Most people didn't even realize that a conversation was taking place
+between two members, especially if a "cover conversation" was used at
+the same time.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+MacHeath's verbal discussion of the testing of the nuclei accelerator
+was just such a cover. Even before he had cracked the air lock, he had
+known that Dr. Theodore Nordred was standing on the other side of the
+thick wall.
+
+MacHeath pushed the heavy door open on its smooth hinges. "Oh, hello,
+Dr. Nordred. How's everything?"
+
+The heavy-set mathematician smiled pleasantly as MacHeath and Griffin
+came into the gun chamber. "I just thought I'd come down and see how
+you were getting along," he said. His voice was a low tenor, with
+just a touch of Midwestern twang. "Sometimes the creative mind gets
+bogged down in the nth-order abstractions that have no discernible
+connection with anything at all." He chuckled. "When that happens, I
+drop everything and go out to find something mundane to worry about."
+
+Nordred was only an inch shorter than the slim MacHeath, and he
+weighed in at close to two hundred pounds. At twenty-five, he had had
+the build of a lightweight wrestler; thirty more years had added
+poundage--a roll beneath his chin and a bulge at the belly--but he
+still looked capable of going a round or two without tiring. His shock
+of heavy hair was a mixture of mouse-brown and gray, and it seemed to
+have a tendency to stand up on end, which added another inch and a
+half to his height. His round face had a tendency to smile when he was
+talking or working with his hands; when he was deep in thought, his
+face usually relaxed into thoughtful blankness. He frowned rarely, and
+only for seconds at a time.
+
+"It seems to me you have enough to worry about, doctor," MacHeath said
+banteringly, "without looking for it." He put down his instrument case
+and took out a cigarette while Griffin closed the door to the
+acceleration tube.
+
+"Oh I don't have to look far," Nordred said. "How long do you think it
+will be before we can resume our work with the Monster?"
+
+"Ten days to two weeks," MacHeath said promptly.
+
+"I see." One his rare frowns crossed his face. "I wish I knew why the
+exciter arced across. It shouldn't have."
+
+"Don't you have any idea?" MacHeath asked innocently. At the same
+time, he opened his mind wide to net in every wisp and filament of
+Nordred's thoughts that he could reach.
+
+"None at all," admitted the mathematician. "Weakness in the
+insulation, I suppose, though it tested solidly enough." And his mind,
+as far back as his preconscious and the upper fringes of his
+subconscious, agreed with his words. MacHeath could go no deeper as
+yet; he didn't know Nordred well enough yet.
+
+There were suspicions in Nordred's mind that the insulation weakness
+must have been caused by deliberate sabotage, but he had no one to pin
+his suspicions on. Neither he nor anyone else connected with the
+Redford project was aware of the true status of Dr. Konrad Bern.
+
+"Well, let's hope it doesn't happen again," MacHeath said. "Balancing
+these babies so that they work properly is hard enough for a deuteron
+accelerator, but the Monster here is ten times as touchy."
+
+Nordred nodded absently. "I know. But our work can't be done with
+anything less." Nordred actually knew less about the engineering
+details of the big accelerator than anyone else on the project; he was
+primarily a philosopher-mathematician, and only secondarily a
+physicist. He was theoretically in charge of the project, but the
+actual experimentation was done by the other four men; Drs. Roger
+Kent, Paul Luvochek, Solomon Bessermann, and Konrad Bern. These four
+and their assistants set up and ran off the experiments designed to
+test Dr. Nordred's theories.
+
+MacHeath picked up his instrument case again, and the three men went
+out of the gun chamber, into the outer room, and then started up the
+spiral stairway that led to the surface, talking as they went. But the
+apparent conversation had little to do with the instruction that
+MacHeath was giving Griffin as they climbed.
+
+So when MacHeath stopped suddenly and patted at his coverall pockets,
+Griffin was ready for the words that came next.
+
+"Damn!" MacHeath said. "I've left my notebook. Will you go down and
+get it for me, Bill?"
+
+Dr. Nordred had neither understood nor noticed the actual
+instructions:
+
+"Bill, as soon as I give you an excuse, get back down there and check
+that gun chamber. Give it a thorough going-over. I don't really think
+you'll find a thing, but I don't want to take any chances at this
+stage of the game."
+
+"Right," said Griffin, starting back down the stairway.
+
+MacHeath and Dr. Nordred went on climbing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+David MacHeath sat at a table in the project's cafeteria, absently
+stirring his coffee, and trying to look professionally modest while
+Dr. Luvochek and Dr. Bessermann alternately praised him for his work.
+
+Luvochek, a tubby little butterball of a man, whose cherubic face
+would have made him look almost childlike if it weren't for the blue
+of his jaw, said: "You and those two men of yours have really done a
+marvelous job in the past four days, Mr. MacHeath--really marvelous."
+
+"I'll say," Bessermann chimed in. "I was getting pretty tired of
+looking at burned-out equipment and spending three-quarters of my time
+putting in replacement parts and wielding a soldering gun." Bessermann
+was leaner than Luvochek, but, like his brother scientist, he was
+balding on top. Both men were in their middle thirties.
+
+"I don't understand this jinx, myself," Luvochek said. "At first, it
+was just little things, but the accidents got worse and worse. And
+then, when the Monster blew--" He stopped and shook his head slowly.
+"I'd suspect sabotage, except that there was never any sign of
+tampering with the equipment I saw."
+
+"What do you think of the sabotage idea?" Bessermann asked MacHeath.
+
+MacHeath shrugged. "Haven't seen any signs of it."
+
+"Run of bad luck," said Luvochek. "That's all."
+
+As they talked MacHeath absorbed the patterns of thought that wove in
+and out in the two men's minds. Both men were more open than Dr.
+Nordred; they were easier for MacHeath to understand. Nowhere was
+there any thought of guilt--at least, as far as sabotage was
+concerned.
+
+MacHeath drank his coffee slowly and thoughtfully, keeping up his part
+of the three-way conversation while he concentrated on his own
+problem.
+
+One thing was certain: Nowhere in the minds of any of the personnel of
+the Redford Project was there any conscious knowledge of sabotage. Not
+even in the mind of Konrad Bern.
+
+Dr. Roger Kent, a tall, lantern-jawed sad-eyed man in his forties, had
+been hard to get through to at first, but as soon as MacHeath
+discovered that the hard block Kent had built up around himself was
+caused by grief over a wife who had been dead five years, he became as
+easy to read as a billboard. Kent had submerged his grief in work; the
+eternal drive of the true scientist to drag the truth out of Mother
+Nature. He was constitutionally incapable of sabotaging the very
+instruments that had been built to dig in after that truth.
+
+Dr. Konrad Bern, on the other hand, was difficult to read below the
+preconscious stage. Science, to him, was a form of power, to be used
+for "idealistic" purposes. He was perfectly capable of sabotaging the
+weapons of an enemy if it became necessary, whether that meant ruining
+a physical instrument or carefully falsifying the results of an
+experiment. Outwardly, he was a pleasant enough chap, but his mind
+revealed a rigidly held pattern of hatreds, fears, and twisted
+idealism. He held them tightly against the onslaughts of a hostile
+world.
+
+And that meant that he couldn't possibly have any control over
+whatever psionic powers he may have had.
+
+Unless--
+
+Unless he was so expert and so well-trained that he was better than
+anything the S.M.M.R. had ever known.
+
+MacHeath didn't even like to think about that. It would mean that all
+the theory of psionics that had been built up so painstakingly over
+the past years would have to be junked _in toto_.
+
+Something was gnawing in the depths of his mind. In the perfectly
+rational but utterly nonlogical part of his subconscious where hunches
+are built, something was trying to form.
+
+MacHeath didn't try to probe for it. As soon as he had enough
+information for the hunch to be fully formed, it would be ready to
+use. Until then, it would be worthless, and probing for it might
+interrupt the formation.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He was just finishing his coffee as Bill Griffin came in the door and
+headed toward the table where MacHeath, Luvochek, and Bessermann were
+sitting.
+
+MacHeath stood up and said: "Excuse me. I'll have to be getting some
+work done if you guys are ever going to get your own work done."
+
+"Sure."
+
+"Go ahead."
+
+"Thanks for the coffee," MacHeath added as he moved away.
+
+"Anytime," said Bessermann, grinning. "You guys just keep up the good
+work. When you fix 'em, they stay fixed. We haven't had a burnout
+since you came."
+
+"Maybe you broke our statistical jinx," said Luvochek, with a chubby
+smile.
+
+"Maybe," said MacHeath. "I hope so."
+
+For some reason, the gnawing in his hunch factory became more
+persistent.
+
+As he and Griffin walked toward the door, Griffin reported rapidly. "I
+checked everything in the gun chamber. No sign of any tampering.
+Everything's just as we left it. The dust film hasn't been disturbed."
+
+"It figures," said MacHeath.
+
+Outside, in the corridor, they met Dr. Konrad Bern hurrying toward the
+cafeteria. He stopped as he saw them.
+
+"Oh, hello, Mr. MacHeath, Mr. Griffin," he said. His white-toothed
+smile was friendly, but both of the S.M.M.R. agents could detect the
+hostility that was hard and brittle beneath the surface. "I wanted to
+thank you for the wonderful job you've been doing."
+
+"Why, thank you, doctor," said MacHeath honestly. "We aim to satisfy."
+
+Bern chuckled. "You're doing well so far. Odd streak of luck we've
+had, isn't it? Poor Dr. Nordred has been under a terrible strain; his
+whole life work is tied up in this project." He made a vague gesture
+with one hand. "Would you care for some coffee?"
+
+"Just had some, thanks," said MacHeath, "but we'll take a rain check."
+
+"Fine. Anytime." And he went on into the cafeteria.
+
+"Wow!" said Griffin as he walked on down the corridor with MacHeath.
+"That man is scared silly! But what an actor! You'd never know he was
+eating his guts out."
+
+"Sure he's scared," MacHeath said. "With all this sabotage talk going
+around, he's afraid there'll be an exhaustive investigation, and he
+can't take that right now."
+
+Griffin frowned. "I guess I missed that. What did you pick up?"
+
+"He's supposed to meet a Soviet agent tonight, and he's afraid he'll
+be caught. He doesn't know what happened to the first three, and he
+won't know what will happen to Number Four tonight.
+
+"We'll keep him around as long as he's useful. He's not a Bohr or a
+Pauli or a Fermi, but he--"
+
+MacHeath stopped himself suddenly and came to a dead halt.
+
+"My God," he said softly, "that's _it_."
+
+His hunch had hatched.
+
+After a moment, he said: "Harry is getting back from the target end of
+the tube now, Bill. He can't pick me up, so beetle it down to the tool
+room, get him, and get up to the workshop fast. If I'm not there,
+wait; I have a little prying to do."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"Can do," said Griffin. He went toward the elevator at an easy lope.
+
+David MacHeath went in the opposite direction.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When MacHeath returned to the workshop which he had been assigned,
+Bill Griffin and Harry Benbow were waiting for him. Beside the
+big-muscled Griffin, Harry Benbow looked even thinner than he was. He
+was a good six-two, which made him a head taller than Griffin, but,
+unlike many tall, lean men, Benbow had no tendency to slouch; he stood
+tall and straight, reminding MacHeath of a poplar tree towering
+proudly over the countryside. Benbow was one of those rare American
+Negroes whose skin was actually as close to being "black" as human
+pigmentation will allow. His eyes were like disks of obsidian set in
+spheres of white porcelain, which gave an odd contrast-similarity
+effect when compared with Griffin's china-blue eyes.
+
+If the average man had wanted to pick two human beings who were
+"opposites," he could hardly have made a better choice than Benbow and
+the short, thickly-built, blond-haired, pink-skinned Bill Griffin. But
+the average man would be so struck by the differences that he would
+never notice that the similarities were vastly more important.
+
+"You look as if you'd just been kissed by Miss America," Harry said as
+MacHeath came through the door.
+
+"Better than that," MacHeath said. "We've got work to do."
+
+"What's the pitch?" Griffin wanted to know.
+
+"Well, in the first place, I'm afraid Dr. Konrad Bern is no longer of
+any use to the Redford Project. We're going to have to arrest him as
+an unregistered agent of the Soviet Government."
+
+"It's just as well," said Harry Benbow gently. "His research hasn't
+done us any good and it hasn't done the Soviets any good. The poor
+guy's been on edge ever since he got here. All the pale hide around
+this place stirs up every nerve in him."
+
+"What got you onto this?" Griffin asked MacHeath.
+
+"A hunch first," MacHeath said. "Then I got data to back it up. But,
+first ... Harry, how'd you know about Bern's reactions? He keeps those
+prejudices of his down pretty deep; I didn't think you could go that
+far."
+
+"I didn't have to. He spent half an hour talking to me this morning.
+He was so happy to see a fellow human being--according to his
+definition of human being--that he was as easy to read as if _you_
+were doing the reading."
+
+MacHeath nodded. "I hate to throw him to the wolves, but he's got to
+go."
+
+"What was the snooping you said you had to do?" Griffin asked.
+
+"Dates. Times. Briefly, I found that the run of accidents has been
+building up to a peak. At first, it was just small meters that went
+wrong. Then bigger, more complex stuff. And, finally, the Monster
+went. See the pattern?"
+
+The other men nodded.
+
+"You're the therapist," Griffin said. "What do you suggest?"
+
+"Shock treatment," said David MacHeath.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Just how Dr. Konrad Bern got wind of the fact that a squad of FBI men
+had come to the project to arrest him that evening is something that
+MacHeath didn't know until later. He was busy at the time, ignoring
+anything but what he was interested in. It always fascinated him to
+watch the mind of a psychokinetic expert at work. He couldn't do the
+trick himself, and he was always amazed at the ability of anyone who
+could.
+
+It was like watching a pianist play a particularly difficult concerto.
+A person can watch a pianist, see every move he is making, and why he
+is making it. But being able to see what is going on doesn't mean that
+one can duplicate the action. MacHeath was in the same position.
+Telepathically, he could observe the play of emotions that ran through
+a psychokinetic's mind--the combinations of avid desire and the utter
+loathing which, playing one against another, could move a brick, a
+book, or a Buick if the mind was powerful enough. But he couldn't do
+it himself, no matter how carefully he tried to follow the raging
+emotions that acted as two opposing jaws of a pair of tongs to lift
+and move the object.
+
+And so engrossed was he with the process that he did not notice that
+Konrad Bern had eluded the FBI. He was unaware of what had happened
+until one of the Federal agents rapped loudly on the workshop door.
+
+Almost instantly, MacHeath picked up the information from the agent's
+mind. He glanced at Griffin and Benbow. "You two can handle it. Be
+careful you don't overdo it."
+
+Then he went to the door and opened it a trifle. "Yes?"
+
+The man outside showed a gold badge. "Morgan, FBI. You David
+MacHeath?"
+
+"Yes." MacHeath stepped outside and showed the FBI man his
+identification.
+
+"We were told to co-operate with you in this Konrad Bern case. He's
+managed to slip away from us somehow, but we know he's still in the
+area. He can't get past the gate."
+
+MacHeath let his mind expand until it meshed with that of Dr. Konrad
+Bern.
+
+"There is a way out," MacHeath snapped. "The acceleration tube."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Come on!" He started sprinting toward the elevators. He explained to
+the FBI agent as they went.
+
+"The acceleration tube of the ultracosmotron runs due north of here
+for two miles underground. The guard at the other end won't be
+expecting anyone to be coming from the inside of the target building.
+If Bern plays his cards right, he can get away."
+
+"Can't we phone the target building?" the FBI man asked.
+
+"No. We shut off all the electrical equipment and took down some of
+the wires so we could balance the acceleration fields."
+
+"Well, if he's on foot, we could send a car out there. We'd get there
+before he does. Uh ... wouldn't we?"
+
+"Maybe. But he'll kill himself if he sees he's trapped." That wasn't
+quite true. Bern was ready to fight to the death, and he had a heavy
+pistol to back him up. MacHeath didn't want to see anyone killed, and
+he didn't want stray bullets flying around the inside of that tube or
+in the target room.
+
+MacHeath and the FBI agent piled out of the elevator at the bottom of
+the shaft. Dr. Roger Kent was standing at the head of the stairs that
+spiraled down to the gun chamber. Dr. Kent knew that Bern had gone
+down the stairway, but he didn't know why.
+
+"He's our saboteur," MacHeath said quickly. "I'm going after him. As
+soon as I close the door and seal it, you turn on the pumps. Lower the
+air pressure in the tube to a pound per square inch below
+atmospheric. That'll put a force of about a ton and a quarter against
+the doors, and he won't be able to open them."
+
+Dr. Kent still didn't grasp the fact that Bern was a spy.
+
+"Explain to him, Morgan," MacHeath told the Federal agent. He went on
+down the spiral staircase, knowing that Kent would understand and act
+in plenty of time.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The door to the tube was standing open. MacHeath slipped on a pair of
+the sponge-soled shoes, noticing angrily that Bern hadn't bothered to
+do so. He went into the tube and closed the door behind him. Then he
+started down the blackness of the tube at a fast trot. Ahead of him,
+in the utter darkness, he could hear the click of heels as the
+leather-shod Bern moved toward the target end of the long tube.
+
+Neither of them had lights. They were unnecessary, for one thing,
+since there was only one direction to go and there were no obstacles
+in the path. Bern would probably have carried a flashlight if he'd
+been able to get his hands on one quickly, but he hadn't, so he went
+in darkness. MacHeath didn't want a light; in the darkness, he had the
+advantage of knowing where his opponent was.
+
+Every so often, Bern would stop, listening for sounds of pursuit,
+since his own footsteps, echoing down the glass-lined cylinder,
+drowned out any noise from behind. But MacHeath, running silently on
+the toes of his thick-soled shoes, kept in motion, gaining on the
+fleeing spy.
+
+A two-mile run is a good stretch of exercise for anyone, but MacHeath
+didn't dare slow down. As it was, Konrad Bern was already tugging
+frantically at the door that led to the target room by the time
+MacHeath reached him. But the faint sighing of the pumps had already
+told MacHeath that the air pressure had been dropped. Bern couldn't
+possibly get the door open.
+
+MacHeath's lungs wanted to be filled with air; his chest wanted to
+heave; he wanted to pant, taking in great gulps of life-giving oxygen.
+But he didn't dare. He didn't want Bern to know he was there, so he
+strained to keep his breath silent.
+
+He stepped up behind the physicist in the pitch blackness, and judging
+carefully, brought his fist down on the nape of the man's neck in a
+hard rabbit punch.
+
+Konrad Bern dropped unconscious to the floor of the tube.
+
+Then MacHeath let his chest pump air into his lungs in long, harsh
+gasps. Shakily, he lowered himself to the floor beside Bern and
+squatted on his haunches, waiting for the hiss of the bleeder valve
+that would tell him that the air pressure had been raised to allow
+someone to enter the air lock.
+
+It was Morgan, the FBI man, who finally cracked the door. Griffin and
+Dr. Kent were with him.
+
+"You all right?" asked Morgan.
+
+"I'm fine," MacHeath said, "but Bern is going to have a sore neck for
+a while. I didn't hit him hard enough to break it, but he'll get
+plenty of sleep before he wakes up."
+
+More FBI men came in, and they dragged out the unprotesting Bern.
+
+Dr. Kent said: "Well, I'm glad that's over. I'll have to get back and
+see what Dr. Nordred is raving about."
+
+"Raving?" asked MacHeath innocently.
+
+"Yes. While I was in the pump room reducing the pressure, he called me
+on the interphone. Said he'd been looking all over for me. He and
+Luvochek and Bessermann are up in the lab." He frowned. "They claim
+that one of the radiolead samples was floating in the air in the lab.
+It's settled down now, I gather, but it only weighs a fraction of what
+it should, though it's gaining all the time. And that's ridiculous.
+It's not at all what Dr. Nordred's theory predicted." Then he clamped
+his lips together, thinking perhaps he had talked too much.
+
+"Interesting," said MacHeath blandly. "Very interesting."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Senator Gonzales sat in Brian Taggert's sixth-floor office in the
+S.M.M.R. building and looked puzzled. "All right, I grant you that
+Bern couldn't have been the saboteur. Then why arrest him?"
+
+Dave MacHeath took a drag from his cigarette before he answered. "We
+had to have a patsy--someone to put the blame on. No one really
+believed that it was just bad luck, but they'll all accept the idea
+that Bern was a saboteur."
+
+"We would have had to arrest him eventually, anyway," said Brian
+Taggert.
+
+"Give me a quick run-down," Gonzales said. "I've got to explain this
+to the President."
+
+"Did you ever hear of the Pauli Effect?" MacHeath asked.
+
+"Something about the number of electrons that--"
+
+"No," MacHeath said quickly. "That's the Pauli _principle_, better
+known as the Exclusion Principle. The Pauli _Effect_ is a different
+thing entirely, a psionic effect.
+
+"It used to be said that a theoretical physicist was judged by his
+inability to handle research apparatus; the clumsier he was in
+research, the better he was with theory. But Wolfgang Pauli was a lot
+more than clumsy. Apparatus would break, topple over, go to pieces, or
+burn up if Pauli just walked into the room.
+
+"Up to the time he died, in 1958, his colleagues kidded about it,
+without really believing there was anything behind it. But it is
+recorded that the explosion of some vacuum equipment in a laboratory
+at the University of Göttingen was the direct result of the Pauli
+Effect. It was definitely established that the explosion occurred at
+the precise moment that a train on which Pauli was traveling stopped
+for a short time at the Göttingen railway station."
+
+The senator said: "The poltergeist phenomenon."
+
+"Not exactly," MacHeath said, "although there is a similarity. The
+poltergeist phenomenon is usually spectacular and is nearly always
+associated with teen-age neurotics. Then there's the pyrotic; fires
+always start in his vicinity."
+
+"But there's always a reason for psionic phenomena to react violently
+under subconscious control," Senator Gonzales pointed out. "There's
+always a psychological quirk."
+
+"Sure. And I almost fell into the same trap, myself."
+
+"How so?"
+
+"I was thinking that if Bern were the saboteur, all our theories about
+psionics would have to be thrown out--we'd have to start from a
+different set of precepts. _And I didn't even want to think about such
+an idea!_"
+
+"Nobody likes their pet theories overthrown," Gonzales observed.
+
+"Of course not. But here's the point: The only way that a scientific
+theory can be proved wrong is to uncover a phenomenon which doesn't
+fit in with the theory. A theoretical physicist is a mathematician; he
+makes logical deductions and logical predictions by juggling symbols
+around in accordance with some logical system. But the axioms, the
+assumptions upon which those systems are built, are nonlogical. You
+can't prove an axiom; if comes right out of the mind.
+
+"So imagine that you're a theoretical physicist. A really
+original-type thinker. You come up with a mathematical system that
+explains all known phenomena at that time, and predicts others that
+are, as yet, unknown. You check your math over and over again; there's
+no error in your logic, since it all follows, step by step."
+
+"O.K.; go on," Gonzales said interestedly.
+
+"Very well, then; you've built yourself a logical universe, based on
+your axioms, and the structure seems to have a one-to-one
+correspondence with the actual universe. Not only that, but if the
+theory is accepted, you've built your reputation on it--your life.
+
+"Now, what happens if your axioms--not the logic _about_ the axioms,
+but the axioms themselves--are proven to be wrong?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Brian Taggert took his pipe out of his mouth. "Why, you give up the
+erroneous set of axioms and build a new set that will explain the new
+phenomenon. Isn't that what a scientist is supposed to do?" His manner
+was that of wide-eyed innocence laid on with a large trowel.
+
+"Oh, _sure_ it is," said the senator. "A man builds his whole life,
+his whole universe; on a set of principles, and he scraps them at the
+drop of a hat. _Sure_ he does."
+
+"He claims he will," MacHeath said. "Any scientist worth the paper his
+diploma is printed on is firmly convinced that he will change his
+axioms as soon as they're proven false. Of course, ninety-nine per
+cent of 'em _can't_ and _won't_ and _don't_. They refuse to look at
+anything that suggests changing axioms.
+
+"Some scientists eagerly accept the axioms that they were taught in
+school and hang on to them all their lives, fighting change tooth and
+nail. Oh, they'll accept new ideas, all right--provided that they fit
+in with the structures based on the old axioms.
+
+"Then there are the young iconoclasts who don't like the axioms as
+they stand, so they make up some new ones of their own--men like
+Newton, Einstein, Planck, and so on. Then, once the new axioms have
+been forced down the throats of their colleagues, the innovators
+become the Old Order; the iconoclasts become the ones who put the
+fences around the new images to safeguard them. And they're even more
+firmly wedded to their axioms than anyone else. This is _their_
+universe!
+
+"Of course, these men proclaim to all the world that they are
+perfectly willing to change their axioms. And the better a scientist
+he is, the more he believes, in his heart-of-hearts, that he really
+would change. He really thinks, consciously, that he wants others to
+test his theories.
+
+"But notice: A theory is only good if it explains all known phenomena
+in its field. If it does, then the only thing that can topple it is a
+_new_ fact. The only thing that can threaten the complex structure
+formulated by a really creative, painstaking, mathematical physicist
+is _experiment_!"
+
+Senator Gonzales' attentive silence was eloquent.
+
+"Experiment!" MacHeath repeated. "That can wreck a theory quicker and
+more completely than all the learned arguments of a dozen men. And
+every theoretician is aware of that fact. Consciously, he gladly
+accepts the inevitable; but his subconscious mind will fight to keep
+those axioms.
+
+"_Even if it has to smash every experimental device around!_
+
+"After all, if nobody can experiment on your theory, it can't be
+proved wrong, can it?
+
+"In Nordred's case, as in Pauli's, this subconscious defense actually
+made itself felt in the form of broken equipment. Dr. Theodore Nordred
+was totally unconscious of the fact that he detested and feared the
+idea of anyone experimenting to prove or disprove his theory. He had
+no idea that he, himself, was re-channeling the energy in those
+machines to make them burn out."
+
+Brian Taggert looked at MacHeath pointedly. "Do you think the shock
+treatment you gave him will cause any repercussions?"
+
+"No. Griffin and Benbow held that block of radiolead floating in the
+air only while Dr. Nordred was alone in the lab. He pushed at it, felt
+of it, and moved it around for more than ten minutes before he'd admit
+the reality of what he saw. Then he called Luvochek and Bessermann in
+to look at it.
+
+"Griffin and Benbow let the sample settle to the desk, so that by the
+time the other two scientists got to the lab, the lead didn't have an
+apparent negative weight, but was still much lighter than it should
+be.
+
+"All the while that Bessermann and Luvochek were trying to weigh the
+lead block, to get an accurate measurement, Griffin and Benbow, three
+rooms away, kept increasing the weight slowly towards normal. And so
+far no one has invented a device which will give an instantaneous
+check on the weight of an object. A balance can't check the weight of
+a sample unless that weight is constant; there's too much time lag
+involved.
+
+"So, what evidence do they have? Scientifically speaking, none. They
+have no measurements, and the experiment can't be repeated. And only
+Nordred actually saw the sample _floating_. Luvochek and Bessermann
+will eventually think up a 'natural' explanation for the apparent
+steady gain in weight. Only Nordred will remain convinced that what he
+saw actually happened.
+
+"I don't see how there could be any serious repercussions in the field
+of physics." But he looked at Taggert for confirmation.
+
+Taggert gave it to him with an approving look.
+
+"It's a funny thing," said Gonzales musingly. "Some time back, we were
+in a situation where we had to go to the extreme of physical violence
+to keep from demonstrating to a scientist that psionic powers could
+be controlled, just to keep from ruining the physicist's work.
+
+"Now, we turn right around and demonstrate the 'impossible' to another
+physicist in order to pull his hard-earned axioms out from under him."
+He smiled wryly. "There ain't no justice in the world."
+
+"No," agreed MacHeath, "but the trick worked. He won't have any
+subconscious desire to smash equipment just to protect a theory that
+has already been smashed. On the contrary, he'll let them go through
+in order to find new data to build another theory on."
+
+"He'll never again be the man he was," said Taggert regretfully. "He's
+lost the force of his convictions. He won't be capable of taking a
+no-nonsense, dogmatic, black-and-white stand. But it was necessary."
+He made an odd gesture with one hand. "What else can you do with a man
+who's a psionic psychopath?"
+
+THE END
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Psichopath, by Gordon Randall Garrett
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30304 ***
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+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30304 ***</div>
+
+<div class="tr"><p class="center">Transcriber's Note:</p>
+<p class="center">This etext was produced from Analog Science Fact &amp; Fiction October 1960. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.</p></div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h1>PSICHOPATH</h1>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>By DARREL T. LANGART</h2>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/image_001.jpg" width="600" height="506" alt=""  />
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Given psi powers like clairvoyance and telepathy, solving
+problems of sabotage would be easy, of course. That is, it
+seems that way at first thought!</i></p></div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>Illustrated by van Dongen</h3>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+<p>he man in the pastel blue topcoat walked with steady purpose, but
+without haste, through the chill, wind-swirled drizzle that filled the
+air above the streets of Arlington, Virginia. His matching blue
+cap-hood was pulled low over his forehead, and the clear, infrared
+radiating face mask had been flipped down to protect his chubby cheeks
+and round nose from the icy wind.</p>
+
+<p>No one noticed him particularly. He was just another average man who
+blended in with all the others who walked the streets that day. No one
+recognized him; his face did not appear often in public places, except
+in his own state, and, even so, it was a thoroughly ordinary face.
+But, as he walked, Senator John Peter Gonzales was keeping a mental,
+fine-webbed, four-dimensional net around him, feeling for the
+slightest touch of recognition. He wanted no one to connect him in any
+way with his intended destination.</p>
+
+<p>It was not his first visit to the six-floor brick building that stood
+on a street in a lower-middle-class district of Arlington. Actually,
+government business took him there more often than would have been
+safe for the average man-on-the-street. For Senator Gonzales, the
+process of remaining incognito was so elementary that it was almost
+subconscious.</p>
+
+<p>Arriving at his destination, he paused on the sidewalk to light a
+cigarette, shielding it against the wind and drizzle with cupped
+hands while his mind made one last check on the surroundings. Then he
+strode quickly up the five steps to the double doors which were
+marked: <i>The Society For Mystical And Metaphysical Research, Inc.</i></p>
+
+<p>Just as he stepped in, he flipped the face shield up and put on an
+old-fashioned pair of thick-lensed, black-rimmed spectacles. Then, his
+face assuming a bland smile that would have been completely out of
+place on Senator Gonzales, he went from the foyer into the front
+office.</p>
+
+<p>"Good afternoon, Mrs. Jesser," he said, in a high, smooth, slightly
+accented voice that was not his own. "I perceive by your aura that you
+are feeling well. Your normal aura-color is tinged with a positive
+golden hue."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Jesser, a well-rounded matron in her early forties, rose to the
+bait like a porpoise being hand-fed at a Florida zoo. "<i>Dear</i> Swami
+Chandra! How perfectly wonderful to see you again! You're looking
+<i>very</i> well your-<i>self</i>."</p>
+
+<p>The Swami, whose Indian blood was of the Aztec rather than the Brahmin
+variety, nonetheless managed to radiate all the mystery of the East.
+"My well-being, dear Mrs. Jesser, is due to the fact that I have been
+communing for the past three months with my very good friend, the
+Fifth Dalai Lama. A most refreshingly wise person." Senator Gonzales
+was fond of the Society's crackpot receptionist, and he knew exactly
+what kind of hokum would please her most.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I <i>do</i> hope you will find time to tell me <i>all</i> about it," she
+said effusively. "Mr. Balfour isn't in the city just now," she went
+on. "He's lecturing in New York on the history of flying saucer
+sightings. Do you realize that this is the fortieth anniversary of the
+first saucer sighting, back in 1944?"</p>
+
+<p>"The first <i>photographed</i> sighting," the Swami corrected
+condescendingly. "Our friends have been watching and guiding us for
+far longer than that, and were sighted many times before they were
+photographed."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Jesser nodded briskly. "Of course. You're right, as always,
+Swami."</p>
+
+<p>"I am sorry to hear," the Swami continued smoothly, "that I will not
+be able to see Mr. Balfour. However, I came at the call of Mr. Brian
+Taggert, who is expecting me."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Jesser glanced down at her appointment sheet. "He didn't mention
+an appointment to me. However&mdash;" She punched a button on the intercom.
+"Mr. Taggert? Swami Chandra is here to see you. He says he has an
+appointment."</p>
+
+<p>Brian Taggert's deep voice came over the instrument. "The Swami, as
+usual, is very astute. I have been thinking about calling him. Send
+him right up."</p>
+
+<p>"You may go up, Swami," said Mrs. Jesser, wide-eyed. She watched in
+awe as the Swami marched regally through the inner door and began to
+climb the stairs toward the sixth floor.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>One way to hide an ex-officio agency of the United States Government
+was to label it truthfully&mdash;<i>The Society For Mystical And Metaphysical
+Research</i>. In spite of the fact that the label was literally true, it
+sounded so crackpot that no one but a crackpot would bother to look
+into it. As a consequence, better than ninety per cent of the
+membership of the Society was composed of just such people. Only a few
+members of the "core" knew the organization's true function and
+purpose. And as long as such scatter-brains as Mrs. Jesser and Mr.
+Balfour were in there pitching, no one would ever penetrate to the
+actual core of the Society.</p>
+
+<p>The senator had already pocketed the exaggerated glasses by the time
+he reached the sixth floor, and his face had lost its bland,
+overly-wise smile. He pushed open the door to Taggert's office.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you got any ideas yet?" he asked quickly.</p>
+
+<p>Brian Taggert, a heavily-muscled man with dark eyes and black,
+slightly wavy hair, sat on the edge of a couch in one corner of the
+room. His desk across the room was there for paperwork only, and
+Taggert had precious little of that to bother with.</p>
+
+<p>He took a puff from his heavy-bowled briar. "We're going to have to
+send an agent in there. Someone who can be on the spot. Someone who
+can get the feel of the situation first hand."</p>
+
+<p>"That'll be difficult. We can't just suddenly stick an unknown in
+there and have an excuse for his being there. Couldn't Donahue or
+Reeves&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Taggert shook his head. "Impossible, John. Extrasensory perception
+can't replace sight, any more than sight can replace hearing. You know
+that."</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly. But I thought we could get enough information that way to
+tell us who our saboteur is. No dice, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"No dice," said Taggert. "Look at the situation we've got there. The
+purpose of the Redford Research Team is to test the Meson Ultimate
+Decay Theory of Dr. Theodore Nordred. Now, if we&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Senator Gonzales, walking across the room toward Taggert, gestured
+with one hand. "I know! I know! Give me <i>some</i> credit for
+intelligence! But we <i>do</i> have one suspect, don't we? What about
+<i>him</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>Taggert chuckled through a wreath of smoke. "Calm down, John. Or are
+you trying to give me your impression of Mrs. Jesser in a conversation
+with a saucerite?"</p>
+
+<p>The senator laughed and sat down in a nearby chair. "All right. Sorry.
+But this whole thing is lousing up our entire space program. First
+off, we nearly lose Dr. Ch'ien, and, with him gone, the interstellar
+drive project would've been shot. Now, if this sabotage keeps up, the
+Redford project <i>will</i> be shot, and that means we might have to stick
+to the old-fashioned rocket to get off-planet. Brian, we <i>need</i>
+antigravity, and, so far, Nordred's theory is our only clue."</p>
+
+<p>"Agreed," said Taggert.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, we're never going to get it if equipment keeps mysteriously
+burning itself out, breaking down, and just generally goofing up. This
+morning, the primary exciter on the new ultracosmotron went haywire,
+and the beam of sodium nuclei burned through part of the accelerator
+tube wall. It'll take a month to get it back in working order."</p>
+
+<p>Taggert took his pipe out of his mouth and tapped the dottle into a
+nearby ash disposal unit. "And you want to pick up our pet spy?"</p>
+
+<p>Senator Gonzales scowled. "Well, I'd certainly call him our prime
+suspect." But there was a certain lack of conviction in his manner.</p>
+
+<p>Brian Taggert didn't flatly contradict the senator. "Maybe. But you
+know, John, there's one thing that bothers me about these accidents."</p>
+
+<p>"What's that?"</p>
+
+<p>"The fact that we have not one shred of evidence that points to
+sabotage."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>In a room on the fifth floor, directly below Brian Taggert's office, a
+young man was half sitting, half reclining in a thickly upholstered
+adjustable chair. He had dropped the back of the chair to a forty-five
+degree angle and lifted up the footrest; now he was leaning back in
+lazy comfort, his ankles crossed, his right hand holding a slowly
+smoldering cigarette, his eyes contemplating the ceiling. Or, rather,
+they seemed to be contemplating something <i>beyond</i> the ceiling.</p>
+
+<p>It was pure coincidence that the focus of his thoughts happened to be
+located in about the same volume of space that his eyes seemed to be
+focused on. If Brian Taggert and Senator Gonzales had been in the room
+below, his eyes would still be looking at the ceiling.</p>
+
+<p>In repose, his face looked even younger than his twenty-eight years
+would have led one to expect. His close-cropped brown hair added to
+the impression of youth, and the well-tailored suit on his slim,
+muscular body added to the effect. At any top-flight university, he
+could have passes for a well-bred, sophisticated, intelligent student
+who had money enough to indulge himself and sense enough not to overdo
+it.</p>
+
+<p>He was beginning to understand the pattern that was being woven in the
+room above&mdash;beginning to feel it in depth.</p>
+
+<p>Senator Gonzalez was mildly telepathic, inasmuch as he could pick up
+thoughts in the prevocal stage&mdash;the stage at which thought becomes
+definitely organized into words, phrases, and sentences. He could go a
+little deeper, into the selectivity stage, where the linking processes
+of logic took over from the nonlogical but rational processes of the
+preconscious&mdash;but only if he knew the person well. Where the senator
+excelled was in detecting emotional tone and manipulating emotional
+processes, both within himself and within others.</p>
+
+<p>Brian Taggert was an analyzer, an originator, a motivator&mdash;and more.
+The young man found himself avoiding too deep a probe into the mind of
+Brian Taggert; he knew that he had not yet achieved the maturity to
+understand the multilayered depths of a mind like that. Eventually,
+perhaps....</p>
+
+<p>Not that Senator Gonzales was a child, nor that he was emotionally or
+intellectually shallow. It was merely that he was not of Taggert's
+caliber.</p>
+
+<p>The young man absently took another drag from his cigarette. Taggert
+had explained the basic problem to him, but he was getting a wider
+picture from the additional information that Senator Gonzales had
+brought.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Theodore Nordred, a mathematical physicist and one of the
+top-flight, high-powered, original minds in the field, had shown that
+Einstein's final equations only held in a universe composed entirely
+of normal matter. Since the great Einstein had died before the
+Principle of Parity had been overthrown in the mid-fifties, he had
+been unable to incorporate the information into his Unified Field
+Theory. Nordred had been able to show, mathematically, that Einstein's
+equations were valid only for a completely "dexter," or right-handed
+universe, or for a completely "sinister" or left-handed universe.</p>
+
+<p>Although the universe in which Man lived was predominantly
+dexter&mdash;arbitrarily so designated&mdash;it was not completely so. It had a
+"sinister" component amounting to approximately one one-hundred-thousandth
+of one per cent. On the average, one atom out of every ten million in the
+universe was an atom of antimatter. The distribution was unequal of course;
+antimatter could not exist in contact with ordinary matter. Most of it was
+distributed throughout interstellar space in the form of individual atoms,
+freely floating in space, a long way from any large mass of normal matter.</p>
+
+<p>But that minute fraction of a per cent was enough to show that the
+known universe was not totally Einsteinian. In a purely Einsteinian
+universe, antigravity was impossible, but if the equations of Dr.
+Theodore Nordred were actually a closer approximation to true reality
+than those of Einstein, then antigravity <i>might</i> be a practical
+reality.</p>
+
+<p>And that was the problem the Redford Research Team was working on. It
+was a parallel project to the interstellar drive problem, being
+carried on elsewhere.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>The "pet spy," as Taggert had called him, was Dr. Konrad Bern, a
+middle-aged Negro from Tanganyika, who was convinced that only under
+Communism could the colored races of the world achieve the
+technological organization and living standard of the white man. He
+had been trained as a "sleeper"; not even the exhaustive
+investigations of the FBI had turned up any relationship between Bern
+and the Soviets. It had taken the telepathic probing of the S.M.M.R.
+agents to uncover his real purposes. Known, he constituted no danger.</p>
+
+<p>There was no denying that he was a highly competent, if not brilliant,
+physicist. And, since it was quite impossible for him to get any
+information on the Redford Project into the hands of the
+opposition&mdash;it was no longer fashionable to call Communists "the
+enemy"&mdash;there was no reason why he shouldn't be allowed to contribute
+to the American efforts to bridge space.</p>
+
+<p>Three times in the five months since Bern had joined the project,
+agents of the Soviet government had made attempts to contact the
+physicist. Three times the FBI, warned by S.M.M.R. agents, had quietly
+blocked the contact. Konrad Bern had been effectively isolated.</p>
+
+<p>But, at the project site itself, equipment failure had become
+increasingly more frequent, all out of proportion to the normal
+accident rate in any well-regulated laboratory. The work of the
+project had practically come to a standstill; the ultra-secret project
+reports to the President were beginning to show less and less progress
+in the basic research, and more and more progress in repairing damaged
+equipment. Apparently, though, increasing efficiency in repair work
+was self-neutralizing; repairing an instrument in half the time merely
+meant that it could break down twice as often.</p>
+
+<p>It had to be sabotage. And yet, not even the S.M.M.R. agents could
+find any trace of intentional damage nor any thought patterns that
+would indicate deliberate damage.</p>
+
+<p>And Senator John Peter Gonzales quite evidently did <i>not</i> want to face
+the implications of <i>that</i> particular fact.</p>
+
+<p>"We're going to have to send an agent in," Taggert repeated.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>That's my cue</i>, thought the young man on the fifth floor as he
+crushed out his cigarette and got up from the chair.)</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know how we're going to manage it," said the senator. "What
+excuse do we have for putting a new man on the Redford team?"</p>
+
+<p>Brian Taggert grinned. "What they need is an expert repair
+technician&mdash;a man who knows how to build and repair complex research
+instruments. He doesn't have to know anything about the purpose of the
+team itself, all he has to do is keep the equipment in good shape."</p>
+
+<p>Senator Gonzalez let a slow smile spread over his face. "You've been
+gulling me, you snake. All right; I deserved it. Tell him to come in."</p>
+
+<p>As the door opened, Taggert said: "Senator Gonzales, may I present Mr.
+David MacHeath? He's our man, I think."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>David MacHeath watched a blue line wriggle its way erratically across
+the face of an oscilloscope. "The wave form is way off," he said
+flatly, "and the frequency is slithering all over the place."</p>
+
+<p>He squinted at the line for a moment then spoke to the man standing
+nearby. "Signal Harry to back her off two degrees, then run her up
+slowly, ten minutes at a time."</p>
+
+<p>The other man flickered the key on the side of the small
+carbide-Welsbach lamp. The shutters blinked, sending pulses of light
+down the length of the ten-foot diameter glass-walled tube in which
+the men were working. Far down the tube, MacHeath could see the
+answering flicker from Harry, a mile and a half away in the darkness.</p>
+
+<p>MacHeath watched the screen again. After a few seconds, he said:
+"O.K.! Hold it!"</p>
+
+<p>Again the lamp flashed.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it isn't perfect," MacHeath said, "but it's all we can do from
+here. We'll have to evacuate the tube to get her in perfect balance.
+Tell Harry to knock off for the day."</p>
+
+<p>While the welcome message was being flashed, MacHeath shut off the
+testing instruments and disconnected them. It was possible to
+compensate a little for the testing equipment, but a telephone, or
+even an electric flashlight, would simply add to the burden.</p>
+
+<p>Bill Griffin shoved down the key on the lamp he was holding and locked
+it into place. The shutters remained open, and the lamp shed a beam of
+white light along the shining walls of the cylindrical tube. "How much
+longer do you figure it'll take, Dave?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Another shift, at least," said MacHeath, picking up the compact,
+shielded instrument case. "You want to carry that mat?"</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/image_002.jpg" width="300" height="911" alt=""  />
+</div>
+
+<p>Griffin picked up the thick sponge-rubber mat that the instrument case
+had been sitting on, and the two men started off down the tube,
+walking silently on the sponge-rubber-soled shoes which would not
+scratch the glass underfoot.</p>
+
+<p>"Any indication yet as to who our saboteur is?" Griffin asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not sure," MacHeath admitted. "I've picked up a couple of leads,
+but I don't know if they mean anything or not."</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder if there <i>is</i> a saboteur," Griffin said musingly. "Maybe
+it's just a run of bad luck. It could happen, you know. A statistical
+run of&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You don't believe that, any more than I do," MacHeath said.</p>
+
+<p>"No. But I find it even harder to believe that a materialistic
+philosophy like Communism could evolve any workable psionic
+discipline."</p>
+
+<p>"So do I," agreed MacHeath.</p>
+
+<p>"But it can't be physical sabotage," Griffin argued. "There's not a
+trace of it&mdash;anywhere. It <i>has</i> to be psionic."</p>
+
+<p>"Right," said MacHeath, grinning as he saw what was coming next.</p>
+
+<p>"But we've already eliminated that. So?" Griffin nodded firmly as if
+in full agreement with himself. "So we follow the dictum of the
+Master: 'Eliminate the impossible; whatever is left, no matter how
+improbable, is the truth.' And, since there is absolutely nothing
+left, there is no truth. At the bottom, the whole thing is merely a
+matter of mental delusion."</p>
+
+<p>"Sherlock Holmes would be proud of you, Bill," MacHeath said. "And so
+am I."</p>
+
+<p>Griffin looked at MacHeath oddly. "I wish I was a halfway decent
+telepath, I'd like to know what's going on in your preconscious."</p>
+
+<p>"You'd have to dig deeper than that, I'm afraid," MacHeath said
+ruefully. "As soon as my subconscious has solved the problem, I'll let
+you know."</p>
+
+<p>"I've changed my mind," said Griffin cheerfully. "I don't envy your
+telepathy. I don't envy a guy who has to TP his own subconscious to
+find out what he's thinking."</p>
+
+<p>MacHeath chuckled softly as he turned the bolt that opened the door in
+the "gun" end of the stripped-nuclei accelerator. The seals broke with
+a soft hiss. Evidently, the barometric pressure outside the
+two-mile-long underground tube had changed slightly during the time
+they had been down there.</p>
+
+<p>"It'll be a week before we can test it," MacHeath said in a tired
+voice. "Even after we get it partly in balance. It'll take that long
+to evacuate the tube and sweep it clean."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>It was the first sentence he had spoken in the past hour or so, and it
+was purely for the edification of the man who was standing on the
+other side of the air lock, although neither Griffin nor MacHeath had
+actually seen him as yet.</p>
+
+<p>Griffin was not a telepath in the sense that the S.M.M.R. used the
+word, but to a non-psionicist, he would have appeared to be one.
+Membership in the "core" group of the <i>Society for Mystical and
+Metaphysical Research</i> required, above all, <i>understanding</i>. And, with
+that understanding, a conversation between two members need consist
+only of an occasional gesture and a key word now and then.</p>
+
+<p>The word "understanding" needs emphasis. Without understanding of
+another human mind, no human mind can be completely effective. Without
+that understanding, no human being can be completely free.</p>
+
+<p>And yet, the English word "understanding" is only an approximation to
+the actual process that must take place. <i>Total</i> understanding, in one
+sense, would require that a person actually <i>become</i> another
+person&mdash;that he be able to feel, completely and absolutely, every
+emotion, every thought, every bodily sensation, every twinge of
+memory, every judgment, every decision, and every sense of personal
+identity that is felt by the other person, no more and no less.</p>
+
+<p>Such totality is, obviously, neither attainable nor desirable. The
+result would be a merger of identities, a total unification. And, as a
+consequence, a complete loss of one of the human beings involved.</p>
+
+<p>Optimum "understanding" requires that a judgment be made, and that, in
+turn, requires <i>two</i> minds&mdash;not a fusion of identity. There must be
+one to judge and another to be judged, and each mind plays both
+roles.</p>
+
+<p><i>Love thy neighbor as thyself.</i> But the original Greek word would
+translate better as "respect and understand" than as the modern
+English "love." The founders of our modern religions were not fools;
+they simply did not have the tools at hand to formulate their
+knowledge properly. As understanding increases, a critical point is
+reached, which causes a qualitative change in the human mind.</p>
+
+<p>First, self-understanding must come. The human mind operates through
+similarities, and the thing most similar to any human mind is itself.
+The next most similar thing is another human mind.</p>
+
+<p>From that point on, all objects, processes, and patterns in the
+universe can be graded according to their similarity to each other,
+and, ultimately, to their similarity to the human mind.</p>
+
+<p>Two given entities may seem utterly dissimilar, but they can always be
+linked by a <i>tertium quid</i>&mdash;a "third thing" which is similar to both.
+This third thing, be it a material object or a product of the human
+imagination, is called a symbol. Symbols are the bridges by which the
+human mind can reach and manipulate the universe in which it exists.
+With the proper symbols and the understanding to use them, the human
+mind is limited only by its own inherent structural restrictions.</p>
+
+<p>One of the most active research projects of the S.M.M.R. was the
+construction of a more powerful symbology. Psionics had made
+tremendous strides in the previous four decades, but it was still in
+the alchemy stage. So far, symbols for various processes could only be
+worked out by cut-and-try, rule-of-thumb methods, using symbols
+already established, including languages and mathematics. None were
+completely satisfactory, but they worked fairly well within their
+narrow limits.</p>
+
+<p>As far as communication was concerned, the hashed-together symbology
+used by the S.M.M.R. was better than any conceivable code. The
+understanding required to "break" the "code" was well beyond the
+critical point. Anyone who could break it was, <i>ipso facto</i>, a member
+of the S.M.M.R.</p>
+
+<p>Most people didn't even realize that a conversation was taking place
+between two members, especially if a "cover conversation" was used at
+the same time.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>MacHeath's verbal discussion of the testing of the nuclei accelerator
+was just such a cover. Even before he had cracked the air lock, he had
+known that Dr. Theodore Nordred was standing on the other side of the
+thick wall.</p>
+
+<p>MacHeath pushed the heavy door open on its smooth hinges. "Oh, hello,
+Dr. Nordred. How's everything?"</p>
+
+<p>The heavy-set mathematician smiled pleasantly as MacHeath and Griffin
+came into the gun chamber. "I just thought I'd come down and see how
+you were getting along," he said. His voice was a low tenor, with
+just a touch of Midwestern twang. "Sometimes the creative mind gets
+bogged down in the nth-order abstractions that have no discernible
+connection with anything at all." He chuckled. "When that happens, I
+drop everything and go out to find something mundane to worry about."</p>
+
+<p>Nordred was only an inch shorter than the slim MacHeath, and he
+weighed in at close to two hundred pounds. At twenty-five, he had had
+the build of a lightweight wrestler; thirty more years had added
+poundage&mdash;a roll beneath his chin and a bulge at the belly&mdash;but he
+still looked capable of going a round or two without tiring. His shock
+of heavy hair was a mixture of mouse-brown and gray, and it seemed to
+have a tendency to stand up on end, which added another inch and a
+half to his height. His round face had a tendency to smile when he was
+talking or working with his hands; when he was deep in thought, his
+face usually relaxed into thoughtful blankness. He frowned rarely, and
+only for seconds at a time.</p>
+
+<p>"It seems to me you have enough to worry about, doctor," MacHeath said
+banteringly, "without looking for it." He put down his instrument case
+and took out a cigarette while Griffin closed the door to the
+acceleration tube.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh I don't have to look far," Nordred said. "How long do you think it
+will be before we can resume our work with the Monster?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ten days to two weeks," MacHeath said promptly.</p>
+
+<p>"I see." One his rare frowns crossed his face. "I wish I knew why the
+exciter arced across. It shouldn't have."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you have any idea?" MacHeath asked innocently. At the same
+time, he opened his mind wide to net in every wisp and filament of
+Nordred's thoughts that he could reach.</p>
+
+<p>"None at all," admitted the mathematician. "Weakness in the
+insulation, I suppose, though it tested solidly enough." And his mind,
+as far back as his preconscious and the upper fringes of his
+subconscious, agreed with his words. MacHeath could go no deeper as
+yet; he didn't know Nordred well enough yet.</p>
+
+<p>There were suspicions in Nordred's mind that the insulation weakness
+must have been caused by deliberate sabotage, but he had no one to pin
+his suspicions on. Neither he nor anyone else connected with the
+Redford project was aware of the true status of Dr. Konrad Bern.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, let's hope it doesn't happen again," MacHeath said. "Balancing
+these babies so that they work properly is hard enough for a deuteron
+accelerator, but the Monster here is ten times as touchy."</p>
+
+<p>Nordred nodded absently. "I know. But our work can't be done with
+anything less." Nordred actually knew less about the engineering
+details of the big accelerator than anyone else on the project; he was
+primarily a philosopher-mathematician, and only secondarily a
+physicist. He was theoretically in charge of the project, but the
+actual experimentation was done by the other four men; Drs. Roger
+Kent, Paul Luvochek, Solomon Bessermann, and Konrad Bern. These four
+and their assistants set up and ran off the experiments designed to
+test Dr. Nordred's theories.</p>
+
+<p>MacHeath picked up his instrument case again, and the three men went
+out of the gun chamber, into the outer room, and then started up the
+spiral stairway that led to the surface, talking as they went. But the
+apparent conversation had little to do with the instruction that
+MacHeath was giving Griffin as they climbed.</p>
+
+<p>So when MacHeath stopped suddenly and patted at his coverall pockets,
+Griffin was ready for the words that came next.</p>
+
+<p>"Damn!" MacHeath said. "I've left my notebook. Will you go down and
+get it for me, Bill?"</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Nordred had neither understood nor noticed the actual
+instructions:</p>
+
+<p>"Bill, as soon as I give you an excuse, get back down there and check
+that gun chamber. Give it a thorough going-over. I don't really think
+you'll find a thing, but I don't want to take any chances at this
+stage of the game."</p>
+
+<p>"Right," said Griffin, starting back down the stairway.</p>
+
+<p>MacHeath and Dr. Nordred went on climbing.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>David MacHeath sat at a table in the project's cafeteria, absently
+stirring his coffee, and trying to look professionally modest while
+Dr. Luvochek and Dr. Bessermann alternately praised him for his work.</p>
+
+<p>Luvochek, a tubby little butterball of a man, whose cherubic face
+would have made him look almost childlike if it weren't for the blue
+of his jaw, said: "You and those two men of yours have really done a
+marvelous job in the past four days, Mr. MacHeath&mdash;really marvelous."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll say," Bessermann chimed in. "I was getting pretty tired of
+looking at burned-out equipment and spending three-quarters of my time
+putting in replacement parts and wielding a soldering gun." Bessermann
+was leaner than Luvochek, but, like his brother scientist, he was
+balding on top. Both men were in their middle thirties.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't understand this jinx, myself," Luvochek said. "At first, it
+was just little things, but the accidents got worse and worse. And
+then, when the Monster blew&mdash;" He stopped and shook his head slowly.
+"I'd suspect sabotage, except that there was never any sign of
+tampering with the equipment I saw."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you think of the sabotage idea?" Bessermann asked MacHeath.</p>
+
+<p>MacHeath shrugged. "Haven't seen any signs of it."</p>
+
+<p>"Run of bad luck," said Luvochek. "That's all."</p>
+
+<p>As they talked MacHeath absorbed the patterns of thought that wove in
+and out in the two men's minds. Both men were more open than Dr.
+Nordred; they were easier for MacHeath to understand. Nowhere was
+there any thought of guilt&mdash;at least, as far as sabotage was
+concerned.</p>
+
+<p>MacHeath drank his coffee slowly and thoughtfully, keeping up his part
+of the three-way conversation while he concentrated on his own
+problem.</p>
+
+<p>One thing was certain: Nowhere in the minds of any of the personnel of
+the Redford Project was there any conscious knowledge of sabotage. Not
+even in the mind of Konrad Bern.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Roger Kent, a tall, lantern-jawed sad-eyed man in his forties, had
+been hard to get through to at first, but as soon as MacHeath
+discovered that the hard block Kent had built up around himself was
+caused by grief over a wife who had been dead five years, he became as
+easy to read as a billboard. Kent had submerged his grief in work; the
+eternal drive of the true scientist to drag the truth out of Mother
+Nature. He was constitutionally incapable of sabotaging the very
+instruments that had been built to dig in after that truth.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Konrad Bern, on the other hand, was difficult to read below the
+preconscious stage. Science, to him, was a form of power, to be used
+for "idealistic" purposes. He was perfectly capable of sabotaging the
+weapons of an enemy if it became necessary, whether that meant ruining
+a physical instrument or carefully falsifying the results of an
+experiment. Outwardly, he was a pleasant enough chap, but his mind
+revealed a rigidly held pattern of hatreds, fears, and twisted
+idealism. He held them tightly against the onslaughts of a hostile
+world.</p>
+
+<p>And that meant that he couldn't possibly have any control over
+whatever psionic powers he may have had.</p>
+
+<p>Unless&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Unless he was so expert and so well-trained that he was better than
+anything the S.M.M.R. had ever known.</p>
+
+<p>MacHeath didn't even like to think about that. It would mean that all
+the theory of psionics that had been built up so painstakingly over
+the past years would have to be junked <i>in toto</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Something was gnawing in the depths of his mind. In the perfectly
+rational but utterly nonlogical part of his subconscious where hunches
+are built, something was trying to form.</p>
+
+<p>MacHeath didn't try to probe for it. As soon as he had enough
+information for the hunch to be fully formed, it would be ready to
+use. Until then, it would be worthless, and probing for it might
+interrupt the formation.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>He was just finishing his coffee as Bill Griffin came in the door and
+headed toward the table where MacHeath, Luvochek, and Bessermann were
+sitting.</p>
+
+<p>MacHeath stood up and said: "Excuse me. I'll have to be getting some
+work done if you guys are ever going to get your own work done."</p>
+
+<p>"Sure."</p>
+
+<p>"Go ahead."</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks for the coffee," MacHeath added as he moved away.</p>
+
+<p>"Anytime," said Bessermann, grinning. "You guys just keep up the good
+work. When you fix 'em, they stay fixed. We haven't had a burnout
+since you came."</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe you broke our statistical jinx," said Luvochek, with a chubby
+smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe," said MacHeath. "I hope so."</p>
+
+<p>For some reason, the gnawing in his hunch factory became more
+persistent.</p>
+
+<p>As he and Griffin walked toward the door, Griffin reported rapidly. "I
+checked everything in the gun chamber. No sign of any tampering.
+Everything's just as we left it. The dust film hasn't been disturbed."</p>
+
+<p>"It figures," said MacHeath.</p>
+
+<p>Outside, in the corridor, they met Dr. Konrad Bern hurrying toward the
+cafeteria. He stopped as he saw them.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, hello, Mr. MacHeath, Mr. Griffin," he said. His white-toothed
+smile was friendly, but both of the S.M.M.R. agents could detect the
+hostility that was hard and brittle beneath the surface. "I wanted to
+thank you for the wonderful job you've been doing."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, thank you, doctor," said MacHeath honestly. "We aim to satisfy."</p>
+
+<p>Bern chuckled. "You're doing well so far. Odd streak of luck we've
+had, isn't it? Poor Dr. Nordred has been under a terrible strain; his
+whole life work is tied up in this project." He made a vague gesture
+with one hand. "Would you care for some coffee?"</p>
+
+<p>"Just had some, thanks," said MacHeath, "but we'll take a rain check."</p>
+
+<p>"Fine. Anytime." And he went on into the cafeteria.</p>
+
+<p>"Wow!" said Griffin as he walked on down the corridor with MacHeath.
+"That man is scared silly! But what an actor! You'd never know he was
+eating his guts out."</p>
+
+<p>"Sure he's scared," MacHeath said. "With all this sabotage talk going
+around, he's afraid there'll be an exhaustive investigation, and he
+can't take that right now."</p>
+
+<p>Griffin frowned. "I guess I missed that. What did you pick up?"</p>
+
+<p>"He's supposed to meet a Soviet agent tonight, and he's afraid he'll
+be caught. He doesn't know what happened to the first three, and he
+won't know what will happen to Number Four tonight.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll keep him around as long as he's useful. He's not a Bohr or a
+Pauli or a Fermi, but he&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>MacHeath stopped himself suddenly and came to a dead halt.</p>
+
+<p>"My God," he said softly, "that's <i>it</i>."</p>
+
+<p>His hunch had hatched.</p>
+
+<p>After a moment, he said: "Harry is getting back from the target end of
+the tube now, Bill. He can't pick me up, so beetle it down to the tool
+room, get him, and get up to the workshop fast. If I'm not there,
+wait; I have a little prying to do."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/image_003.jpg" width="500" height="398" alt=""  />
+</div>
+
+<p>"Can do," said Griffin. He went toward the elevator at an easy lope.</p>
+
+<p>David MacHeath went in the opposite direction.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>When MacHeath returned to the workshop which he had been assigned,
+Bill Griffin and Harry Benbow were waiting for him. Beside the
+big-muscled Griffin, Harry Benbow looked even thinner than he was. He
+was a good six-two, which made him a head taller than Griffin, but,
+unlike many tall, lean men, Benbow had no tendency to slouch; he stood
+tall and straight, reminding MacHeath of a poplar tree towering
+proudly over the countryside. Benbow was one of those rare American
+Negroes whose skin was actually as close to being "black" as human
+pigmentation will allow. His eyes were like disks of obsidian set in
+spheres of white porcelain, which gave an odd contrast-similarity
+effect when compared with Griffin's china-blue eyes.</p>
+
+<p>If the average man had wanted to pick two human beings who were
+"opposites," he could hardly have made a better choice than Benbow and
+the short, thickly-built, blond-haired, pink-skinned Bill Griffin. But
+the average man would be so struck by the differences that he would
+never notice that the similarities were vastly more important.</p>
+
+<p>"You look as if you'd just been kissed by Miss America," Harry said as
+MacHeath came through the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Better than that," MacHeath said. "We've got work to do."</p>
+
+<p>"What's the pitch?" Griffin wanted to know.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, in the first place, I'm afraid Dr. Konrad Bern is no longer of
+any use to the Redford Project. We're going to have to arrest him as
+an unregistered agent of the Soviet Government."</p>
+
+<p>"It's just as well," said Harry Benbow gently. "His research hasn't
+done us any good and it hasn't done the Soviets any good. The poor
+guy's been on edge ever since he got here. All the pale hide around
+this place stirs up every nerve in him."</p>
+
+<p>"What got you onto this?" Griffin asked MacHeath.</p>
+
+<p>"A hunch first," MacHeath said. "Then I got data to back it up. But,
+first ... Harry, how'd you know about Bern's reactions? He keeps those
+prejudices of his down pretty deep; I didn't think you could go that
+far."</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't have to. He spent half an hour talking to me this morning.
+He was so happy to see a fellow human being&mdash;according to his
+definition of human being&mdash;that he was as easy to read as if <i>you</i>
+were doing the reading."</p>
+
+<p>MacHeath nodded. "I hate to throw him to the wolves, but he's got to
+go."</p>
+
+<p>"What was the snooping you said you had to do?" Griffin asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Dates. Times. Briefly, I found that the run of accidents has been
+building up to a peak. At first, it was just small meters that went
+wrong. Then bigger, more complex stuff. And, finally, the Monster
+went. See the pattern?"</p>
+
+<p>The other men nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"You're the therapist," Griffin said. "What do you suggest?"</p>
+
+<p>"Shock treatment," said David MacHeath.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Just how Dr. Konrad Bern got wind of the fact that a squad of FBI men
+had come to the project to arrest him that evening is something that
+MacHeath didn't know until later. He was busy at the time, ignoring
+anything but what he was interested in. It always fascinated him to
+watch the mind of a psychokinetic expert at work. He couldn't do the
+trick himself, and he was always amazed at the ability of anyone who
+could.</p>
+
+<p>It was like watching a pianist play a particularly difficult concerto.
+A person can watch a pianist, see every move he is making, and why he
+is making it. But being able to see what is going on doesn't mean that
+one can duplicate the action. MacHeath was in the same position.
+Telepathically, he could observe the play of emotions that ran through
+a psychokinetic's mind&mdash;the combinations of avid desire and the utter
+loathing which, playing one against another, could move a brick, a
+book, or a Buick if the mind was powerful enough. But he couldn't do
+it himself, no matter how carefully he tried to follow the raging
+emotions that acted as two opposing jaws of a pair of tongs to lift
+and move the object.</p>
+
+<p>And so engrossed was he with the process that he did not notice that
+Konrad Bern had eluded the FBI. He was unaware of what had happened
+until one of the Federal agents rapped loudly on the workshop door.</p>
+
+<p>Almost instantly, MacHeath picked up the information from the agent's
+mind. He glanced at Griffin and Benbow. "You two can handle it. Be
+careful you don't overdo it."</p>
+
+<p>Then he went to the door and opened it a trifle. "Yes?"</p>
+
+<p>The man outside showed a gold badge. "Morgan, FBI. You David
+MacHeath?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes." MacHeath stepped outside and showed the FBI man his
+identification.</p>
+
+<p>"We were told to co-operate with you in this Konrad Bern case. He's
+managed to slip away from us somehow, but we know he's still in the
+area. He can't get past the gate."</p>
+
+<p>MacHeath let his mind expand until it meshed with that of Dr. Konrad
+Bern.</p>
+
+<p>"There is a way out," MacHeath snapped. "The acceleration tube."</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p>"Come on!" He started sprinting toward the elevators. He explained to
+the FBI agent as they went.</p>
+
+<p>"The acceleration tube of the ultracosmotron runs due north of here
+for two miles underground. The guard at the other end won't be
+expecting anyone to be coming from the inside of the target building.
+If Bern plays his cards right, he can get away."</p>
+
+<p>"Can't we phone the target building?" the FBI man asked.</p>
+
+<p>"No. We shut off all the electrical equipment and took down some of
+the wires so we could balance the acceleration fields."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, if he's on foot, we could send a car out there. We'd get there
+before he does. Uh ... wouldn't we?"</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe. But he'll kill himself if he sees he's trapped." That wasn't
+quite true. Bern was ready to fight to the death, and he had a heavy
+pistol to back him up. MacHeath didn't want to see anyone killed, and
+he didn't want stray bullets flying around the inside of that tube or
+in the target room.</p>
+
+<p>MacHeath and the FBI agent piled out of the elevator at the bottom of
+the shaft. Dr. Roger Kent was standing at the head of the stairs that
+spiraled down to the gun chamber. Dr. Kent knew that Bern had gone
+down the stairway, but he didn't know why.</p>
+
+<p>"He's our saboteur," MacHeath said quickly. "I'm going after him. As
+soon as I close the door and seal it, you turn on the pumps. Lower the
+air pressure in the tube to a pound per square inch below
+atmospheric. That'll put a force of about a ton and a quarter against
+the doors, and he won't be able to open them."</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Kent still didn't grasp the fact that Bern was a spy.</p>
+
+<p>"Explain to him, Morgan," MacHeath told the Federal agent. He went on
+down the spiral staircase, knowing that Kent would understand and act
+in plenty of time.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>The door to the tube was standing open. MacHeath slipped on a pair of
+the sponge-soled shoes, noticing angrily that Bern hadn't bothered to
+do so. He went into the tube and closed the door behind him. Then he
+started down the blackness of the tube at a fast trot. Ahead of him,
+in the utter darkness, he could hear the click of heels as the
+leather-shod Bern moved toward the target end of the long tube.</p>
+
+<p>Neither of them had lights. They were unnecessary, for one thing,
+since there was only one direction to go and there were no obstacles
+in the path. Bern would probably have carried a flashlight if he'd
+been able to get his hands on one quickly, but he hadn't, so he went
+in darkness. MacHeath didn't want a light; in the darkness, he had the
+advantage of knowing where his opponent was.</p>
+
+<p>Every so often, Bern would stop, listening for sounds of pursuit,
+since his own footsteps, echoing down the glass-lined cylinder,
+drowned out any noise from behind. But MacHeath, running silently on
+the toes of his thick-soled shoes, kept in motion, gaining on the
+fleeing spy.</p>
+
+<p>A two-mile run is a good stretch of exercise for anyone, but MacHeath
+didn't dare slow down. As it was, Konrad Bern was already tugging
+frantically at the door that led to the target room by the time
+MacHeath reached him. But the faint sighing of the pumps had already
+told MacHeath that the air pressure had been dropped. Bern couldn't
+possibly get the door open.</p>
+
+<p>MacHeath's lungs wanted to be filled with air; his chest wanted to
+heave; he wanted to pant, taking in great gulps of life-giving oxygen.
+But he didn't dare. He didn't want Bern to know he was there, so he
+strained to keep his breath silent.</p>
+
+<p>He stepped up behind the physicist in the pitch blackness, and judging
+carefully, brought his fist down on the nape of the man's neck in a
+hard rabbit punch.</p>
+
+<p>Konrad Bern dropped unconscious to the floor of the tube.</p>
+
+<p>Then MacHeath let his chest pump air into his lungs in long, harsh
+gasps. Shakily, he lowered himself to the floor beside Bern and
+squatted on his haunches, waiting for the hiss of the bleeder valve
+that would tell him that the air pressure had been raised to allow
+someone to enter the air lock.</p>
+
+<p>It was Morgan, the FBI man, who finally cracked the door. Griffin and
+Dr. Kent were with him.</p>
+
+<p>"You all right?" asked Morgan.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm fine," MacHeath said, "but Bern is going to have a sore neck for
+a while. I didn't hit him hard enough to break it, but he'll get
+plenty of sleep before he wakes up."</p>
+
+<p>More FBI men came in, and they dragged out the unprotesting Bern.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Kent said: "Well, I'm glad that's over. I'll have to get back and
+see what Dr. Nordred is raving about."</p>
+
+<p>"Raving?" asked MacHeath innocently.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. While I was in the pump room reducing the pressure, he called me
+on the interphone. Said he'd been looking all over for me. He and
+Luvochek and Bessermann are up in the lab." He frowned. "They claim
+that one of the radiolead samples was floating in the air in the lab.
+It's settled down now, I gather, but it only weighs a fraction of what
+it should, though it's gaining all the time. And that's ridiculous.
+It's not at all what Dr. Nordred's theory predicted." Then he clamped
+his lips together, thinking perhaps he had talked too much.</p>
+
+<p>"Interesting," said MacHeath blandly. "Very interesting."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Senator Gonzales sat in Brian Taggert's sixth-floor office in the
+S.M.M.R. building and looked puzzled. "All right, I grant you that
+Bern couldn't have been the saboteur. Then why arrest him?"</p>
+
+<p>Dave MacHeath took a drag from his cigarette before he answered. "We
+had to have a patsy&mdash;someone to put the blame on. No one really
+believed that it was just bad luck, but they'll all accept the idea
+that Bern was a saboteur."</p>
+
+<p>"We would have had to arrest him eventually, anyway," said Brian
+Taggert.</p>
+
+<p>"Give me a quick run-down," Gonzales said. "I've got to explain this
+to the President."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you ever hear of the Pauli Effect?" MacHeath asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Something about the number of electrons that&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No," MacHeath said quickly. "That's the Pauli <i>principle</i>, better
+known as the Exclusion Principle. The Pauli <i>Effect</i> is a different
+thing entirely, a psionic effect.</p>
+
+<p>"It used to be said that a theoretical physicist was judged by his
+inability to handle research apparatus; the clumsier he was in
+research, the better he was with theory. But Wolfgang Pauli was a lot
+more than clumsy. Apparatus would break, topple over, go to pieces, or
+burn up if Pauli just walked into the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Up to the time he died, in 1958, his colleagues kidded about it,
+without really believing there was anything behind it. But it is
+recorded that the explosion of some vacuum equipment in a laboratory
+at the University of G&ouml;ttingen was the direct result of the Pauli
+Effect. It was definitely established that the explosion occurred at
+the precise moment that a train on which Pauli was traveling stopped
+for a short time at the G&ouml;ttingen railway station."</p>
+
+<p>The senator said: "The poltergeist phenomenon."</p>
+
+<p>"Not exactly," MacHeath said, "although there is a similarity. The
+poltergeist phenomenon is usually spectacular and is nearly always
+associated with teen-age neurotics. Then there's the pyrotic; fires
+always start in his vicinity."</p>
+
+<p>"But there's always a reason for psionic phenomena to react violently
+under subconscious control," Senator Gonzales pointed out. "There's
+always a psychological quirk."</p>
+
+<p>"Sure. And I almost fell into the same trap, myself."</p>
+
+<p>"How so?"</p>
+
+<p>"I was thinking that if Bern were the saboteur, all our theories about
+psionics would have to be thrown out&mdash;we'd have to start from a
+different set of precepts. <i>And I didn't even want to think about such
+an idea!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"Nobody likes their pet theories overthrown," Gonzales observed.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course not. But here's the point: The only way that a scientific
+theory can be proved wrong is to uncover a phenomenon which doesn't
+fit in with the theory. A theoretical physicist is a mathematician; he
+makes logical deductions and logical predictions by juggling symbols
+around in accordance with some logical system. But the axioms, the
+assumptions upon which those systems are built, are nonlogical. You
+can't prove an axiom; if comes right out of the mind.</p>
+
+<p>"So imagine that you're a theoretical physicist. A really
+original-type thinker. You come up with a mathematical system that
+explains all known phenomena at that time, and predicts others that
+are, as yet, unknown. You check your math over and over again; there's
+no error in your logic, since it all follows, step by step."</p>
+
+<p>"O.K.; go on," Gonzales said interestedly.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, then; you've built yourself a logical universe, based on
+your axioms, and the structure seems to have a one-to-one
+correspondence with the actual universe. Not only that, but if the
+theory is accepted, you've built your reputation on it&mdash;your life.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, what happens if your axioms&mdash;not the logic <i>about</i> the axioms,
+but the axioms themselves&mdash;are proven to be wrong?"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Brian Taggert took his pipe out of his mouth. "Why, you give up the
+erroneous set of axioms and build a new set that will explain the new
+phenomenon. Isn't that what a scientist is supposed to do?" His manner
+was that of wide-eyed innocence laid on with a large trowel.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, <i>sure</i> it is," said the senator. "A man builds his whole life,
+his whole universe; on a set of principles, and he scraps them at the
+drop of a hat. <i>Sure</i> he does."</p>
+
+<p>"He claims he will," MacHeath said. "Any scientist worth the paper his
+diploma is printed on is firmly convinced that he will change his
+axioms as soon as they're proven false. Of course, ninety-nine per
+cent of 'em <i>can't</i> and <i>won't</i> and <i>don't</i>. They refuse to look at
+anything that suggests changing axioms.</p>
+
+<p>"Some scientists eagerly accept the axioms that they were taught in
+school and hang on to them all their lives, fighting change tooth and
+nail. Oh, they'll accept new ideas, all right&mdash;provided that they fit
+in with the structures based on the old axioms.</p>
+
+<p>"Then there are the young iconoclasts who don't like the axioms as
+they stand, so they make up some new ones of their own&mdash;men like
+Newton, Einstein, Planck, and so on. Then, once the new axioms have
+been forced down the throats of their colleagues, the innovators
+become the Old Order; the iconoclasts become the ones who put the
+fences around the new images to safeguard them. And they're even more
+firmly wedded to their axioms than anyone else. This is <i>their</i>
+universe!</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, these men proclaim to all the world that they are
+perfectly willing to change their axioms. And the better a scientist
+he is, the more he believes, in his heart-of-hearts, that he really
+would change. He really thinks, consciously, that he wants others to
+test his theories.</p>
+
+<p>"But notice: A theory is only good if it explains all known phenomena
+in its field. If it does, then the only thing that can topple it is a
+<i>new</i> fact. The only thing that can threaten the complex structure
+formulated by a really creative, painstaking, mathematical physicist
+is <i>experiment</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>Senator Gonzales' attentive silence was eloquent.</p>
+
+<p>"Experiment!" MacHeath repeated. "That can wreck a theory quicker and
+more completely than all the learned arguments of a dozen men. And
+every theoretician is aware of that fact. Consciously, he gladly
+accepts the inevitable; but his subconscious mind will fight to keep
+those axioms.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Even if it has to smash every experimental device around!</i></p>
+
+<p>"After all, if nobody can experiment on your theory, it can't be
+proved wrong, can it?</p>
+
+<p>"In Nordred's case, as in Pauli's, this subconscious defense actually
+made itself felt in the form of broken equipment. Dr. Theodore Nordred
+was totally unconscious of the fact that he detested and feared the
+idea of anyone experimenting to prove or disprove his theory. He had
+no idea that he, himself, was re-channeling the energy in those
+machines to make them burn out."</p>
+
+<p>Brian Taggert looked at MacHeath pointedly. "Do you think the shock
+treatment you gave him will cause any repercussions?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. Griffin and Benbow held that block of radiolead floating in the
+air only while Dr. Nordred was alone in the lab. He pushed at it, felt
+of it, and moved it around for more than ten minutes before he'd admit
+the reality of what he saw. Then he called Luvochek and Bessermann in
+to look at it.</p>
+
+<p>"Griffin and Benbow let the sample settle to the desk, so that by the
+time the other two scientists got to the lab, the lead didn't have an
+apparent negative weight, but was still much lighter than it should
+be.</p>
+
+<p>"All the while that Bessermann and Luvochek were trying to weigh the
+lead block, to get an accurate measurement, Griffin and Benbow, three
+rooms away, kept increasing the weight slowly towards normal. And so
+far no one has invented a device which will give an instantaneous
+check on the weight of an object. A balance can't check the weight of
+a sample unless that weight is constant; there's too much time lag
+involved.</p>
+
+<p>"So, what evidence do they have? Scientifically speaking, none. They
+have no measurements, and the experiment can't be repeated. And only
+Nordred actually saw the sample <i>floating</i>. Luvochek and Bessermann
+will eventually think up a 'natural' explanation for the apparent
+steady gain in weight. Only Nordred will remain convinced that what he
+saw actually happened.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see how there could be any serious repercussions in the field
+of physics." But he looked at Taggert for confirmation.</p>
+
+<p>Taggert gave it to him with an approving look.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a funny thing," said Gonzales musingly. "Some time back, we were
+in a situation where we had to go to the extreme of physical violence
+to keep from demonstrating to a scientist that psionic powers could
+be controlled, just to keep from ruining the physicist's work.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, we turn right around and demonstrate the 'impossible' to another
+physicist in order to pull his hard-earned axioms out from under him."
+He smiled wryly. "There ain't no justice in the world."</p>
+
+<p>"No," agreed MacHeath, "but the trick worked. He won't have any
+subconscious desire to smash equipment just to protect a theory that
+has already been smashed. On the contrary, he'll let them go through
+in order to find new data to build another theory on."</p>
+
+<p>"He'll never again be the man he was," said Taggert regretfully. "He's
+lost the force of his convictions. He won't be capable of taking a
+no-nonsense, dogmatic, black-and-white stand. But it was necessary."
+He made an odd gesture with one hand. "What else can you do with a man
+who's a psionic psychopath?"</p>
+
+
+<h3>THE END</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30304 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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+
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+
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #30304 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30304)
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Psichopath, by Gordon Randall Garrett
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Psichopath
+
+Author: Gordon Randall Garrett
+
+Illustrator: van Dongen
+
+Release Date: October 20, 2009 [EBook #30304]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PSICHOPATH ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                         Transcriber's Note:
+
+  This etext was produced from Analog Science Fact & Fiction October 1960.
+  Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright
+  on this publication was renewed.
+
+
+                              PSICHOPATH
+
+
+                         By DARREL T. LANGART
+
+
+
+     _Given psi powers like clairvoyance and telepathy, solving
+     problems of sabotage would be easy, of course. That is, it
+     seems that way at first thought!_
+
+
+                      Illustrated by van Dongen
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+The man in the pastel blue topcoat walked with steady purpose, but
+without haste, through the chill, wind-swirled drizzle that filled the
+air above the streets of Arlington, Virginia. His matching blue
+cap-hood was pulled low over his forehead, and the clear, infrared
+radiating face mask had been flipped down to protect his chubby cheeks
+and round nose from the icy wind.
+
+No one noticed him particularly. He was just another average man who
+blended in with all the others who walked the streets that day. No one
+recognized him; his face did not appear often in public places, except
+in his own state, and, even so, it was a thoroughly ordinary face.
+But, as he walked, Senator John Peter Gonzales was keeping a mental,
+fine-webbed, four-dimensional net around him, feeling for the
+slightest touch of recognition. He wanted no one to connect him in any
+way with his intended destination.
+
+It was not his first visit to the six-floor brick building that stood
+on a street in a lower-middle-class district of Arlington. Actually,
+government business took him there more often than would have been
+safe for the average man-on-the-street. For Senator Gonzales, the
+process of remaining incognito was so elementary that it was almost
+subconscious.
+
+Arriving at his destination, he paused on the sidewalk to light a
+cigarette, shielding it against the wind and drizzle with cupped
+hands while his mind made one last check on the surroundings. Then he
+strode quickly up the five steps to the double doors which were
+marked: _The Society For Mystical And Metaphysical Research, Inc._
+
+Just as he stepped in, he flipped the face shield up and put on an
+old-fashioned pair of thick-lensed, black-rimmed spectacles. Then, his
+face assuming a bland smile that would have been completely out of
+place on Senator Gonzales, he went from the foyer into the front
+office.
+
+"Good afternoon, Mrs. Jesser," he said, in a high, smooth, slightly
+accented voice that was not his own. "I perceive by your aura that you
+are feeling well. Your normal aura-color is tinged with a positive
+golden hue."
+
+Mrs. Jesser, a well-rounded matron in her early forties, rose to the
+bait like a porpoise being hand-fed at a Florida zoo. "_Dear_ Swami
+Chandra! How perfectly wonderful to see you again! You're looking
+_very_ well your-_self_."
+
+The Swami, whose Indian blood was of the Aztec rather than the Brahmin
+variety, nonetheless managed to radiate all the mystery of the East.
+"My well-being, dear Mrs. Jesser, is due to the fact that I have been
+communing for the past three months with my very good friend, the
+Fifth Dalai Lama. A most refreshingly wise person." Senator Gonzales
+was fond of the Society's crackpot receptionist, and he knew exactly
+what kind of hokum would please her most.
+
+"Oh, I _do_ hope you will find time to tell me _all_ about it," she
+said effusively. "Mr. Balfour isn't in the city just now," she went
+on. "He's lecturing in New York on the history of flying saucer
+sightings. Do you realize that this is the fortieth anniversary of the
+first saucer sighting, back in 1944?"
+
+"The first _photographed_ sighting," the Swami corrected
+condescendingly. "Our friends have been watching and guiding us for
+far longer than that, and were sighted many times before they were
+photographed."
+
+Mrs. Jesser nodded briskly. "Of course. You're right, as always,
+Swami."
+
+"I am sorry to hear," the Swami continued smoothly, "that I will not
+be able to see Mr. Balfour. However, I came at the call of Mr. Brian
+Taggert, who is expecting me."
+
+Mrs. Jesser glanced down at her appointment sheet. "He didn't mention
+an appointment to me. However--" She punched a button on the intercom.
+"Mr. Taggert? Swami Chandra is here to see you. He says he has an
+appointment."
+
+Brian Taggert's deep voice came over the instrument. "The Swami, as
+usual, is very astute. I have been thinking about calling him. Send
+him right up."
+
+"You may go up, Swami," said Mrs. Jesser, wide-eyed. She watched in
+awe as the Swami marched regally through the inner door and began to
+climb the stairs toward the sixth floor.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One way to hide an ex-officio agency of the United States Government
+was to label it truthfully--_The Society For Mystical And Metaphysical
+Research_. In spite of the fact that the label was literally true, it
+sounded so crackpot that no one but a crackpot would bother to look
+into it. As a consequence, better than ninety per cent of the
+membership of the Society was composed of just such people. Only a few
+members of the "core" knew the organization's true function and
+purpose. And as long as such scatter-brains as Mrs. Jesser and Mr.
+Balfour were in there pitching, no one would ever penetrate to the
+actual core of the Society.
+
+The senator had already pocketed the exaggerated glasses by the time
+he reached the sixth floor, and his face had lost its bland,
+overly-wise smile. He pushed open the door to Taggert's office.
+
+"Have you got any ideas yet?" he asked quickly.
+
+Brian Taggert, a heavily-muscled man with dark eyes and black,
+slightly wavy hair, sat on the edge of a couch in one corner of the
+room. His desk across the room was there for paperwork only, and
+Taggert had precious little of that to bother with.
+
+He took a puff from his heavy-bowled briar. "We're going to have to
+send an agent in there. Someone who can be on the spot. Someone who
+can get the feel of the situation first hand."
+
+"That'll be difficult. We can't just suddenly stick an unknown in
+there and have an excuse for his being there. Couldn't Donahue or
+Reeves--"
+
+Taggert shook his head. "Impossible, John. Extrasensory perception
+can't replace sight, any more than sight can replace hearing. You know
+that."
+
+"Certainly. But I thought we could get enough information that way to
+tell us who our saboteur is. No dice, eh?"
+
+"No dice," said Taggert. "Look at the situation we've got there. The
+purpose of the Redford Research Team is to test the Meson Ultimate
+Decay Theory of Dr. Theodore Nordred. Now, if we--"
+
+Senator Gonzales, walking across the room toward Taggert, gestured
+with one hand. "I know! I know! Give me _some_ credit for
+intelligence! But we _do_ have one suspect, don't we? What about
+_him_?"
+
+Taggert chuckled through a wreath of smoke. "Calm down, John. Or are
+you trying to give me your impression of Mrs. Jesser in a conversation
+with a saucerite?"
+
+The senator laughed and sat down in a nearby chair. "All right. Sorry.
+But this whole thing is lousing up our entire space program. First
+off, we nearly lose Dr. Ch'ien, and, with him gone, the interstellar
+drive project would've been shot. Now, if this sabotage keeps up, the
+Redford project _will_ be shot, and that means we might have to stick
+to the old-fashioned rocket to get off-planet. Brian, we _need_
+antigravity, and, so far, Nordred's theory is our only clue."
+
+"Agreed," said Taggert.
+
+"Well, we're never going to get it if equipment keeps mysteriously
+burning itself out, breaking down, and just generally goofing up. This
+morning, the primary exciter on the new ultracosmotron went haywire,
+and the beam of sodium nuclei burned through part of the accelerator
+tube wall. It'll take a month to get it back in working order."
+
+Taggert took his pipe out of his mouth and tapped the dottle into a
+nearby ash disposal unit. "And you want to pick up our pet spy?"
+
+Senator Gonzales scowled. "Well, I'd certainly call him our prime
+suspect." But there was a certain lack of conviction in his manner.
+
+Brian Taggert didn't flatly contradict the senator. "Maybe. But you
+know, John, there's one thing that bothers me about these accidents."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"The fact that we have not one shred of evidence that points to
+sabotage."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In a room on the fifth floor, directly below Brian Taggert's office, a
+young man was half sitting, half reclining in a thickly upholstered
+adjustable chair. He had dropped the back of the chair to a forty-five
+degree angle and lifted up the footrest; now he was leaning back in
+lazy comfort, his ankles crossed, his right hand holding a slowly
+smoldering cigarette, his eyes contemplating the ceiling. Or, rather,
+they seemed to be contemplating something _beyond_ the ceiling.
+
+It was pure coincidence that the focus of his thoughts happened to be
+located in about the same volume of space that his eyes seemed to be
+focused on. If Brian Taggert and Senator Gonzales had been in the room
+below, his eyes would still be looking at the ceiling.
+
+In repose, his face looked even younger than his twenty-eight years
+would have led one to expect. His close-cropped brown hair added to
+the impression of youth, and the well-tailored suit on his slim,
+muscular body added to the effect. At any top-flight university, he
+could have passes for a well-bred, sophisticated, intelligent student
+who had money enough to indulge himself and sense enough not to overdo
+it.
+
+He was beginning to understand the pattern that was being woven in the
+room above--beginning to feel it in depth.
+
+Senator Gonzalez was mildly telepathic, inasmuch as he could pick up
+thoughts in the prevocal stage--the stage at which thought becomes
+definitely organized into words, phrases, and sentences. He could go a
+little deeper, into the selectivity stage, where the linking processes
+of logic took over from the nonlogical but rational processes of the
+preconscious--but only if he knew the person well. Where the senator
+excelled was in detecting emotional tone and manipulating emotional
+processes, both within himself and within others.
+
+Brian Taggert was an analyzer, an originator, a motivator--and more.
+The young man found himself avoiding too deep a probe into the mind of
+Brian Taggert; he knew that he had not yet achieved the maturity to
+understand the multilayered depths of a mind like that. Eventually,
+perhaps....
+
+Not that Senator Gonzales was a child, nor that he was emotionally or
+intellectually shallow. It was merely that he was not of Taggert's
+caliber.
+
+The young man absently took another drag from his cigarette. Taggert
+had explained the basic problem to him, but he was getting a wider
+picture from the additional information that Senator Gonzales had
+brought.
+
+Dr. Theodore Nordred, a mathematical physicist and one of the
+top-flight, high-powered, original minds in the field, had shown that
+Einstein's final equations only held in a universe composed entirely
+of normal matter. Since the great Einstein had died before the
+Principle of Parity had been overthrown in the mid-fifties, he had
+been unable to incorporate the information into his Unified Field
+Theory. Nordred had been able to show, mathematically, that Einstein's
+equations were valid only for a completely "dexter," or right-handed
+universe, or for a completely "sinister" or left-handed universe.
+
+Although the universe in which Man lived was predominantly
+dexter--arbitrarily so designated--it was not completely so. It had a
+"sinister" component amounting to approximately one one-hundred-thousandth
+of one per cent. On the average, one atom out of every ten million in the
+universe was an atom of antimatter. The distribution was unequal of course;
+antimatter could not exist in contact with ordinary matter. Most of it was
+distributed throughout interstellar space in the form of individual atoms,
+freely floating in space, a long way from any large mass of normal matter.
+
+But that minute fraction of a per cent was enough to show that the
+known universe was not totally Einsteinian. In a purely Einsteinian
+universe, antigravity was impossible, but if the equations of Dr.
+Theodore Nordred were actually a closer approximation to true reality
+than those of Einstein, then antigravity _might_ be a practical
+reality.
+
+And that was the problem the Redford Research Team was working on. It
+was a parallel project to the interstellar drive problem, being
+carried on elsewhere.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The "pet spy," as Taggert had called him, was Dr. Konrad Bern, a
+middle-aged Negro from Tanganyika, who was convinced that only under
+Communism could the colored races of the world achieve the
+technological organization and living standard of the white man. He
+had been trained as a "sleeper"; not even the exhaustive
+investigations of the FBI had turned up any relationship between Bern
+and the Soviets. It had taken the telepathic probing of the S.M.M.R.
+agents to uncover his real purposes. Known, he constituted no danger.
+
+There was no denying that he was a highly competent, if not brilliant,
+physicist. And, since it was quite impossible for him to get any
+information on the Redford Project into the hands of the
+opposition--it was no longer fashionable to call Communists "the
+enemy"--there was no reason why he shouldn't be allowed to contribute
+to the American efforts to bridge space.
+
+Three times in the five months since Bern had joined the project,
+agents of the Soviet government had made attempts to contact the
+physicist. Three times the FBI, warned by S.M.M.R. agents, had quietly
+blocked the contact. Konrad Bern had been effectively isolated.
+
+But, at the project site itself, equipment failure had become
+increasingly more frequent, all out of proportion to the normal
+accident rate in any well-regulated laboratory. The work of the
+project had practically come to a standstill; the ultra-secret project
+reports to the President were beginning to show less and less progress
+in the basic research, and more and more progress in repairing damaged
+equipment. Apparently, though, increasing efficiency in repair work
+was self-neutralizing; repairing an instrument in half the time merely
+meant that it could break down twice as often.
+
+It had to be sabotage. And yet, not even the S.M.M.R. agents could
+find any trace of intentional damage nor any thought patterns that
+would indicate deliberate damage.
+
+And Senator John Peter Gonzales quite evidently did _not_ want to face
+the implications of _that_ particular fact.
+
+"We're going to have to send an agent in," Taggert repeated.
+
+(_That's my cue_, thought the young man on the fifth floor as he
+crushed out his cigarette and got up from the chair.)
+
+"I don't know how we're going to manage it," said the senator. "What
+excuse do we have for putting a new man on the Redford team?"
+
+Brian Taggert grinned. "What they need is an expert repair
+technician--a man who knows how to build and repair complex research
+instruments. He doesn't have to know anything about the purpose of the
+team itself, all he has to do is keep the equipment in good shape."
+
+Senator Gonzalez let a slow smile spread over his face. "You've been
+gulling me, you snake. All right; I deserved it. Tell him to come in."
+
+As the door opened, Taggert said: "Senator Gonzales, may I present Mr.
+David MacHeath? He's our man, I think."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+David MacHeath watched a blue line wriggle its way erratically across
+the face of an oscilloscope. "The wave form is way off," he said
+flatly, "and the frequency is slithering all over the place."
+
+He squinted at the line for a moment then spoke to the man standing
+nearby. "Signal Harry to back her off two degrees, then run her up
+slowly, ten minutes at a time."
+
+The other man flickered the key on the side of the small
+carbide-Welsbach lamp. The shutters blinked, sending pulses of light
+down the length of the ten-foot diameter glass-walled tube in which
+the men were working. Far down the tube, MacHeath could see the
+answering flicker from Harry, a mile and a half away in the darkness.
+
+MacHeath watched the screen again. After a few seconds, he said:
+"O.K.! Hold it!"
+
+Again the lamp flashed.
+
+"Well, it isn't perfect," MacHeath said, "but it's all we can do from
+here. We'll have to evacuate the tube to get her in perfect balance.
+Tell Harry to knock off for the day."
+
+While the welcome message was being flashed, MacHeath shut off the
+testing instruments and disconnected them. It was possible to
+compensate a little for the testing equipment, but a telephone, or
+even an electric flashlight, would simply add to the burden.
+
+Bill Griffin shoved down the key on the lamp he was holding and locked
+it into place. The shutters remained open, and the lamp shed a beam of
+white light along the shining walls of the cylindrical tube. "How much
+longer do you figure it'll take, Dave?" he asked.
+
+"Another shift, at least," said MacHeath, picking up the compact,
+shielded instrument case. "You want to carry that mat?"
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Griffin picked up the thick sponge-rubber mat that the instrument case
+had been sitting on, and the two men started off down the tube,
+walking silently on the sponge-rubber-soled shoes which would not
+scratch the glass underfoot.
+
+"Any indication yet as to who our saboteur is?" Griffin asked.
+
+"I'm not sure," MacHeath admitted. "I've picked up a couple of leads,
+but I don't know if they mean anything or not."
+
+"I wonder if there _is_ a saboteur," Griffin said musingly. "Maybe
+it's just a run of bad luck. It could happen, you know. A statistical
+run of--"
+
+"You don't believe that, any more than I do," MacHeath said.
+
+"No. But I find it even harder to believe that a materialistic
+philosophy like Communism could evolve any workable psionic
+discipline."
+
+"So do I," agreed MacHeath.
+
+"But it can't be physical sabotage," Griffin argued. "There's not a
+trace of it--anywhere. It _has_ to be psionic."
+
+"Right," said MacHeath, grinning as he saw what was coming next.
+
+"But we've already eliminated that. So?" Griffin nodded firmly as if
+in full agreement with himself. "So we follow the dictum of the
+Master: 'Eliminate the impossible; whatever is left, no matter how
+improbable, is the truth.' And, since there is absolutely nothing
+left, there is no truth. At the bottom, the whole thing is merely a
+matter of mental delusion."
+
+"Sherlock Holmes would be proud of you, Bill," MacHeath said. "And so
+am I."
+
+Griffin looked at MacHeath oddly. "I wish I was a halfway decent
+telepath, I'd like to know what's going on in your preconscious."
+
+"You'd have to dig deeper than that, I'm afraid," MacHeath said
+ruefully. "As soon as my subconscious has solved the problem, I'll let
+you know."
+
+"I've changed my mind," said Griffin cheerfully. "I don't envy your
+telepathy. I don't envy a guy who has to TP his own subconscious to
+find out what he's thinking."
+
+MacHeath chuckled softly as he turned the bolt that opened the door in
+the "gun" end of the stripped-nuclei accelerator. The seals broke with
+a soft hiss. Evidently, the barometric pressure outside the
+two-mile-long underground tube had changed slightly during the time
+they had been down there.
+
+"It'll be a week before we can test it," MacHeath said in a tired
+voice. "Even after we get it partly in balance. It'll take that long
+to evacuate the tube and sweep it clean."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was the first sentence he had spoken in the past hour or so, and it
+was purely for the edification of the man who was standing on the
+other side of the air lock, although neither Griffin nor MacHeath had
+actually seen him as yet.
+
+Griffin was not a telepath in the sense that the S.M.M.R. used the
+word, but to a non-psionicist, he would have appeared to be one.
+Membership in the "core" group of the _Society for Mystical and
+Metaphysical Research_ required, above all, _understanding_. And, with
+that understanding, a conversation between two members need consist
+only of an occasional gesture and a key word now and then.
+
+The word "understanding" needs emphasis. Without understanding of
+another human mind, no human mind can be completely effective. Without
+that understanding, no human being can be completely free.
+
+And yet, the English word "understanding" is only an approximation to
+the actual process that must take place. _Total_ understanding, in one
+sense, would require that a person actually _become_ another
+person--that he be able to feel, completely and absolutely, every
+emotion, every thought, every bodily sensation, every twinge of
+memory, every judgment, every decision, and every sense of personal
+identity that is felt by the other person, no more and no less.
+
+Such totality is, obviously, neither attainable nor desirable. The
+result would be a merger of identities, a total unification. And, as a
+consequence, a complete loss of one of the human beings involved.
+
+Optimum "understanding" requires that a judgment be made, and that, in
+turn, requires _two_ minds--not a fusion of identity. There must be
+one to judge and another to be judged, and each mind plays both
+roles.
+
+_Love thy neighbor as thyself._ But the original Greek word would
+translate better as "respect and understand" than as the modern
+English "love." The founders of our modern religions were not fools;
+they simply did not have the tools at hand to formulate their
+knowledge properly. As understanding increases, a critical point is
+reached, which causes a qualitative change in the human mind.
+
+First, self-understanding must come. The human mind operates through
+similarities, and the thing most similar to any human mind is itself.
+The next most similar thing is another human mind.
+
+From that point on, all objects, processes, and patterns in the
+universe can be graded according to their similarity to each other,
+and, ultimately, to their similarity to the human mind.
+
+Two given entities may seem utterly dissimilar, but they can always be
+linked by a _tertium quid_--a "third thing" which is similar to both.
+This third thing, be it a material object or a product of the human
+imagination, is called a symbol. Symbols are the bridges by which the
+human mind can reach and manipulate the universe in which it exists.
+With the proper symbols and the understanding to use them, the human
+mind is limited only by its own inherent structural restrictions.
+
+One of the most active research projects of the S.M.M.R. was the
+construction of a more powerful symbology. Psionics had made
+tremendous strides in the previous four decades, but it was still in
+the alchemy stage. So far, symbols for various processes could only be
+worked out by cut-and-try, rule-of-thumb methods, using symbols
+already established, including languages and mathematics. None were
+completely satisfactory, but they worked fairly well within their
+narrow limits.
+
+As far as communication was concerned, the hashed-together symbology
+used by the S.M.M.R. was better than any conceivable code. The
+understanding required to "break" the "code" was well beyond the
+critical point. Anyone who could break it was, _ipso facto_, a member
+of the S.M.M.R.
+
+Most people didn't even realize that a conversation was taking place
+between two members, especially if a "cover conversation" was used at
+the same time.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+MacHeath's verbal discussion of the testing of the nuclei accelerator
+was just such a cover. Even before he had cracked the air lock, he had
+known that Dr. Theodore Nordred was standing on the other side of the
+thick wall.
+
+MacHeath pushed the heavy door open on its smooth hinges. "Oh, hello,
+Dr. Nordred. How's everything?"
+
+The heavy-set mathematician smiled pleasantly as MacHeath and Griffin
+came into the gun chamber. "I just thought I'd come down and see how
+you were getting along," he said. His voice was a low tenor, with
+just a touch of Midwestern twang. "Sometimes the creative mind gets
+bogged down in the nth-order abstractions that have no discernible
+connection with anything at all." He chuckled. "When that happens, I
+drop everything and go out to find something mundane to worry about."
+
+Nordred was only an inch shorter than the slim MacHeath, and he
+weighed in at close to two hundred pounds. At twenty-five, he had had
+the build of a lightweight wrestler; thirty more years had added
+poundage--a roll beneath his chin and a bulge at the belly--but he
+still looked capable of going a round or two without tiring. His shock
+of heavy hair was a mixture of mouse-brown and gray, and it seemed to
+have a tendency to stand up on end, which added another inch and a
+half to his height. His round face had a tendency to smile when he was
+talking or working with his hands; when he was deep in thought, his
+face usually relaxed into thoughtful blankness. He frowned rarely, and
+only for seconds at a time.
+
+"It seems to me you have enough to worry about, doctor," MacHeath said
+banteringly, "without looking for it." He put down his instrument case
+and took out a cigarette while Griffin closed the door to the
+acceleration tube.
+
+"Oh I don't have to look far," Nordred said. "How long do you think it
+will be before we can resume our work with the Monster?"
+
+"Ten days to two weeks," MacHeath said promptly.
+
+"I see." One his rare frowns crossed his face. "I wish I knew why the
+exciter arced across. It shouldn't have."
+
+"Don't you have any idea?" MacHeath asked innocently. At the same
+time, he opened his mind wide to net in every wisp and filament of
+Nordred's thoughts that he could reach.
+
+"None at all," admitted the mathematician. "Weakness in the
+insulation, I suppose, though it tested solidly enough." And his mind,
+as far back as his preconscious and the upper fringes of his
+subconscious, agreed with his words. MacHeath could go no deeper as
+yet; he didn't know Nordred well enough yet.
+
+There were suspicions in Nordred's mind that the insulation weakness
+must have been caused by deliberate sabotage, but he had no one to pin
+his suspicions on. Neither he nor anyone else connected with the
+Redford project was aware of the true status of Dr. Konrad Bern.
+
+"Well, let's hope it doesn't happen again," MacHeath said. "Balancing
+these babies so that they work properly is hard enough for a deuteron
+accelerator, but the Monster here is ten times as touchy."
+
+Nordred nodded absently. "I know. But our work can't be done with
+anything less." Nordred actually knew less about the engineering
+details of the big accelerator than anyone else on the project; he was
+primarily a philosopher-mathematician, and only secondarily a
+physicist. He was theoretically in charge of the project, but the
+actual experimentation was done by the other four men; Drs. Roger
+Kent, Paul Luvochek, Solomon Bessermann, and Konrad Bern. These four
+and their assistants set up and ran off the experiments designed to
+test Dr. Nordred's theories.
+
+MacHeath picked up his instrument case again, and the three men went
+out of the gun chamber, into the outer room, and then started up the
+spiral stairway that led to the surface, talking as they went. But the
+apparent conversation had little to do with the instruction that
+MacHeath was giving Griffin as they climbed.
+
+So when MacHeath stopped suddenly and patted at his coverall pockets,
+Griffin was ready for the words that came next.
+
+"Damn!" MacHeath said. "I've left my notebook. Will you go down and
+get it for me, Bill?"
+
+Dr. Nordred had neither understood nor noticed the actual
+instructions:
+
+"Bill, as soon as I give you an excuse, get back down there and check
+that gun chamber. Give it a thorough going-over. I don't really think
+you'll find a thing, but I don't want to take any chances at this
+stage of the game."
+
+"Right," said Griffin, starting back down the stairway.
+
+MacHeath and Dr. Nordred went on climbing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+David MacHeath sat at a table in the project's cafeteria, absently
+stirring his coffee, and trying to look professionally modest while
+Dr. Luvochek and Dr. Bessermann alternately praised him for his work.
+
+Luvochek, a tubby little butterball of a man, whose cherubic face
+would have made him look almost childlike if it weren't for the blue
+of his jaw, said: "You and those two men of yours have really done a
+marvelous job in the past four days, Mr. MacHeath--really marvelous."
+
+"I'll say," Bessermann chimed in. "I was getting pretty tired of
+looking at burned-out equipment and spending three-quarters of my time
+putting in replacement parts and wielding a soldering gun." Bessermann
+was leaner than Luvochek, but, like his brother scientist, he was
+balding on top. Both men were in their middle thirties.
+
+"I don't understand this jinx, myself," Luvochek said. "At first, it
+was just little things, but the accidents got worse and worse. And
+then, when the Monster blew--" He stopped and shook his head slowly.
+"I'd suspect sabotage, except that there was never any sign of
+tampering with the equipment I saw."
+
+"What do you think of the sabotage idea?" Bessermann asked MacHeath.
+
+MacHeath shrugged. "Haven't seen any signs of it."
+
+"Run of bad luck," said Luvochek. "That's all."
+
+As they talked MacHeath absorbed the patterns of thought that wove in
+and out in the two men's minds. Both men were more open than Dr.
+Nordred; they were easier for MacHeath to understand. Nowhere was
+there any thought of guilt--at least, as far as sabotage was
+concerned.
+
+MacHeath drank his coffee slowly and thoughtfully, keeping up his part
+of the three-way conversation while he concentrated on his own
+problem.
+
+One thing was certain: Nowhere in the minds of any of the personnel of
+the Redford Project was there any conscious knowledge of sabotage. Not
+even in the mind of Konrad Bern.
+
+Dr. Roger Kent, a tall, lantern-jawed sad-eyed man in his forties, had
+been hard to get through to at first, but as soon as MacHeath
+discovered that the hard block Kent had built up around himself was
+caused by grief over a wife who had been dead five years, he became as
+easy to read as a billboard. Kent had submerged his grief in work; the
+eternal drive of the true scientist to drag the truth out of Mother
+Nature. He was constitutionally incapable of sabotaging the very
+instruments that had been built to dig in after that truth.
+
+Dr. Konrad Bern, on the other hand, was difficult to read below the
+preconscious stage. Science, to him, was a form of power, to be used
+for "idealistic" purposes. He was perfectly capable of sabotaging the
+weapons of an enemy if it became necessary, whether that meant ruining
+a physical instrument or carefully falsifying the results of an
+experiment. Outwardly, he was a pleasant enough chap, but his mind
+revealed a rigidly held pattern of hatreds, fears, and twisted
+idealism. He held them tightly against the onslaughts of a hostile
+world.
+
+And that meant that he couldn't possibly have any control over
+whatever psionic powers he may have had.
+
+Unless--
+
+Unless he was so expert and so well-trained that he was better than
+anything the S.M.M.R. had ever known.
+
+MacHeath didn't even like to think about that. It would mean that all
+the theory of psionics that had been built up so painstakingly over
+the past years would have to be junked _in toto_.
+
+Something was gnawing in the depths of his mind. In the perfectly
+rational but utterly nonlogical part of his subconscious where hunches
+are built, something was trying to form.
+
+MacHeath didn't try to probe for it. As soon as he had enough
+information for the hunch to be fully formed, it would be ready to
+use. Until then, it would be worthless, and probing for it might
+interrupt the formation.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He was just finishing his coffee as Bill Griffin came in the door and
+headed toward the table where MacHeath, Luvochek, and Bessermann were
+sitting.
+
+MacHeath stood up and said: "Excuse me. I'll have to be getting some
+work done if you guys are ever going to get your own work done."
+
+"Sure."
+
+"Go ahead."
+
+"Thanks for the coffee," MacHeath added as he moved away.
+
+"Anytime," said Bessermann, grinning. "You guys just keep up the good
+work. When you fix 'em, they stay fixed. We haven't had a burnout
+since you came."
+
+"Maybe you broke our statistical jinx," said Luvochek, with a chubby
+smile.
+
+"Maybe," said MacHeath. "I hope so."
+
+For some reason, the gnawing in his hunch factory became more
+persistent.
+
+As he and Griffin walked toward the door, Griffin reported rapidly. "I
+checked everything in the gun chamber. No sign of any tampering.
+Everything's just as we left it. The dust film hasn't been disturbed."
+
+"It figures," said MacHeath.
+
+Outside, in the corridor, they met Dr. Konrad Bern hurrying toward the
+cafeteria. He stopped as he saw them.
+
+"Oh, hello, Mr. MacHeath, Mr. Griffin," he said. His white-toothed
+smile was friendly, but both of the S.M.M.R. agents could detect the
+hostility that was hard and brittle beneath the surface. "I wanted to
+thank you for the wonderful job you've been doing."
+
+"Why, thank you, doctor," said MacHeath honestly. "We aim to satisfy."
+
+Bern chuckled. "You're doing well so far. Odd streak of luck we've
+had, isn't it? Poor Dr. Nordred has been under a terrible strain; his
+whole life work is tied up in this project." He made a vague gesture
+with one hand. "Would you care for some coffee?"
+
+"Just had some, thanks," said MacHeath, "but we'll take a rain check."
+
+"Fine. Anytime." And he went on into the cafeteria.
+
+"Wow!" said Griffin as he walked on down the corridor with MacHeath.
+"That man is scared silly! But what an actor! You'd never know he was
+eating his guts out."
+
+"Sure he's scared," MacHeath said. "With all this sabotage talk going
+around, he's afraid there'll be an exhaustive investigation, and he
+can't take that right now."
+
+Griffin frowned. "I guess I missed that. What did you pick up?"
+
+"He's supposed to meet a Soviet agent tonight, and he's afraid he'll
+be caught. He doesn't know what happened to the first three, and he
+won't know what will happen to Number Four tonight.
+
+"We'll keep him around as long as he's useful. He's not a Bohr or a
+Pauli or a Fermi, but he--"
+
+MacHeath stopped himself suddenly and came to a dead halt.
+
+"My God," he said softly, "that's _it_."
+
+His hunch had hatched.
+
+After a moment, he said: "Harry is getting back from the target end of
+the tube now, Bill. He can't pick me up, so beetle it down to the tool
+room, get him, and get up to the workshop fast. If I'm not there,
+wait; I have a little prying to do."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"Can do," said Griffin. He went toward the elevator at an easy lope.
+
+David MacHeath went in the opposite direction.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When MacHeath returned to the workshop which he had been assigned,
+Bill Griffin and Harry Benbow were waiting for him. Beside the
+big-muscled Griffin, Harry Benbow looked even thinner than he was. He
+was a good six-two, which made him a head taller than Griffin, but,
+unlike many tall, lean men, Benbow had no tendency to slouch; he stood
+tall and straight, reminding MacHeath of a poplar tree towering
+proudly over the countryside. Benbow was one of those rare American
+Negroes whose skin was actually as close to being "black" as human
+pigmentation will allow. His eyes were like disks of obsidian set in
+spheres of white porcelain, which gave an odd contrast-similarity
+effect when compared with Griffin's china-blue eyes.
+
+If the average man had wanted to pick two human beings who were
+"opposites," he could hardly have made a better choice than Benbow and
+the short, thickly-built, blond-haired, pink-skinned Bill Griffin. But
+the average man would be so struck by the differences that he would
+never notice that the similarities were vastly more important.
+
+"You look as if you'd just been kissed by Miss America," Harry said as
+MacHeath came through the door.
+
+"Better than that," MacHeath said. "We've got work to do."
+
+"What's the pitch?" Griffin wanted to know.
+
+"Well, in the first place, I'm afraid Dr. Konrad Bern is no longer of
+any use to the Redford Project. We're going to have to arrest him as
+an unregistered agent of the Soviet Government."
+
+"It's just as well," said Harry Benbow gently. "His research hasn't
+done us any good and it hasn't done the Soviets any good. The poor
+guy's been on edge ever since he got here. All the pale hide around
+this place stirs up every nerve in him."
+
+"What got you onto this?" Griffin asked MacHeath.
+
+"A hunch first," MacHeath said. "Then I got data to back it up. But,
+first ... Harry, how'd you know about Bern's reactions? He keeps those
+prejudices of his down pretty deep; I didn't think you could go that
+far."
+
+"I didn't have to. He spent half an hour talking to me this morning.
+He was so happy to see a fellow human being--according to his
+definition of human being--that he was as easy to read as if _you_
+were doing the reading."
+
+MacHeath nodded. "I hate to throw him to the wolves, but he's got to
+go."
+
+"What was the snooping you said you had to do?" Griffin asked.
+
+"Dates. Times. Briefly, I found that the run of accidents has been
+building up to a peak. At first, it was just small meters that went
+wrong. Then bigger, more complex stuff. And, finally, the Monster
+went. See the pattern?"
+
+The other men nodded.
+
+"You're the therapist," Griffin said. "What do you suggest?"
+
+"Shock treatment," said David MacHeath.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Just how Dr. Konrad Bern got wind of the fact that a squad of FBI men
+had come to the project to arrest him that evening is something that
+MacHeath didn't know until later. He was busy at the time, ignoring
+anything but what he was interested in. It always fascinated him to
+watch the mind of a psychokinetic expert at work. He couldn't do the
+trick himself, and he was always amazed at the ability of anyone who
+could.
+
+It was like watching a pianist play a particularly difficult concerto.
+A person can watch a pianist, see every move he is making, and why he
+is making it. But being able to see what is going on doesn't mean that
+one can duplicate the action. MacHeath was in the same position.
+Telepathically, he could observe the play of emotions that ran through
+a psychokinetic's mind--the combinations of avid desire and the utter
+loathing which, playing one against another, could move a brick, a
+book, or a Buick if the mind was powerful enough. But he couldn't do
+it himself, no matter how carefully he tried to follow the raging
+emotions that acted as two opposing jaws of a pair of tongs to lift
+and move the object.
+
+And so engrossed was he with the process that he did not notice that
+Konrad Bern had eluded the FBI. He was unaware of what had happened
+until one of the Federal agents rapped loudly on the workshop door.
+
+Almost instantly, MacHeath picked up the information from the agent's
+mind. He glanced at Griffin and Benbow. "You two can handle it. Be
+careful you don't overdo it."
+
+Then he went to the door and opened it a trifle. "Yes?"
+
+The man outside showed a gold badge. "Morgan, FBI. You David
+MacHeath?"
+
+"Yes." MacHeath stepped outside and showed the FBI man his
+identification.
+
+"We were told to co-operate with you in this Konrad Bern case. He's
+managed to slip away from us somehow, but we know he's still in the
+area. He can't get past the gate."
+
+MacHeath let his mind expand until it meshed with that of Dr. Konrad
+Bern.
+
+"There is a way out," MacHeath snapped. "The acceleration tube."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Come on!" He started sprinting toward the elevators. He explained to
+the FBI agent as they went.
+
+"The acceleration tube of the ultracosmotron runs due north of here
+for two miles underground. The guard at the other end won't be
+expecting anyone to be coming from the inside of the target building.
+If Bern plays his cards right, he can get away."
+
+"Can't we phone the target building?" the FBI man asked.
+
+"No. We shut off all the electrical equipment and took down some of
+the wires so we could balance the acceleration fields."
+
+"Well, if he's on foot, we could send a car out there. We'd get there
+before he does. Uh ... wouldn't we?"
+
+"Maybe. But he'll kill himself if he sees he's trapped." That wasn't
+quite true. Bern was ready to fight to the death, and he had a heavy
+pistol to back him up. MacHeath didn't want to see anyone killed, and
+he didn't want stray bullets flying around the inside of that tube or
+in the target room.
+
+MacHeath and the FBI agent piled out of the elevator at the bottom of
+the shaft. Dr. Roger Kent was standing at the head of the stairs that
+spiraled down to the gun chamber. Dr. Kent knew that Bern had gone
+down the stairway, but he didn't know why.
+
+"He's our saboteur," MacHeath said quickly. "I'm going after him. As
+soon as I close the door and seal it, you turn on the pumps. Lower the
+air pressure in the tube to a pound per square inch below
+atmospheric. That'll put a force of about a ton and a quarter against
+the doors, and he won't be able to open them."
+
+Dr. Kent still didn't grasp the fact that Bern was a spy.
+
+"Explain to him, Morgan," MacHeath told the Federal agent. He went on
+down the spiral staircase, knowing that Kent would understand and act
+in plenty of time.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The door to the tube was standing open. MacHeath slipped on a pair of
+the sponge-soled shoes, noticing angrily that Bern hadn't bothered to
+do so. He went into the tube and closed the door behind him. Then he
+started down the blackness of the tube at a fast trot. Ahead of him,
+in the utter darkness, he could hear the click of heels as the
+leather-shod Bern moved toward the target end of the long tube.
+
+Neither of them had lights. They were unnecessary, for one thing,
+since there was only one direction to go and there were no obstacles
+in the path. Bern would probably have carried a flashlight if he'd
+been able to get his hands on one quickly, but he hadn't, so he went
+in darkness. MacHeath didn't want a light; in the darkness, he had the
+advantage of knowing where his opponent was.
+
+Every so often, Bern would stop, listening for sounds of pursuit,
+since his own footsteps, echoing down the glass-lined cylinder,
+drowned out any noise from behind. But MacHeath, running silently on
+the toes of his thick-soled shoes, kept in motion, gaining on the
+fleeing spy.
+
+A two-mile run is a good stretch of exercise for anyone, but MacHeath
+didn't dare slow down. As it was, Konrad Bern was already tugging
+frantically at the door that led to the target room by the time
+MacHeath reached him. But the faint sighing of the pumps had already
+told MacHeath that the air pressure had been dropped. Bern couldn't
+possibly get the door open.
+
+MacHeath's lungs wanted to be filled with air; his chest wanted to
+heave; he wanted to pant, taking in great gulps of life-giving oxygen.
+But he didn't dare. He didn't want Bern to know he was there, so he
+strained to keep his breath silent.
+
+He stepped up behind the physicist in the pitch blackness, and judging
+carefully, brought his fist down on the nape of the man's neck in a
+hard rabbit punch.
+
+Konrad Bern dropped unconscious to the floor of the tube.
+
+Then MacHeath let his chest pump air into his lungs in long, harsh
+gasps. Shakily, he lowered himself to the floor beside Bern and
+squatted on his haunches, waiting for the hiss of the bleeder valve
+that would tell him that the air pressure had been raised to allow
+someone to enter the air lock.
+
+It was Morgan, the FBI man, who finally cracked the door. Griffin and
+Dr. Kent were with him.
+
+"You all right?" asked Morgan.
+
+"I'm fine," MacHeath said, "but Bern is going to have a sore neck for
+a while. I didn't hit him hard enough to break it, but he'll get
+plenty of sleep before he wakes up."
+
+More FBI men came in, and they dragged out the unprotesting Bern.
+
+Dr. Kent said: "Well, I'm glad that's over. I'll have to get back and
+see what Dr. Nordred is raving about."
+
+"Raving?" asked MacHeath innocently.
+
+"Yes. While I was in the pump room reducing the pressure, he called me
+on the interphone. Said he'd been looking all over for me. He and
+Luvochek and Bessermann are up in the lab." He frowned. "They claim
+that one of the radiolead samples was floating in the air in the lab.
+It's settled down now, I gather, but it only weighs a fraction of what
+it should, though it's gaining all the time. And that's ridiculous.
+It's not at all what Dr. Nordred's theory predicted." Then he clamped
+his lips together, thinking perhaps he had talked too much.
+
+"Interesting," said MacHeath blandly. "Very interesting."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Senator Gonzales sat in Brian Taggert's sixth-floor office in the
+S.M.M.R. building and looked puzzled. "All right, I grant you that
+Bern couldn't have been the saboteur. Then why arrest him?"
+
+Dave MacHeath took a drag from his cigarette before he answered. "We
+had to have a patsy--someone to put the blame on. No one really
+believed that it was just bad luck, but they'll all accept the idea
+that Bern was a saboteur."
+
+"We would have had to arrest him eventually, anyway," said Brian
+Taggert.
+
+"Give me a quick run-down," Gonzales said. "I've got to explain this
+to the President."
+
+"Did you ever hear of the Pauli Effect?" MacHeath asked.
+
+"Something about the number of electrons that--"
+
+"No," MacHeath said quickly. "That's the Pauli _principle_, better
+known as the Exclusion Principle. The Pauli _Effect_ is a different
+thing entirely, a psionic effect.
+
+"It used to be said that a theoretical physicist was judged by his
+inability to handle research apparatus; the clumsier he was in
+research, the better he was with theory. But Wolfgang Pauli was a lot
+more than clumsy. Apparatus would break, topple over, go to pieces, or
+burn up if Pauli just walked into the room.
+
+"Up to the time he died, in 1958, his colleagues kidded about it,
+without really believing there was anything behind it. But it is
+recorded that the explosion of some vacuum equipment in a laboratory
+at the University of Göttingen was the direct result of the Pauli
+Effect. It was definitely established that the explosion occurred at
+the precise moment that a train on which Pauli was traveling stopped
+for a short time at the Göttingen railway station."
+
+The senator said: "The poltergeist phenomenon."
+
+"Not exactly," MacHeath said, "although there is a similarity. The
+poltergeist phenomenon is usually spectacular and is nearly always
+associated with teen-age neurotics. Then there's the pyrotic; fires
+always start in his vicinity."
+
+"But there's always a reason for psionic phenomena to react violently
+under subconscious control," Senator Gonzales pointed out. "There's
+always a psychological quirk."
+
+"Sure. And I almost fell into the same trap, myself."
+
+"How so?"
+
+"I was thinking that if Bern were the saboteur, all our theories about
+psionics would have to be thrown out--we'd have to start from a
+different set of precepts. _And I didn't even want to think about such
+an idea!_"
+
+"Nobody likes their pet theories overthrown," Gonzales observed.
+
+"Of course not. But here's the point: The only way that a scientific
+theory can be proved wrong is to uncover a phenomenon which doesn't
+fit in with the theory. A theoretical physicist is a mathematician; he
+makes logical deductions and logical predictions by juggling symbols
+around in accordance with some logical system. But the axioms, the
+assumptions upon which those systems are built, are nonlogical. You
+can't prove an axiom; if comes right out of the mind.
+
+"So imagine that you're a theoretical physicist. A really
+original-type thinker. You come up with a mathematical system that
+explains all known phenomena at that time, and predicts others that
+are, as yet, unknown. You check your math over and over again; there's
+no error in your logic, since it all follows, step by step."
+
+"O.K.; go on," Gonzales said interestedly.
+
+"Very well, then; you've built yourself a logical universe, based on
+your axioms, and the structure seems to have a one-to-one
+correspondence with the actual universe. Not only that, but if the
+theory is accepted, you've built your reputation on it--your life.
+
+"Now, what happens if your axioms--not the logic _about_ the axioms,
+but the axioms themselves--are proven to be wrong?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Brian Taggert took his pipe out of his mouth. "Why, you give up the
+erroneous set of axioms and build a new set that will explain the new
+phenomenon. Isn't that what a scientist is supposed to do?" His manner
+was that of wide-eyed innocence laid on with a large trowel.
+
+"Oh, _sure_ it is," said the senator. "A man builds his whole life,
+his whole universe; on a set of principles, and he scraps them at the
+drop of a hat. _Sure_ he does."
+
+"He claims he will," MacHeath said. "Any scientist worth the paper his
+diploma is printed on is firmly convinced that he will change his
+axioms as soon as they're proven false. Of course, ninety-nine per
+cent of 'em _can't_ and _won't_ and _don't_. They refuse to look at
+anything that suggests changing axioms.
+
+"Some scientists eagerly accept the axioms that they were taught in
+school and hang on to them all their lives, fighting change tooth and
+nail. Oh, they'll accept new ideas, all right--provided that they fit
+in with the structures based on the old axioms.
+
+"Then there are the young iconoclasts who don't like the axioms as
+they stand, so they make up some new ones of their own--men like
+Newton, Einstein, Planck, and so on. Then, once the new axioms have
+been forced down the throats of their colleagues, the innovators
+become the Old Order; the iconoclasts become the ones who put the
+fences around the new images to safeguard them. And they're even more
+firmly wedded to their axioms than anyone else. This is _their_
+universe!
+
+"Of course, these men proclaim to all the world that they are
+perfectly willing to change their axioms. And the better a scientist
+he is, the more he believes, in his heart-of-hearts, that he really
+would change. He really thinks, consciously, that he wants others to
+test his theories.
+
+"But notice: A theory is only good if it explains all known phenomena
+in its field. If it does, then the only thing that can topple it is a
+_new_ fact. The only thing that can threaten the complex structure
+formulated by a really creative, painstaking, mathematical physicist
+is _experiment_!"
+
+Senator Gonzales' attentive silence was eloquent.
+
+"Experiment!" MacHeath repeated. "That can wreck a theory quicker and
+more completely than all the learned arguments of a dozen men. And
+every theoretician is aware of that fact. Consciously, he gladly
+accepts the inevitable; but his subconscious mind will fight to keep
+those axioms.
+
+"_Even if it has to smash every experimental device around!_
+
+"After all, if nobody can experiment on your theory, it can't be
+proved wrong, can it?
+
+"In Nordred's case, as in Pauli's, this subconscious defense actually
+made itself felt in the form of broken equipment. Dr. Theodore Nordred
+was totally unconscious of the fact that he detested and feared the
+idea of anyone experimenting to prove or disprove his theory. He had
+no idea that he, himself, was re-channeling the energy in those
+machines to make them burn out."
+
+Brian Taggert looked at MacHeath pointedly. "Do you think the shock
+treatment you gave him will cause any repercussions?"
+
+"No. Griffin and Benbow held that block of radiolead floating in the
+air only while Dr. Nordred was alone in the lab. He pushed at it, felt
+of it, and moved it around for more than ten minutes before he'd admit
+the reality of what he saw. Then he called Luvochek and Bessermann in
+to look at it.
+
+"Griffin and Benbow let the sample settle to the desk, so that by the
+time the other two scientists got to the lab, the lead didn't have an
+apparent negative weight, but was still much lighter than it should
+be.
+
+"All the while that Bessermann and Luvochek were trying to weigh the
+lead block, to get an accurate measurement, Griffin and Benbow, three
+rooms away, kept increasing the weight slowly towards normal. And so
+far no one has invented a device which will give an instantaneous
+check on the weight of an object. A balance can't check the weight of
+a sample unless that weight is constant; there's too much time lag
+involved.
+
+"So, what evidence do they have? Scientifically speaking, none. They
+have no measurements, and the experiment can't be repeated. And only
+Nordred actually saw the sample _floating_. Luvochek and Bessermann
+will eventually think up a 'natural' explanation for the apparent
+steady gain in weight. Only Nordred will remain convinced that what he
+saw actually happened.
+
+"I don't see how there could be any serious repercussions in the field
+of physics." But he looked at Taggert for confirmation.
+
+Taggert gave it to him with an approving look.
+
+"It's a funny thing," said Gonzales musingly. "Some time back, we were
+in a situation where we had to go to the extreme of physical violence
+to keep from demonstrating to a scientist that psionic powers could
+be controlled, just to keep from ruining the physicist's work.
+
+"Now, we turn right around and demonstrate the 'impossible' to another
+physicist in order to pull his hard-earned axioms out from under him."
+He smiled wryly. "There ain't no justice in the world."
+
+"No," agreed MacHeath, "but the trick worked. He won't have any
+subconscious desire to smash equipment just to protect a theory that
+has already been smashed. On the contrary, he'll let them go through
+in order to find new data to build another theory on."
+
+"He'll never again be the man he was," said Taggert regretfully. "He's
+lost the force of his convictions. He won't be capable of taking a
+no-nonsense, dogmatic, black-and-white stand. But it was necessary."
+He made an odd gesture with one hand. "What else can you do with a man
+who's a psionic psychopath?"
+
+THE END
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Psichopath, by Gordon Randall Garrett
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Psichopath, by Gordon Randall Garrett
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Psichopath
+
+Author: Gordon Randall Garrett
+
+Illustrator: van Dongen
+
+Release Date: October 20, 2009 [EBook #30304]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PSICHOPATH ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div class="tr"><p class="center">Transcriber's Note:</p>
+<p class="center">This etext was produced from Analog Science Fact &amp; Fiction October 1960. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.</p></div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h1>PSICHOPATH</h1>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>By DARREL T. LANGART</h2>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/image_001.jpg" width="600" height="506" alt=""  />
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Given psi powers like clairvoyance and telepathy, solving
+problems of sabotage would be easy, of course. That is, it
+seems that way at first thought!</i></p></div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>Illustrated by van Dongen</h3>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+<p>he man in the pastel blue topcoat walked with steady purpose, but
+without haste, through the chill, wind-swirled drizzle that filled the
+air above the streets of Arlington, Virginia. His matching blue
+cap-hood was pulled low over his forehead, and the clear, infrared
+radiating face mask had been flipped down to protect his chubby cheeks
+and round nose from the icy wind.</p>
+
+<p>No one noticed him particularly. He was just another average man who
+blended in with all the others who walked the streets that day. No one
+recognized him; his face did not appear often in public places, except
+in his own state, and, even so, it was a thoroughly ordinary face.
+But, as he walked, Senator John Peter Gonzales was keeping a mental,
+fine-webbed, four-dimensional net around him, feeling for the
+slightest touch of recognition. He wanted no one to connect him in any
+way with his intended destination.</p>
+
+<p>It was not his first visit to the six-floor brick building that stood
+on a street in a lower-middle-class district of Arlington. Actually,
+government business took him there more often than would have been
+safe for the average man-on-the-street. For Senator Gonzales, the
+process of remaining incognito was so elementary that it was almost
+subconscious.</p>
+
+<p>Arriving at his destination, he paused on the sidewalk to light a
+cigarette, shielding it against the wind and drizzle with cupped
+hands while his mind made one last check on the surroundings. Then he
+strode quickly up the five steps to the double doors which were
+marked: <i>The Society For Mystical And Metaphysical Research, Inc.</i></p>
+
+<p>Just as he stepped in, he flipped the face shield up and put on an
+old-fashioned pair of thick-lensed, black-rimmed spectacles. Then, his
+face assuming a bland smile that would have been completely out of
+place on Senator Gonzales, he went from the foyer into the front
+office.</p>
+
+<p>"Good afternoon, Mrs. Jesser," he said, in a high, smooth, slightly
+accented voice that was not his own. "I perceive by your aura that you
+are feeling well. Your normal aura-color is tinged with a positive
+golden hue."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Jesser, a well-rounded matron in her early forties, rose to the
+bait like a porpoise being hand-fed at a Florida zoo. "<i>Dear</i> Swami
+Chandra! How perfectly wonderful to see you again! You're looking
+<i>very</i> well your-<i>self</i>."</p>
+
+<p>The Swami, whose Indian blood was of the Aztec rather than the Brahmin
+variety, nonetheless managed to radiate all the mystery of the East.
+"My well-being, dear Mrs. Jesser, is due to the fact that I have been
+communing for the past three months with my very good friend, the
+Fifth Dalai Lama. A most refreshingly wise person." Senator Gonzales
+was fond of the Society's crackpot receptionist, and he knew exactly
+what kind of hokum would please her most.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I <i>do</i> hope you will find time to tell me <i>all</i> about it," she
+said effusively. "Mr. Balfour isn't in the city just now," she went
+on. "He's lecturing in New York on the history of flying saucer
+sightings. Do you realize that this is the fortieth anniversary of the
+first saucer sighting, back in 1944?"</p>
+
+<p>"The first <i>photographed</i> sighting," the Swami corrected
+condescendingly. "Our friends have been watching and guiding us for
+far longer than that, and were sighted many times before they were
+photographed."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Jesser nodded briskly. "Of course. You're right, as always,
+Swami."</p>
+
+<p>"I am sorry to hear," the Swami continued smoothly, "that I will not
+be able to see Mr. Balfour. However, I came at the call of Mr. Brian
+Taggert, who is expecting me."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Jesser glanced down at her appointment sheet. "He didn't mention
+an appointment to me. However&mdash;" She punched a button on the intercom.
+"Mr. Taggert? Swami Chandra is here to see you. He says he has an
+appointment."</p>
+
+<p>Brian Taggert's deep voice came over the instrument. "The Swami, as
+usual, is very astute. I have been thinking about calling him. Send
+him right up."</p>
+
+<p>"You may go up, Swami," said Mrs. Jesser, wide-eyed. She watched in
+awe as the Swami marched regally through the inner door and began to
+climb the stairs toward the sixth floor.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>One way to hide an ex-officio agency of the United States Government
+was to label it truthfully&mdash;<i>The Society For Mystical And Metaphysical
+Research</i>. In spite of the fact that the label was literally true, it
+sounded so crackpot that no one but a crackpot would bother to look
+into it. As a consequence, better than ninety per cent of the
+membership of the Society was composed of just such people. Only a few
+members of the "core" knew the organization's true function and
+purpose. And as long as such scatter-brains as Mrs. Jesser and Mr.
+Balfour were in there pitching, no one would ever penetrate to the
+actual core of the Society.</p>
+
+<p>The senator had already pocketed the exaggerated glasses by the time
+he reached the sixth floor, and his face had lost its bland,
+overly-wise smile. He pushed open the door to Taggert's office.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you got any ideas yet?" he asked quickly.</p>
+
+<p>Brian Taggert, a heavily-muscled man with dark eyes and black,
+slightly wavy hair, sat on the edge of a couch in one corner of the
+room. His desk across the room was there for paperwork only, and
+Taggert had precious little of that to bother with.</p>
+
+<p>He took a puff from his heavy-bowled briar. "We're going to have to
+send an agent in there. Someone who can be on the spot. Someone who
+can get the feel of the situation first hand."</p>
+
+<p>"That'll be difficult. We can't just suddenly stick an unknown in
+there and have an excuse for his being there. Couldn't Donahue or
+Reeves&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Taggert shook his head. "Impossible, John. Extrasensory perception
+can't replace sight, any more than sight can replace hearing. You know
+that."</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly. But I thought we could get enough information that way to
+tell us who our saboteur is. No dice, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"No dice," said Taggert. "Look at the situation we've got there. The
+purpose of the Redford Research Team is to test the Meson Ultimate
+Decay Theory of Dr. Theodore Nordred. Now, if we&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Senator Gonzales, walking across the room toward Taggert, gestured
+with one hand. "I know! I know! Give me <i>some</i> credit for
+intelligence! But we <i>do</i> have one suspect, don't we? What about
+<i>him</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>Taggert chuckled through a wreath of smoke. "Calm down, John. Or are
+you trying to give me your impression of Mrs. Jesser in a conversation
+with a saucerite?"</p>
+
+<p>The senator laughed and sat down in a nearby chair. "All right. Sorry.
+But this whole thing is lousing up our entire space program. First
+off, we nearly lose Dr. Ch'ien, and, with him gone, the interstellar
+drive project would've been shot. Now, if this sabotage keeps up, the
+Redford project <i>will</i> be shot, and that means we might have to stick
+to the old-fashioned rocket to get off-planet. Brian, we <i>need</i>
+antigravity, and, so far, Nordred's theory is our only clue."</p>
+
+<p>"Agreed," said Taggert.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, we're never going to get it if equipment keeps mysteriously
+burning itself out, breaking down, and just generally goofing up. This
+morning, the primary exciter on the new ultracosmotron went haywire,
+and the beam of sodium nuclei burned through part of the accelerator
+tube wall. It'll take a month to get it back in working order."</p>
+
+<p>Taggert took his pipe out of his mouth and tapped the dottle into a
+nearby ash disposal unit. "And you want to pick up our pet spy?"</p>
+
+<p>Senator Gonzales scowled. "Well, I'd certainly call him our prime
+suspect." But there was a certain lack of conviction in his manner.</p>
+
+<p>Brian Taggert didn't flatly contradict the senator. "Maybe. But you
+know, John, there's one thing that bothers me about these accidents."</p>
+
+<p>"What's that?"</p>
+
+<p>"The fact that we have not one shred of evidence that points to
+sabotage."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>In a room on the fifth floor, directly below Brian Taggert's office, a
+young man was half sitting, half reclining in a thickly upholstered
+adjustable chair. He had dropped the back of the chair to a forty-five
+degree angle and lifted up the footrest; now he was leaning back in
+lazy comfort, his ankles crossed, his right hand holding a slowly
+smoldering cigarette, his eyes contemplating the ceiling. Or, rather,
+they seemed to be contemplating something <i>beyond</i> the ceiling.</p>
+
+<p>It was pure coincidence that the focus of his thoughts happened to be
+located in about the same volume of space that his eyes seemed to be
+focused on. If Brian Taggert and Senator Gonzales had been in the room
+below, his eyes would still be looking at the ceiling.</p>
+
+<p>In repose, his face looked even younger than his twenty-eight years
+would have led one to expect. His close-cropped brown hair added to
+the impression of youth, and the well-tailored suit on his slim,
+muscular body added to the effect. At any top-flight university, he
+could have passes for a well-bred, sophisticated, intelligent student
+who had money enough to indulge himself and sense enough not to overdo
+it.</p>
+
+<p>He was beginning to understand the pattern that was being woven in the
+room above&mdash;beginning to feel it in depth.</p>
+
+<p>Senator Gonzalez was mildly telepathic, inasmuch as he could pick up
+thoughts in the prevocal stage&mdash;the stage at which thought becomes
+definitely organized into words, phrases, and sentences. He could go a
+little deeper, into the selectivity stage, where the linking processes
+of logic took over from the nonlogical but rational processes of the
+preconscious&mdash;but only if he knew the person well. Where the senator
+excelled was in detecting emotional tone and manipulating emotional
+processes, both within himself and within others.</p>
+
+<p>Brian Taggert was an analyzer, an originator, a motivator&mdash;and more.
+The young man found himself avoiding too deep a probe into the mind of
+Brian Taggert; he knew that he had not yet achieved the maturity to
+understand the multilayered depths of a mind like that. Eventually,
+perhaps....</p>
+
+<p>Not that Senator Gonzales was a child, nor that he was emotionally or
+intellectually shallow. It was merely that he was not of Taggert's
+caliber.</p>
+
+<p>The young man absently took another drag from his cigarette. Taggert
+had explained the basic problem to him, but he was getting a wider
+picture from the additional information that Senator Gonzales had
+brought.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Theodore Nordred, a mathematical physicist and one of the
+top-flight, high-powered, original minds in the field, had shown that
+Einstein's final equations only held in a universe composed entirely
+of normal matter. Since the great Einstein had died before the
+Principle of Parity had been overthrown in the mid-fifties, he had
+been unable to incorporate the information into his Unified Field
+Theory. Nordred had been able to show, mathematically, that Einstein's
+equations were valid only for a completely "dexter," or right-handed
+universe, or for a completely "sinister" or left-handed universe.</p>
+
+<p>Although the universe in which Man lived was predominantly
+dexter&mdash;arbitrarily so designated&mdash;it was not completely so. It had a
+"sinister" component amounting to approximately one one-hundred-thousandth
+of one per cent. On the average, one atom out of every ten million in the
+universe was an atom of antimatter. The distribution was unequal of course;
+antimatter could not exist in contact with ordinary matter. Most of it was
+distributed throughout interstellar space in the form of individual atoms,
+freely floating in space, a long way from any large mass of normal matter.</p>
+
+<p>But that minute fraction of a per cent was enough to show that the
+known universe was not totally Einsteinian. In a purely Einsteinian
+universe, antigravity was impossible, but if the equations of Dr.
+Theodore Nordred were actually a closer approximation to true reality
+than those of Einstein, then antigravity <i>might</i> be a practical
+reality.</p>
+
+<p>And that was the problem the Redford Research Team was working on. It
+was a parallel project to the interstellar drive problem, being
+carried on elsewhere.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>The "pet spy," as Taggert had called him, was Dr. Konrad Bern, a
+middle-aged Negro from Tanganyika, who was convinced that only under
+Communism could the colored races of the world achieve the
+technological organization and living standard of the white man. He
+had been trained as a "sleeper"; not even the exhaustive
+investigations of the FBI had turned up any relationship between Bern
+and the Soviets. It had taken the telepathic probing of the S.M.M.R.
+agents to uncover his real purposes. Known, he constituted no danger.</p>
+
+<p>There was no denying that he was a highly competent, if not brilliant,
+physicist. And, since it was quite impossible for him to get any
+information on the Redford Project into the hands of the
+opposition&mdash;it was no longer fashionable to call Communists "the
+enemy"&mdash;there was no reason why he shouldn't be allowed to contribute
+to the American efforts to bridge space.</p>
+
+<p>Three times in the five months since Bern had joined the project,
+agents of the Soviet government had made attempts to contact the
+physicist. Three times the FBI, warned by S.M.M.R. agents, had quietly
+blocked the contact. Konrad Bern had been effectively isolated.</p>
+
+<p>But, at the project site itself, equipment failure had become
+increasingly more frequent, all out of proportion to the normal
+accident rate in any well-regulated laboratory. The work of the
+project had practically come to a standstill; the ultra-secret project
+reports to the President were beginning to show less and less progress
+in the basic research, and more and more progress in repairing damaged
+equipment. Apparently, though, increasing efficiency in repair work
+was self-neutralizing; repairing an instrument in half the time merely
+meant that it could break down twice as often.</p>
+
+<p>It had to be sabotage. And yet, not even the S.M.M.R. agents could
+find any trace of intentional damage nor any thought patterns that
+would indicate deliberate damage.</p>
+
+<p>And Senator John Peter Gonzales quite evidently did <i>not</i> want to face
+the implications of <i>that</i> particular fact.</p>
+
+<p>"We're going to have to send an agent in," Taggert repeated.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>That's my cue</i>, thought the young man on the fifth floor as he
+crushed out his cigarette and got up from the chair.)</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know how we're going to manage it," said the senator. "What
+excuse do we have for putting a new man on the Redford team?"</p>
+
+<p>Brian Taggert grinned. "What they need is an expert repair
+technician&mdash;a man who knows how to build and repair complex research
+instruments. He doesn't have to know anything about the purpose of the
+team itself, all he has to do is keep the equipment in good shape."</p>
+
+<p>Senator Gonzalez let a slow smile spread over his face. "You've been
+gulling me, you snake. All right; I deserved it. Tell him to come in."</p>
+
+<p>As the door opened, Taggert said: "Senator Gonzales, may I present Mr.
+David MacHeath? He's our man, I think."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>David MacHeath watched a blue line wriggle its way erratically across
+the face of an oscilloscope. "The wave form is way off," he said
+flatly, "and the frequency is slithering all over the place."</p>
+
+<p>He squinted at the line for a moment then spoke to the man standing
+nearby. "Signal Harry to back her off two degrees, then run her up
+slowly, ten minutes at a time."</p>
+
+<p>The other man flickered the key on the side of the small
+carbide-Welsbach lamp. The shutters blinked, sending pulses of light
+down the length of the ten-foot diameter glass-walled tube in which
+the men were working. Far down the tube, MacHeath could see the
+answering flicker from Harry, a mile and a half away in the darkness.</p>
+
+<p>MacHeath watched the screen again. After a few seconds, he said:
+"O.K.! Hold it!"</p>
+
+<p>Again the lamp flashed.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it isn't perfect," MacHeath said, "but it's all we can do from
+here. We'll have to evacuate the tube to get her in perfect balance.
+Tell Harry to knock off for the day."</p>
+
+<p>While the welcome message was being flashed, MacHeath shut off the
+testing instruments and disconnected them. It was possible to
+compensate a little for the testing equipment, but a telephone, or
+even an electric flashlight, would simply add to the burden.</p>
+
+<p>Bill Griffin shoved down the key on the lamp he was holding and locked
+it into place. The shutters remained open, and the lamp shed a beam of
+white light along the shining walls of the cylindrical tube. "How much
+longer do you figure it'll take, Dave?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Another shift, at least," said MacHeath, picking up the compact,
+shielded instrument case. "You want to carry that mat?"</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/image_002.jpg" width="300" height="911" alt=""  />
+</div>
+
+<p>Griffin picked up the thick sponge-rubber mat that the instrument case
+had been sitting on, and the two men started off down the tube,
+walking silently on the sponge-rubber-soled shoes which would not
+scratch the glass underfoot.</p>
+
+<p>"Any indication yet as to who our saboteur is?" Griffin asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not sure," MacHeath admitted. "I've picked up a couple of leads,
+but I don't know if they mean anything or not."</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder if there <i>is</i> a saboteur," Griffin said musingly. "Maybe
+it's just a run of bad luck. It could happen, you know. A statistical
+run of&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You don't believe that, any more than I do," MacHeath said.</p>
+
+<p>"No. But I find it even harder to believe that a materialistic
+philosophy like Communism could evolve any workable psionic
+discipline."</p>
+
+<p>"So do I," agreed MacHeath.</p>
+
+<p>"But it can't be physical sabotage," Griffin argued. "There's not a
+trace of it&mdash;anywhere. It <i>has</i> to be psionic."</p>
+
+<p>"Right," said MacHeath, grinning as he saw what was coming next.</p>
+
+<p>"But we've already eliminated that. So?" Griffin nodded firmly as if
+in full agreement with himself. "So we follow the dictum of the
+Master: 'Eliminate the impossible; whatever is left, no matter how
+improbable, is the truth.' And, since there is absolutely nothing
+left, there is no truth. At the bottom, the whole thing is merely a
+matter of mental delusion."</p>
+
+<p>"Sherlock Holmes would be proud of you, Bill," MacHeath said. "And so
+am I."</p>
+
+<p>Griffin looked at MacHeath oddly. "I wish I was a halfway decent
+telepath, I'd like to know what's going on in your preconscious."</p>
+
+<p>"You'd have to dig deeper than that, I'm afraid," MacHeath said
+ruefully. "As soon as my subconscious has solved the problem, I'll let
+you know."</p>
+
+<p>"I've changed my mind," said Griffin cheerfully. "I don't envy your
+telepathy. I don't envy a guy who has to TP his own subconscious to
+find out what he's thinking."</p>
+
+<p>MacHeath chuckled softly as he turned the bolt that opened the door in
+the "gun" end of the stripped-nuclei accelerator. The seals broke with
+a soft hiss. Evidently, the barometric pressure outside the
+two-mile-long underground tube had changed slightly during the time
+they had been down there.</p>
+
+<p>"It'll be a week before we can test it," MacHeath said in a tired
+voice. "Even after we get it partly in balance. It'll take that long
+to evacuate the tube and sweep it clean."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>It was the first sentence he had spoken in the past hour or so, and it
+was purely for the edification of the man who was standing on the
+other side of the air lock, although neither Griffin nor MacHeath had
+actually seen him as yet.</p>
+
+<p>Griffin was not a telepath in the sense that the S.M.M.R. used the
+word, but to a non-psionicist, he would have appeared to be one.
+Membership in the "core" group of the <i>Society for Mystical and
+Metaphysical Research</i> required, above all, <i>understanding</i>. And, with
+that understanding, a conversation between two members need consist
+only of an occasional gesture and a key word now and then.</p>
+
+<p>The word "understanding" needs emphasis. Without understanding of
+another human mind, no human mind can be completely effective. Without
+that understanding, no human being can be completely free.</p>
+
+<p>And yet, the English word "understanding" is only an approximation to
+the actual process that must take place. <i>Total</i> understanding, in one
+sense, would require that a person actually <i>become</i> another
+person&mdash;that he be able to feel, completely and absolutely, every
+emotion, every thought, every bodily sensation, every twinge of
+memory, every judgment, every decision, and every sense of personal
+identity that is felt by the other person, no more and no less.</p>
+
+<p>Such totality is, obviously, neither attainable nor desirable. The
+result would be a merger of identities, a total unification. And, as a
+consequence, a complete loss of one of the human beings involved.</p>
+
+<p>Optimum "understanding" requires that a judgment be made, and that, in
+turn, requires <i>two</i> minds&mdash;not a fusion of identity. There must be
+one to judge and another to be judged, and each mind plays both
+roles.</p>
+
+<p><i>Love thy neighbor as thyself.</i> But the original Greek word would
+translate better as "respect and understand" than as the modern
+English "love." The founders of our modern religions were not fools;
+they simply did not have the tools at hand to formulate their
+knowledge properly. As understanding increases, a critical point is
+reached, which causes a qualitative change in the human mind.</p>
+
+<p>First, self-understanding must come. The human mind operates through
+similarities, and the thing most similar to any human mind is itself.
+The next most similar thing is another human mind.</p>
+
+<p>From that point on, all objects, processes, and patterns in the
+universe can be graded according to their similarity to each other,
+and, ultimately, to their similarity to the human mind.</p>
+
+<p>Two given entities may seem utterly dissimilar, but they can always be
+linked by a <i>tertium quid</i>&mdash;a "third thing" which is similar to both.
+This third thing, be it a material object or a product of the human
+imagination, is called a symbol. Symbols are the bridges by which the
+human mind can reach and manipulate the universe in which it exists.
+With the proper symbols and the understanding to use them, the human
+mind is limited only by its own inherent structural restrictions.</p>
+
+<p>One of the most active research projects of the S.M.M.R. was the
+construction of a more powerful symbology. Psionics had made
+tremendous strides in the previous four decades, but it was still in
+the alchemy stage. So far, symbols for various processes could only be
+worked out by cut-and-try, rule-of-thumb methods, using symbols
+already established, including languages and mathematics. None were
+completely satisfactory, but they worked fairly well within their
+narrow limits.</p>
+
+<p>As far as communication was concerned, the hashed-together symbology
+used by the S.M.M.R. was better than any conceivable code. The
+understanding required to "break" the "code" was well beyond the
+critical point. Anyone who could break it was, <i>ipso facto</i>, a member
+of the S.M.M.R.</p>
+
+<p>Most people didn't even realize that a conversation was taking place
+between two members, especially if a "cover conversation" was used at
+the same time.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>MacHeath's verbal discussion of the testing of the nuclei accelerator
+was just such a cover. Even before he had cracked the air lock, he had
+known that Dr. Theodore Nordred was standing on the other side of the
+thick wall.</p>
+
+<p>MacHeath pushed the heavy door open on its smooth hinges. "Oh, hello,
+Dr. Nordred. How's everything?"</p>
+
+<p>The heavy-set mathematician smiled pleasantly as MacHeath and Griffin
+came into the gun chamber. "I just thought I'd come down and see how
+you were getting along," he said. His voice was a low tenor, with
+just a touch of Midwestern twang. "Sometimes the creative mind gets
+bogged down in the nth-order abstractions that have no discernible
+connection with anything at all." He chuckled. "When that happens, I
+drop everything and go out to find something mundane to worry about."</p>
+
+<p>Nordred was only an inch shorter than the slim MacHeath, and he
+weighed in at close to two hundred pounds. At twenty-five, he had had
+the build of a lightweight wrestler; thirty more years had added
+poundage&mdash;a roll beneath his chin and a bulge at the belly&mdash;but he
+still looked capable of going a round or two without tiring. His shock
+of heavy hair was a mixture of mouse-brown and gray, and it seemed to
+have a tendency to stand up on end, which added another inch and a
+half to his height. His round face had a tendency to smile when he was
+talking or working with his hands; when he was deep in thought, his
+face usually relaxed into thoughtful blankness. He frowned rarely, and
+only for seconds at a time.</p>
+
+<p>"It seems to me you have enough to worry about, doctor," MacHeath said
+banteringly, "without looking for it." He put down his instrument case
+and took out a cigarette while Griffin closed the door to the
+acceleration tube.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh I don't have to look far," Nordred said. "How long do you think it
+will be before we can resume our work with the Monster?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ten days to two weeks," MacHeath said promptly.</p>
+
+<p>"I see." One his rare frowns crossed his face. "I wish I knew why the
+exciter arced across. It shouldn't have."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you have any idea?" MacHeath asked innocently. At the same
+time, he opened his mind wide to net in every wisp and filament of
+Nordred's thoughts that he could reach.</p>
+
+<p>"None at all," admitted the mathematician. "Weakness in the
+insulation, I suppose, though it tested solidly enough." And his mind,
+as far back as his preconscious and the upper fringes of his
+subconscious, agreed with his words. MacHeath could go no deeper as
+yet; he didn't know Nordred well enough yet.</p>
+
+<p>There were suspicions in Nordred's mind that the insulation weakness
+must have been caused by deliberate sabotage, but he had no one to pin
+his suspicions on. Neither he nor anyone else connected with the
+Redford project was aware of the true status of Dr. Konrad Bern.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, let's hope it doesn't happen again," MacHeath said. "Balancing
+these babies so that they work properly is hard enough for a deuteron
+accelerator, but the Monster here is ten times as touchy."</p>
+
+<p>Nordred nodded absently. "I know. But our work can't be done with
+anything less." Nordred actually knew less about the engineering
+details of the big accelerator than anyone else on the project; he was
+primarily a philosopher-mathematician, and only secondarily a
+physicist. He was theoretically in charge of the project, but the
+actual experimentation was done by the other four men; Drs. Roger
+Kent, Paul Luvochek, Solomon Bessermann, and Konrad Bern. These four
+and their assistants set up and ran off the experiments designed to
+test Dr. Nordred's theories.</p>
+
+<p>MacHeath picked up his instrument case again, and the three men went
+out of the gun chamber, into the outer room, and then started up the
+spiral stairway that led to the surface, talking as they went. But the
+apparent conversation had little to do with the instruction that
+MacHeath was giving Griffin as they climbed.</p>
+
+<p>So when MacHeath stopped suddenly and patted at his coverall pockets,
+Griffin was ready for the words that came next.</p>
+
+<p>"Damn!" MacHeath said. "I've left my notebook. Will you go down and
+get it for me, Bill?"</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Nordred had neither understood nor noticed the actual
+instructions:</p>
+
+<p>"Bill, as soon as I give you an excuse, get back down there and check
+that gun chamber. Give it a thorough going-over. I don't really think
+you'll find a thing, but I don't want to take any chances at this
+stage of the game."</p>
+
+<p>"Right," said Griffin, starting back down the stairway.</p>
+
+<p>MacHeath and Dr. Nordred went on climbing.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>David MacHeath sat at a table in the project's cafeteria, absently
+stirring his coffee, and trying to look professionally modest while
+Dr. Luvochek and Dr. Bessermann alternately praised him for his work.</p>
+
+<p>Luvochek, a tubby little butterball of a man, whose cherubic face
+would have made him look almost childlike if it weren't for the blue
+of his jaw, said: "You and those two men of yours have really done a
+marvelous job in the past four days, Mr. MacHeath&mdash;really marvelous."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll say," Bessermann chimed in. "I was getting pretty tired of
+looking at burned-out equipment and spending three-quarters of my time
+putting in replacement parts and wielding a soldering gun." Bessermann
+was leaner than Luvochek, but, like his brother scientist, he was
+balding on top. Both men were in their middle thirties.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't understand this jinx, myself," Luvochek said. "At first, it
+was just little things, but the accidents got worse and worse. And
+then, when the Monster blew&mdash;" He stopped and shook his head slowly.
+"I'd suspect sabotage, except that there was never any sign of
+tampering with the equipment I saw."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you think of the sabotage idea?" Bessermann asked MacHeath.</p>
+
+<p>MacHeath shrugged. "Haven't seen any signs of it."</p>
+
+<p>"Run of bad luck," said Luvochek. "That's all."</p>
+
+<p>As they talked MacHeath absorbed the patterns of thought that wove in
+and out in the two men's minds. Both men were more open than Dr.
+Nordred; they were easier for MacHeath to understand. Nowhere was
+there any thought of guilt&mdash;at least, as far as sabotage was
+concerned.</p>
+
+<p>MacHeath drank his coffee slowly and thoughtfully, keeping up his part
+of the three-way conversation while he concentrated on his own
+problem.</p>
+
+<p>One thing was certain: Nowhere in the minds of any of the personnel of
+the Redford Project was there any conscious knowledge of sabotage. Not
+even in the mind of Konrad Bern.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Roger Kent, a tall, lantern-jawed sad-eyed man in his forties, had
+been hard to get through to at first, but as soon as MacHeath
+discovered that the hard block Kent had built up around himself was
+caused by grief over a wife who had been dead five years, he became as
+easy to read as a billboard. Kent had submerged his grief in work; the
+eternal drive of the true scientist to drag the truth out of Mother
+Nature. He was constitutionally incapable of sabotaging the very
+instruments that had been built to dig in after that truth.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Konrad Bern, on the other hand, was difficult to read below the
+preconscious stage. Science, to him, was a form of power, to be used
+for "idealistic" purposes. He was perfectly capable of sabotaging the
+weapons of an enemy if it became necessary, whether that meant ruining
+a physical instrument or carefully falsifying the results of an
+experiment. Outwardly, he was a pleasant enough chap, but his mind
+revealed a rigidly held pattern of hatreds, fears, and twisted
+idealism. He held them tightly against the onslaughts of a hostile
+world.</p>
+
+<p>And that meant that he couldn't possibly have any control over
+whatever psionic powers he may have had.</p>
+
+<p>Unless&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Unless he was so expert and so well-trained that he was better than
+anything the S.M.M.R. had ever known.</p>
+
+<p>MacHeath didn't even like to think about that. It would mean that all
+the theory of psionics that had been built up so painstakingly over
+the past years would have to be junked <i>in toto</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Something was gnawing in the depths of his mind. In the perfectly
+rational but utterly nonlogical part of his subconscious where hunches
+are built, something was trying to form.</p>
+
+<p>MacHeath didn't try to probe for it. As soon as he had enough
+information for the hunch to be fully formed, it would be ready to
+use. Until then, it would be worthless, and probing for it might
+interrupt the formation.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>He was just finishing his coffee as Bill Griffin came in the door and
+headed toward the table where MacHeath, Luvochek, and Bessermann were
+sitting.</p>
+
+<p>MacHeath stood up and said: "Excuse me. I'll have to be getting some
+work done if you guys are ever going to get your own work done."</p>
+
+<p>"Sure."</p>
+
+<p>"Go ahead."</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks for the coffee," MacHeath added as he moved away.</p>
+
+<p>"Anytime," said Bessermann, grinning. "You guys just keep up the good
+work. When you fix 'em, they stay fixed. We haven't had a burnout
+since you came."</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe you broke our statistical jinx," said Luvochek, with a chubby
+smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe," said MacHeath. "I hope so."</p>
+
+<p>For some reason, the gnawing in his hunch factory became more
+persistent.</p>
+
+<p>As he and Griffin walked toward the door, Griffin reported rapidly. "I
+checked everything in the gun chamber. No sign of any tampering.
+Everything's just as we left it. The dust film hasn't been disturbed."</p>
+
+<p>"It figures," said MacHeath.</p>
+
+<p>Outside, in the corridor, they met Dr. Konrad Bern hurrying toward the
+cafeteria. He stopped as he saw them.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, hello, Mr. MacHeath, Mr. Griffin," he said. His white-toothed
+smile was friendly, but both of the S.M.M.R. agents could detect the
+hostility that was hard and brittle beneath the surface. "I wanted to
+thank you for the wonderful job you've been doing."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, thank you, doctor," said MacHeath honestly. "We aim to satisfy."</p>
+
+<p>Bern chuckled. "You're doing well so far. Odd streak of luck we've
+had, isn't it? Poor Dr. Nordred has been under a terrible strain; his
+whole life work is tied up in this project." He made a vague gesture
+with one hand. "Would you care for some coffee?"</p>
+
+<p>"Just had some, thanks," said MacHeath, "but we'll take a rain check."</p>
+
+<p>"Fine. Anytime." And he went on into the cafeteria.</p>
+
+<p>"Wow!" said Griffin as he walked on down the corridor with MacHeath.
+"That man is scared silly! But what an actor! You'd never know he was
+eating his guts out."</p>
+
+<p>"Sure he's scared," MacHeath said. "With all this sabotage talk going
+around, he's afraid there'll be an exhaustive investigation, and he
+can't take that right now."</p>
+
+<p>Griffin frowned. "I guess I missed that. What did you pick up?"</p>
+
+<p>"He's supposed to meet a Soviet agent tonight, and he's afraid he'll
+be caught. He doesn't know what happened to the first three, and he
+won't know what will happen to Number Four tonight.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll keep him around as long as he's useful. He's not a Bohr or a
+Pauli or a Fermi, but he&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>MacHeath stopped himself suddenly and came to a dead halt.</p>
+
+<p>"My God," he said softly, "that's <i>it</i>."</p>
+
+<p>His hunch had hatched.</p>
+
+<p>After a moment, he said: "Harry is getting back from the target end of
+the tube now, Bill. He can't pick me up, so beetle it down to the tool
+room, get him, and get up to the workshop fast. If I'm not there,
+wait; I have a little prying to do."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/image_003.jpg" width="500" height="398" alt=""  />
+</div>
+
+<p>"Can do," said Griffin. He went toward the elevator at an easy lope.</p>
+
+<p>David MacHeath went in the opposite direction.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>When MacHeath returned to the workshop which he had been assigned,
+Bill Griffin and Harry Benbow were waiting for him. Beside the
+big-muscled Griffin, Harry Benbow looked even thinner than he was. He
+was a good six-two, which made him a head taller than Griffin, but,
+unlike many tall, lean men, Benbow had no tendency to slouch; he stood
+tall and straight, reminding MacHeath of a poplar tree towering
+proudly over the countryside. Benbow was one of those rare American
+Negroes whose skin was actually as close to being "black" as human
+pigmentation will allow. His eyes were like disks of obsidian set in
+spheres of white porcelain, which gave an odd contrast-similarity
+effect when compared with Griffin's china-blue eyes.</p>
+
+<p>If the average man had wanted to pick two human beings who were
+"opposites," he could hardly have made a better choice than Benbow and
+the short, thickly-built, blond-haired, pink-skinned Bill Griffin. But
+the average man would be so struck by the differences that he would
+never notice that the similarities were vastly more important.</p>
+
+<p>"You look as if you'd just been kissed by Miss America," Harry said as
+MacHeath came through the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Better than that," MacHeath said. "We've got work to do."</p>
+
+<p>"What's the pitch?" Griffin wanted to know.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, in the first place, I'm afraid Dr. Konrad Bern is no longer of
+any use to the Redford Project. We're going to have to arrest him as
+an unregistered agent of the Soviet Government."</p>
+
+<p>"It's just as well," said Harry Benbow gently. "His research hasn't
+done us any good and it hasn't done the Soviets any good. The poor
+guy's been on edge ever since he got here. All the pale hide around
+this place stirs up every nerve in him."</p>
+
+<p>"What got you onto this?" Griffin asked MacHeath.</p>
+
+<p>"A hunch first," MacHeath said. "Then I got data to back it up. But,
+first ... Harry, how'd you know about Bern's reactions? He keeps those
+prejudices of his down pretty deep; I didn't think you could go that
+far."</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't have to. He spent half an hour talking to me this morning.
+He was so happy to see a fellow human being&mdash;according to his
+definition of human being&mdash;that he was as easy to read as if <i>you</i>
+were doing the reading."</p>
+
+<p>MacHeath nodded. "I hate to throw him to the wolves, but he's got to
+go."</p>
+
+<p>"What was the snooping you said you had to do?" Griffin asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Dates. Times. Briefly, I found that the run of accidents has been
+building up to a peak. At first, it was just small meters that went
+wrong. Then bigger, more complex stuff. And, finally, the Monster
+went. See the pattern?"</p>
+
+<p>The other men nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"You're the therapist," Griffin said. "What do you suggest?"</p>
+
+<p>"Shock treatment," said David MacHeath.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Just how Dr. Konrad Bern got wind of the fact that a squad of FBI men
+had come to the project to arrest him that evening is something that
+MacHeath didn't know until later. He was busy at the time, ignoring
+anything but what he was interested in. It always fascinated him to
+watch the mind of a psychokinetic expert at work. He couldn't do the
+trick himself, and he was always amazed at the ability of anyone who
+could.</p>
+
+<p>It was like watching a pianist play a particularly difficult concerto.
+A person can watch a pianist, see every move he is making, and why he
+is making it. But being able to see what is going on doesn't mean that
+one can duplicate the action. MacHeath was in the same position.
+Telepathically, he could observe the play of emotions that ran through
+a psychokinetic's mind&mdash;the combinations of avid desire and the utter
+loathing which, playing one against another, could move a brick, a
+book, or a Buick if the mind was powerful enough. But he couldn't do
+it himself, no matter how carefully he tried to follow the raging
+emotions that acted as two opposing jaws of a pair of tongs to lift
+and move the object.</p>
+
+<p>And so engrossed was he with the process that he did not notice that
+Konrad Bern had eluded the FBI. He was unaware of what had happened
+until one of the Federal agents rapped loudly on the workshop door.</p>
+
+<p>Almost instantly, MacHeath picked up the information from the agent's
+mind. He glanced at Griffin and Benbow. "You two can handle it. Be
+careful you don't overdo it."</p>
+
+<p>Then he went to the door and opened it a trifle. "Yes?"</p>
+
+<p>The man outside showed a gold badge. "Morgan, FBI. You David
+MacHeath?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes." MacHeath stepped outside and showed the FBI man his
+identification.</p>
+
+<p>"We were told to co-operate with you in this Konrad Bern case. He's
+managed to slip away from us somehow, but we know he's still in the
+area. He can't get past the gate."</p>
+
+<p>MacHeath let his mind expand until it meshed with that of Dr. Konrad
+Bern.</p>
+
+<p>"There is a way out," MacHeath snapped. "The acceleration tube."</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p>"Come on!" He started sprinting toward the elevators. He explained to
+the FBI agent as they went.</p>
+
+<p>"The acceleration tube of the ultracosmotron runs due north of here
+for two miles underground. The guard at the other end won't be
+expecting anyone to be coming from the inside of the target building.
+If Bern plays his cards right, he can get away."</p>
+
+<p>"Can't we phone the target building?" the FBI man asked.</p>
+
+<p>"No. We shut off all the electrical equipment and took down some of
+the wires so we could balance the acceleration fields."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, if he's on foot, we could send a car out there. We'd get there
+before he does. Uh ... wouldn't we?"</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe. But he'll kill himself if he sees he's trapped." That wasn't
+quite true. Bern was ready to fight to the death, and he had a heavy
+pistol to back him up. MacHeath didn't want to see anyone killed, and
+he didn't want stray bullets flying around the inside of that tube or
+in the target room.</p>
+
+<p>MacHeath and the FBI agent piled out of the elevator at the bottom of
+the shaft. Dr. Roger Kent was standing at the head of the stairs that
+spiraled down to the gun chamber. Dr. Kent knew that Bern had gone
+down the stairway, but he didn't know why.</p>
+
+<p>"He's our saboteur," MacHeath said quickly. "I'm going after him. As
+soon as I close the door and seal it, you turn on the pumps. Lower the
+air pressure in the tube to a pound per square inch below
+atmospheric. That'll put a force of about a ton and a quarter against
+the doors, and he won't be able to open them."</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Kent still didn't grasp the fact that Bern was a spy.</p>
+
+<p>"Explain to him, Morgan," MacHeath told the Federal agent. He went on
+down the spiral staircase, knowing that Kent would understand and act
+in plenty of time.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>The door to the tube was standing open. MacHeath slipped on a pair of
+the sponge-soled shoes, noticing angrily that Bern hadn't bothered to
+do so. He went into the tube and closed the door behind him. Then he
+started down the blackness of the tube at a fast trot. Ahead of him,
+in the utter darkness, he could hear the click of heels as the
+leather-shod Bern moved toward the target end of the long tube.</p>
+
+<p>Neither of them had lights. They were unnecessary, for one thing,
+since there was only one direction to go and there were no obstacles
+in the path. Bern would probably have carried a flashlight if he'd
+been able to get his hands on one quickly, but he hadn't, so he went
+in darkness. MacHeath didn't want a light; in the darkness, he had the
+advantage of knowing where his opponent was.</p>
+
+<p>Every so often, Bern would stop, listening for sounds of pursuit,
+since his own footsteps, echoing down the glass-lined cylinder,
+drowned out any noise from behind. But MacHeath, running silently on
+the toes of his thick-soled shoes, kept in motion, gaining on the
+fleeing spy.</p>
+
+<p>A two-mile run is a good stretch of exercise for anyone, but MacHeath
+didn't dare slow down. As it was, Konrad Bern was already tugging
+frantically at the door that led to the target room by the time
+MacHeath reached him. But the faint sighing of the pumps had already
+told MacHeath that the air pressure had been dropped. Bern couldn't
+possibly get the door open.</p>
+
+<p>MacHeath's lungs wanted to be filled with air; his chest wanted to
+heave; he wanted to pant, taking in great gulps of life-giving oxygen.
+But he didn't dare. He didn't want Bern to know he was there, so he
+strained to keep his breath silent.</p>
+
+<p>He stepped up behind the physicist in the pitch blackness, and judging
+carefully, brought his fist down on the nape of the man's neck in a
+hard rabbit punch.</p>
+
+<p>Konrad Bern dropped unconscious to the floor of the tube.</p>
+
+<p>Then MacHeath let his chest pump air into his lungs in long, harsh
+gasps. Shakily, he lowered himself to the floor beside Bern and
+squatted on his haunches, waiting for the hiss of the bleeder valve
+that would tell him that the air pressure had been raised to allow
+someone to enter the air lock.</p>
+
+<p>It was Morgan, the FBI man, who finally cracked the door. Griffin and
+Dr. Kent were with him.</p>
+
+<p>"You all right?" asked Morgan.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm fine," MacHeath said, "but Bern is going to have a sore neck for
+a while. I didn't hit him hard enough to break it, but he'll get
+plenty of sleep before he wakes up."</p>
+
+<p>More FBI men came in, and they dragged out the unprotesting Bern.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Kent said: "Well, I'm glad that's over. I'll have to get back and
+see what Dr. Nordred is raving about."</p>
+
+<p>"Raving?" asked MacHeath innocently.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. While I was in the pump room reducing the pressure, he called me
+on the interphone. Said he'd been looking all over for me. He and
+Luvochek and Bessermann are up in the lab." He frowned. "They claim
+that one of the radiolead samples was floating in the air in the lab.
+It's settled down now, I gather, but it only weighs a fraction of what
+it should, though it's gaining all the time. And that's ridiculous.
+It's not at all what Dr. Nordred's theory predicted." Then he clamped
+his lips together, thinking perhaps he had talked too much.</p>
+
+<p>"Interesting," said MacHeath blandly. "Very interesting."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Senator Gonzales sat in Brian Taggert's sixth-floor office in the
+S.M.M.R. building and looked puzzled. "All right, I grant you that
+Bern couldn't have been the saboteur. Then why arrest him?"</p>
+
+<p>Dave MacHeath took a drag from his cigarette before he answered. "We
+had to have a patsy&mdash;someone to put the blame on. No one really
+believed that it was just bad luck, but they'll all accept the idea
+that Bern was a saboteur."</p>
+
+<p>"We would have had to arrest him eventually, anyway," said Brian
+Taggert.</p>
+
+<p>"Give me a quick run-down," Gonzales said. "I've got to explain this
+to the President."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you ever hear of the Pauli Effect?" MacHeath asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Something about the number of electrons that&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No," MacHeath said quickly. "That's the Pauli <i>principle</i>, better
+known as the Exclusion Principle. The Pauli <i>Effect</i> is a different
+thing entirely, a psionic effect.</p>
+
+<p>"It used to be said that a theoretical physicist was judged by his
+inability to handle research apparatus; the clumsier he was in
+research, the better he was with theory. But Wolfgang Pauli was a lot
+more than clumsy. Apparatus would break, topple over, go to pieces, or
+burn up if Pauli just walked into the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Up to the time he died, in 1958, his colleagues kidded about it,
+without really believing there was anything behind it. But it is
+recorded that the explosion of some vacuum equipment in a laboratory
+at the University of G&ouml;ttingen was the direct result of the Pauli
+Effect. It was definitely established that the explosion occurred at
+the precise moment that a train on which Pauli was traveling stopped
+for a short time at the G&ouml;ttingen railway station."</p>
+
+<p>The senator said: "The poltergeist phenomenon."</p>
+
+<p>"Not exactly," MacHeath said, "although there is a similarity. The
+poltergeist phenomenon is usually spectacular and is nearly always
+associated with teen-age neurotics. Then there's the pyrotic; fires
+always start in his vicinity."</p>
+
+<p>"But there's always a reason for psionic phenomena to react violently
+under subconscious control," Senator Gonzales pointed out. "There's
+always a psychological quirk."</p>
+
+<p>"Sure. And I almost fell into the same trap, myself."</p>
+
+<p>"How so?"</p>
+
+<p>"I was thinking that if Bern were the saboteur, all our theories about
+psionics would have to be thrown out&mdash;we'd have to start from a
+different set of precepts. <i>And I didn't even want to think about such
+an idea!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"Nobody likes their pet theories overthrown," Gonzales observed.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course not. But here's the point: The only way that a scientific
+theory can be proved wrong is to uncover a phenomenon which doesn't
+fit in with the theory. A theoretical physicist is a mathematician; he
+makes logical deductions and logical predictions by juggling symbols
+around in accordance with some logical system. But the axioms, the
+assumptions upon which those systems are built, are nonlogical. You
+can't prove an axiom; if comes right out of the mind.</p>
+
+<p>"So imagine that you're a theoretical physicist. A really
+original-type thinker. You come up with a mathematical system that
+explains all known phenomena at that time, and predicts others that
+are, as yet, unknown. You check your math over and over again; there's
+no error in your logic, since it all follows, step by step."</p>
+
+<p>"O.K.; go on," Gonzales said interestedly.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, then; you've built yourself a logical universe, based on
+your axioms, and the structure seems to have a one-to-one
+correspondence with the actual universe. Not only that, but if the
+theory is accepted, you've built your reputation on it&mdash;your life.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, what happens if your axioms&mdash;not the logic <i>about</i> the axioms,
+but the axioms themselves&mdash;are proven to be wrong?"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Brian Taggert took his pipe out of his mouth. "Why, you give up the
+erroneous set of axioms and build a new set that will explain the new
+phenomenon. Isn't that what a scientist is supposed to do?" His manner
+was that of wide-eyed innocence laid on with a large trowel.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, <i>sure</i> it is," said the senator. "A man builds his whole life,
+his whole universe; on a set of principles, and he scraps them at the
+drop of a hat. <i>Sure</i> he does."</p>
+
+<p>"He claims he will," MacHeath said. "Any scientist worth the paper his
+diploma is printed on is firmly convinced that he will change his
+axioms as soon as they're proven false. Of course, ninety-nine per
+cent of 'em <i>can't</i> and <i>won't</i> and <i>don't</i>. They refuse to look at
+anything that suggests changing axioms.</p>
+
+<p>"Some scientists eagerly accept the axioms that they were taught in
+school and hang on to them all their lives, fighting change tooth and
+nail. Oh, they'll accept new ideas, all right&mdash;provided that they fit
+in with the structures based on the old axioms.</p>
+
+<p>"Then there are the young iconoclasts who don't like the axioms as
+they stand, so they make up some new ones of their own&mdash;men like
+Newton, Einstein, Planck, and so on. Then, once the new axioms have
+been forced down the throats of their colleagues, the innovators
+become the Old Order; the iconoclasts become the ones who put the
+fences around the new images to safeguard them. And they're even more
+firmly wedded to their axioms than anyone else. This is <i>their</i>
+universe!</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, these men proclaim to all the world that they are
+perfectly willing to change their axioms. And the better a scientist
+he is, the more he believes, in his heart-of-hearts, that he really
+would change. He really thinks, consciously, that he wants others to
+test his theories.</p>
+
+<p>"But notice: A theory is only good if it explains all known phenomena
+in its field. If it does, then the only thing that can topple it is a
+<i>new</i> fact. The only thing that can threaten the complex structure
+formulated by a really creative, painstaking, mathematical physicist
+is <i>experiment</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>Senator Gonzales' attentive silence was eloquent.</p>
+
+<p>"Experiment!" MacHeath repeated. "That can wreck a theory quicker and
+more completely than all the learned arguments of a dozen men. And
+every theoretician is aware of that fact. Consciously, he gladly
+accepts the inevitable; but his subconscious mind will fight to keep
+those axioms.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Even if it has to smash every experimental device around!</i></p>
+
+<p>"After all, if nobody can experiment on your theory, it can't be
+proved wrong, can it?</p>
+
+<p>"In Nordred's case, as in Pauli's, this subconscious defense actually
+made itself felt in the form of broken equipment. Dr. Theodore Nordred
+was totally unconscious of the fact that he detested and feared the
+idea of anyone experimenting to prove or disprove his theory. He had
+no idea that he, himself, was re-channeling the energy in those
+machines to make them burn out."</p>
+
+<p>Brian Taggert looked at MacHeath pointedly. "Do you think the shock
+treatment you gave him will cause any repercussions?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. Griffin and Benbow held that block of radiolead floating in the
+air only while Dr. Nordred was alone in the lab. He pushed at it, felt
+of it, and moved it around for more than ten minutes before he'd admit
+the reality of what he saw. Then he called Luvochek and Bessermann in
+to look at it.</p>
+
+<p>"Griffin and Benbow let the sample settle to the desk, so that by the
+time the other two scientists got to the lab, the lead didn't have an
+apparent negative weight, but was still much lighter than it should
+be.</p>
+
+<p>"All the while that Bessermann and Luvochek were trying to weigh the
+lead block, to get an accurate measurement, Griffin and Benbow, three
+rooms away, kept increasing the weight slowly towards normal. And so
+far no one has invented a device which will give an instantaneous
+check on the weight of an object. A balance can't check the weight of
+a sample unless that weight is constant; there's too much time lag
+involved.</p>
+
+<p>"So, what evidence do they have? Scientifically speaking, none. They
+have no measurements, and the experiment can't be repeated. And only
+Nordred actually saw the sample <i>floating</i>. Luvochek and Bessermann
+will eventually think up a 'natural' explanation for the apparent
+steady gain in weight. Only Nordred will remain convinced that what he
+saw actually happened.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see how there could be any serious repercussions in the field
+of physics." But he looked at Taggert for confirmation.</p>
+
+<p>Taggert gave it to him with an approving look.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a funny thing," said Gonzales musingly. "Some time back, we were
+in a situation where we had to go to the extreme of physical violence
+to keep from demonstrating to a scientist that psionic powers could
+be controlled, just to keep from ruining the physicist's work.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, we turn right around and demonstrate the 'impossible' to another
+physicist in order to pull his hard-earned axioms out from under him."
+He smiled wryly. "There ain't no justice in the world."</p>
+
+<p>"No," agreed MacHeath, "but the trick worked. He won't have any
+subconscious desire to smash equipment just to protect a theory that
+has already been smashed. On the contrary, he'll let them go through
+in order to find new data to build another theory on."</p>
+
+<p>"He'll never again be the man he was," said Taggert regretfully. "He's
+lost the force of his convictions. He won't be capable of taking a
+no-nonsense, dogmatic, black-and-white stand. But it was necessary."
+He made an odd gesture with one hand. "What else can you do with a man
+who's a psionic psychopath?"</p>
+
+
+<h3>THE END</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Psichopath, by Gordon Randall Garrett
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Psichopath, by Gordon Randall Garrett
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Psichopath
+
+Author: Gordon Randall Garrett
+
+Illustrator: van Dongen
+
+Release Date: October 20, 2009 [EBook #30304]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PSICHOPATH ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                         Transcriber's Note:
+
+  This etext was produced from Analog Science Fact & Fiction October 1960.
+  Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright
+  on this publication was renewed.
+
+
+                              PSICHOPATH
+
+
+                         By DARREL T. LANGART
+
+
+
+     _Given psi powers like clairvoyance and telepathy, solving
+     problems of sabotage would be easy, of course. That is, it
+     seems that way at first thought!_
+
+
+                      Illustrated by van Dongen
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+The man in the pastel blue topcoat walked with steady purpose, but
+without haste, through the chill, wind-swirled drizzle that filled the
+air above the streets of Arlington, Virginia. His matching blue
+cap-hood was pulled low over his forehead, and the clear, infrared
+radiating face mask had been flipped down to protect his chubby cheeks
+and round nose from the icy wind.
+
+No one noticed him particularly. He was just another average man who
+blended in with all the others who walked the streets that day. No one
+recognized him; his face did not appear often in public places, except
+in his own state, and, even so, it was a thoroughly ordinary face.
+But, as he walked, Senator John Peter Gonzales was keeping a mental,
+fine-webbed, four-dimensional net around him, feeling for the
+slightest touch of recognition. He wanted no one to connect him in any
+way with his intended destination.
+
+It was not his first visit to the six-floor brick building that stood
+on a street in a lower-middle-class district of Arlington. Actually,
+government business took him there more often than would have been
+safe for the average man-on-the-street. For Senator Gonzales, the
+process of remaining incognito was so elementary that it was almost
+subconscious.
+
+Arriving at his destination, he paused on the sidewalk to light a
+cigarette, shielding it against the wind and drizzle with cupped
+hands while his mind made one last check on the surroundings. Then he
+strode quickly up the five steps to the double doors which were
+marked: _The Society For Mystical And Metaphysical Research, Inc._
+
+Just as he stepped in, he flipped the face shield up and put on an
+old-fashioned pair of thick-lensed, black-rimmed spectacles. Then, his
+face assuming a bland smile that would have been completely out of
+place on Senator Gonzales, he went from the foyer into the front
+office.
+
+"Good afternoon, Mrs. Jesser," he said, in a high, smooth, slightly
+accented voice that was not his own. "I perceive by your aura that you
+are feeling well. Your normal aura-color is tinged with a positive
+golden hue."
+
+Mrs. Jesser, a well-rounded matron in her early forties, rose to the
+bait like a porpoise being hand-fed at a Florida zoo. "_Dear_ Swami
+Chandra! How perfectly wonderful to see you again! You're looking
+_very_ well your-_self_."
+
+The Swami, whose Indian blood was of the Aztec rather than the Brahmin
+variety, nonetheless managed to radiate all the mystery of the East.
+"My well-being, dear Mrs. Jesser, is due to the fact that I have been
+communing for the past three months with my very good friend, the
+Fifth Dalai Lama. A most refreshingly wise person." Senator Gonzales
+was fond of the Society's crackpot receptionist, and he knew exactly
+what kind of hokum would please her most.
+
+"Oh, I _do_ hope you will find time to tell me _all_ about it," she
+said effusively. "Mr. Balfour isn't in the city just now," she went
+on. "He's lecturing in New York on the history of flying saucer
+sightings. Do you realize that this is the fortieth anniversary of the
+first saucer sighting, back in 1944?"
+
+"The first _photographed_ sighting," the Swami corrected
+condescendingly. "Our friends have been watching and guiding us for
+far longer than that, and were sighted many times before they were
+photographed."
+
+Mrs. Jesser nodded briskly. "Of course. You're right, as always,
+Swami."
+
+"I am sorry to hear," the Swami continued smoothly, "that I will not
+be able to see Mr. Balfour. However, I came at the call of Mr. Brian
+Taggert, who is expecting me."
+
+Mrs. Jesser glanced down at her appointment sheet. "He didn't mention
+an appointment to me. However--" She punched a button on the intercom.
+"Mr. Taggert? Swami Chandra is here to see you. He says he has an
+appointment."
+
+Brian Taggert's deep voice came over the instrument. "The Swami, as
+usual, is very astute. I have been thinking about calling him. Send
+him right up."
+
+"You may go up, Swami," said Mrs. Jesser, wide-eyed. She watched in
+awe as the Swami marched regally through the inner door and began to
+climb the stairs toward the sixth floor.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One way to hide an ex-officio agency of the United States Government
+was to label it truthfully--_The Society For Mystical And Metaphysical
+Research_. In spite of the fact that the label was literally true, it
+sounded so crackpot that no one but a crackpot would bother to look
+into it. As a consequence, better than ninety per cent of the
+membership of the Society was composed of just such people. Only a few
+members of the "core" knew the organization's true function and
+purpose. And as long as such scatter-brains as Mrs. Jesser and Mr.
+Balfour were in there pitching, no one would ever penetrate to the
+actual core of the Society.
+
+The senator had already pocketed the exaggerated glasses by the time
+he reached the sixth floor, and his face had lost its bland,
+overly-wise smile. He pushed open the door to Taggert's office.
+
+"Have you got any ideas yet?" he asked quickly.
+
+Brian Taggert, a heavily-muscled man with dark eyes and black,
+slightly wavy hair, sat on the edge of a couch in one corner of the
+room. His desk across the room was there for paperwork only, and
+Taggert had precious little of that to bother with.
+
+He took a puff from his heavy-bowled briar. "We're going to have to
+send an agent in there. Someone who can be on the spot. Someone who
+can get the feel of the situation first hand."
+
+"That'll be difficult. We can't just suddenly stick an unknown in
+there and have an excuse for his being there. Couldn't Donahue or
+Reeves--"
+
+Taggert shook his head. "Impossible, John. Extrasensory perception
+can't replace sight, any more than sight can replace hearing. You know
+that."
+
+"Certainly. But I thought we could get enough information that way to
+tell us who our saboteur is. No dice, eh?"
+
+"No dice," said Taggert. "Look at the situation we've got there. The
+purpose of the Redford Research Team is to test the Meson Ultimate
+Decay Theory of Dr. Theodore Nordred. Now, if we--"
+
+Senator Gonzales, walking across the room toward Taggert, gestured
+with one hand. "I know! I know! Give me _some_ credit for
+intelligence! But we _do_ have one suspect, don't we? What about
+_him_?"
+
+Taggert chuckled through a wreath of smoke. "Calm down, John. Or are
+you trying to give me your impression of Mrs. Jesser in a conversation
+with a saucerite?"
+
+The senator laughed and sat down in a nearby chair. "All right. Sorry.
+But this whole thing is lousing up our entire space program. First
+off, we nearly lose Dr. Ch'ien, and, with him gone, the interstellar
+drive project would've been shot. Now, if this sabotage keeps up, the
+Redford project _will_ be shot, and that means we might have to stick
+to the old-fashioned rocket to get off-planet. Brian, we _need_
+antigravity, and, so far, Nordred's theory is our only clue."
+
+"Agreed," said Taggert.
+
+"Well, we're never going to get it if equipment keeps mysteriously
+burning itself out, breaking down, and just generally goofing up. This
+morning, the primary exciter on the new ultracosmotron went haywire,
+and the beam of sodium nuclei burned through part of the accelerator
+tube wall. It'll take a month to get it back in working order."
+
+Taggert took his pipe out of his mouth and tapped the dottle into a
+nearby ash disposal unit. "And you want to pick up our pet spy?"
+
+Senator Gonzales scowled. "Well, I'd certainly call him our prime
+suspect." But there was a certain lack of conviction in his manner.
+
+Brian Taggert didn't flatly contradict the senator. "Maybe. But you
+know, John, there's one thing that bothers me about these accidents."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"The fact that we have not one shred of evidence that points to
+sabotage."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In a room on the fifth floor, directly below Brian Taggert's office, a
+young man was half sitting, half reclining in a thickly upholstered
+adjustable chair. He had dropped the back of the chair to a forty-five
+degree angle and lifted up the footrest; now he was leaning back in
+lazy comfort, his ankles crossed, his right hand holding a slowly
+smoldering cigarette, his eyes contemplating the ceiling. Or, rather,
+they seemed to be contemplating something _beyond_ the ceiling.
+
+It was pure coincidence that the focus of his thoughts happened to be
+located in about the same volume of space that his eyes seemed to be
+focused on. If Brian Taggert and Senator Gonzales had been in the room
+below, his eyes would still be looking at the ceiling.
+
+In repose, his face looked even younger than his twenty-eight years
+would have led one to expect. His close-cropped brown hair added to
+the impression of youth, and the well-tailored suit on his slim,
+muscular body added to the effect. At any top-flight university, he
+could have passes for a well-bred, sophisticated, intelligent student
+who had money enough to indulge himself and sense enough not to overdo
+it.
+
+He was beginning to understand the pattern that was being woven in the
+room above--beginning to feel it in depth.
+
+Senator Gonzalez was mildly telepathic, inasmuch as he could pick up
+thoughts in the prevocal stage--the stage at which thought becomes
+definitely organized into words, phrases, and sentences. He could go a
+little deeper, into the selectivity stage, where the linking processes
+of logic took over from the nonlogical but rational processes of the
+preconscious--but only if he knew the person well. Where the senator
+excelled was in detecting emotional tone and manipulating emotional
+processes, both within himself and within others.
+
+Brian Taggert was an analyzer, an originator, a motivator--and more.
+The young man found himself avoiding too deep a probe into the mind of
+Brian Taggert; he knew that he had not yet achieved the maturity to
+understand the multilayered depths of a mind like that. Eventually,
+perhaps....
+
+Not that Senator Gonzales was a child, nor that he was emotionally or
+intellectually shallow. It was merely that he was not of Taggert's
+caliber.
+
+The young man absently took another drag from his cigarette. Taggert
+had explained the basic problem to him, but he was getting a wider
+picture from the additional information that Senator Gonzales had
+brought.
+
+Dr. Theodore Nordred, a mathematical physicist and one of the
+top-flight, high-powered, original minds in the field, had shown that
+Einstein's final equations only held in a universe composed entirely
+of normal matter. Since the great Einstein had died before the
+Principle of Parity had been overthrown in the mid-fifties, he had
+been unable to incorporate the information into his Unified Field
+Theory. Nordred had been able to show, mathematically, that Einstein's
+equations were valid only for a completely "dexter," or right-handed
+universe, or for a completely "sinister" or left-handed universe.
+
+Although the universe in which Man lived was predominantly
+dexter--arbitrarily so designated--it was not completely so. It had a
+"sinister" component amounting to approximately one one-hundred-thousandth
+of one per cent. On the average, one atom out of every ten million in the
+universe was an atom of antimatter. The distribution was unequal of course;
+antimatter could not exist in contact with ordinary matter. Most of it was
+distributed throughout interstellar space in the form of individual atoms,
+freely floating in space, a long way from any large mass of normal matter.
+
+But that minute fraction of a per cent was enough to show that the
+known universe was not totally Einsteinian. In a purely Einsteinian
+universe, antigravity was impossible, but if the equations of Dr.
+Theodore Nordred were actually a closer approximation to true reality
+than those of Einstein, then antigravity _might_ be a practical
+reality.
+
+And that was the problem the Redford Research Team was working on. It
+was a parallel project to the interstellar drive problem, being
+carried on elsewhere.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The "pet spy," as Taggert had called him, was Dr. Konrad Bern, a
+middle-aged Negro from Tanganyika, who was convinced that only under
+Communism could the colored races of the world achieve the
+technological organization and living standard of the white man. He
+had been trained as a "sleeper"; not even the exhaustive
+investigations of the FBI had turned up any relationship between Bern
+and the Soviets. It had taken the telepathic probing of the S.M.M.R.
+agents to uncover his real purposes. Known, he constituted no danger.
+
+There was no denying that he was a highly competent, if not brilliant,
+physicist. And, since it was quite impossible for him to get any
+information on the Redford Project into the hands of the
+opposition--it was no longer fashionable to call Communists "the
+enemy"--there was no reason why he shouldn't be allowed to contribute
+to the American efforts to bridge space.
+
+Three times in the five months since Bern had joined the project,
+agents of the Soviet government had made attempts to contact the
+physicist. Three times the FBI, warned by S.M.M.R. agents, had quietly
+blocked the contact. Konrad Bern had been effectively isolated.
+
+But, at the project site itself, equipment failure had become
+increasingly more frequent, all out of proportion to the normal
+accident rate in any well-regulated laboratory. The work of the
+project had practically come to a standstill; the ultra-secret project
+reports to the President were beginning to show less and less progress
+in the basic research, and more and more progress in repairing damaged
+equipment. Apparently, though, increasing efficiency in repair work
+was self-neutralizing; repairing an instrument in half the time merely
+meant that it could break down twice as often.
+
+It had to be sabotage. And yet, not even the S.M.M.R. agents could
+find any trace of intentional damage nor any thought patterns that
+would indicate deliberate damage.
+
+And Senator John Peter Gonzales quite evidently did _not_ want to face
+the implications of _that_ particular fact.
+
+"We're going to have to send an agent in," Taggert repeated.
+
+(_That's my cue_, thought the young man on the fifth floor as he
+crushed out his cigarette and got up from the chair.)
+
+"I don't know how we're going to manage it," said the senator. "What
+excuse do we have for putting a new man on the Redford team?"
+
+Brian Taggert grinned. "What they need is an expert repair
+technician--a man who knows how to build and repair complex research
+instruments. He doesn't have to know anything about the purpose of the
+team itself, all he has to do is keep the equipment in good shape."
+
+Senator Gonzalez let a slow smile spread over his face. "You've been
+gulling me, you snake. All right; I deserved it. Tell him to come in."
+
+As the door opened, Taggert said: "Senator Gonzales, may I present Mr.
+David MacHeath? He's our man, I think."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+David MacHeath watched a blue line wriggle its way erratically across
+the face of an oscilloscope. "The wave form is way off," he said
+flatly, "and the frequency is slithering all over the place."
+
+He squinted at the line for a moment then spoke to the man standing
+nearby. "Signal Harry to back her off two degrees, then run her up
+slowly, ten minutes at a time."
+
+The other man flickered the key on the side of the small
+carbide-Welsbach lamp. The shutters blinked, sending pulses of light
+down the length of the ten-foot diameter glass-walled tube in which
+the men were working. Far down the tube, MacHeath could see the
+answering flicker from Harry, a mile and a half away in the darkness.
+
+MacHeath watched the screen again. After a few seconds, he said:
+"O.K.! Hold it!"
+
+Again the lamp flashed.
+
+"Well, it isn't perfect," MacHeath said, "but it's all we can do from
+here. We'll have to evacuate the tube to get her in perfect balance.
+Tell Harry to knock off for the day."
+
+While the welcome message was being flashed, MacHeath shut off the
+testing instruments and disconnected them. It was possible to
+compensate a little for the testing equipment, but a telephone, or
+even an electric flashlight, would simply add to the burden.
+
+Bill Griffin shoved down the key on the lamp he was holding and locked
+it into place. The shutters remained open, and the lamp shed a beam of
+white light along the shining walls of the cylindrical tube. "How much
+longer do you figure it'll take, Dave?" he asked.
+
+"Another shift, at least," said MacHeath, picking up the compact,
+shielded instrument case. "You want to carry that mat?"
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Griffin picked up the thick sponge-rubber mat that the instrument case
+had been sitting on, and the two men started off down the tube,
+walking silently on the sponge-rubber-soled shoes which would not
+scratch the glass underfoot.
+
+"Any indication yet as to who our saboteur is?" Griffin asked.
+
+"I'm not sure," MacHeath admitted. "I've picked up a couple of leads,
+but I don't know if they mean anything or not."
+
+"I wonder if there _is_ a saboteur," Griffin said musingly. "Maybe
+it's just a run of bad luck. It could happen, you know. A statistical
+run of--"
+
+"You don't believe that, any more than I do," MacHeath said.
+
+"No. But I find it even harder to believe that a materialistic
+philosophy like Communism could evolve any workable psionic
+discipline."
+
+"So do I," agreed MacHeath.
+
+"But it can't be physical sabotage," Griffin argued. "There's not a
+trace of it--anywhere. It _has_ to be psionic."
+
+"Right," said MacHeath, grinning as he saw what was coming next.
+
+"But we've already eliminated that. So?" Griffin nodded firmly as if
+in full agreement with himself. "So we follow the dictum of the
+Master: 'Eliminate the impossible; whatever is left, no matter how
+improbable, is the truth.' And, since there is absolutely nothing
+left, there is no truth. At the bottom, the whole thing is merely a
+matter of mental delusion."
+
+"Sherlock Holmes would be proud of you, Bill," MacHeath said. "And so
+am I."
+
+Griffin looked at MacHeath oddly. "I wish I was a halfway decent
+telepath, I'd like to know what's going on in your preconscious."
+
+"You'd have to dig deeper than that, I'm afraid," MacHeath said
+ruefully. "As soon as my subconscious has solved the problem, I'll let
+you know."
+
+"I've changed my mind," said Griffin cheerfully. "I don't envy your
+telepathy. I don't envy a guy who has to TP his own subconscious to
+find out what he's thinking."
+
+MacHeath chuckled softly as he turned the bolt that opened the door in
+the "gun" end of the stripped-nuclei accelerator. The seals broke with
+a soft hiss. Evidently, the barometric pressure outside the
+two-mile-long underground tube had changed slightly during the time
+they had been down there.
+
+"It'll be a week before we can test it," MacHeath said in a tired
+voice. "Even after we get it partly in balance. It'll take that long
+to evacuate the tube and sweep it clean."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was the first sentence he had spoken in the past hour or so, and it
+was purely for the edification of the man who was standing on the
+other side of the air lock, although neither Griffin nor MacHeath had
+actually seen him as yet.
+
+Griffin was not a telepath in the sense that the S.M.M.R. used the
+word, but to a non-psionicist, he would have appeared to be one.
+Membership in the "core" group of the _Society for Mystical and
+Metaphysical Research_ required, above all, _understanding_. And, with
+that understanding, a conversation between two members need consist
+only of an occasional gesture and a key word now and then.
+
+The word "understanding" needs emphasis. Without understanding of
+another human mind, no human mind can be completely effective. Without
+that understanding, no human being can be completely free.
+
+And yet, the English word "understanding" is only an approximation to
+the actual process that must take place. _Total_ understanding, in one
+sense, would require that a person actually _become_ another
+person--that he be able to feel, completely and absolutely, every
+emotion, every thought, every bodily sensation, every twinge of
+memory, every judgment, every decision, and every sense of personal
+identity that is felt by the other person, no more and no less.
+
+Such totality is, obviously, neither attainable nor desirable. The
+result would be a merger of identities, a total unification. And, as a
+consequence, a complete loss of one of the human beings involved.
+
+Optimum "understanding" requires that a judgment be made, and that, in
+turn, requires _two_ minds--not a fusion of identity. There must be
+one to judge and another to be judged, and each mind plays both
+roles.
+
+_Love thy neighbor as thyself._ But the original Greek word would
+translate better as "respect and understand" than as the modern
+English "love." The founders of our modern religions were not fools;
+they simply did not have the tools at hand to formulate their
+knowledge properly. As understanding increases, a critical point is
+reached, which causes a qualitative change in the human mind.
+
+First, self-understanding must come. The human mind operates through
+similarities, and the thing most similar to any human mind is itself.
+The next most similar thing is another human mind.
+
+From that point on, all objects, processes, and patterns in the
+universe can be graded according to their similarity to each other,
+and, ultimately, to their similarity to the human mind.
+
+Two given entities may seem utterly dissimilar, but they can always be
+linked by a _tertium quid_--a "third thing" which is similar to both.
+This third thing, be it a material object or a product of the human
+imagination, is called a symbol. Symbols are the bridges by which the
+human mind can reach and manipulate the universe in which it exists.
+With the proper symbols and the understanding to use them, the human
+mind is limited only by its own inherent structural restrictions.
+
+One of the most active research projects of the S.M.M.R. was the
+construction of a more powerful symbology. Psionics had made
+tremendous strides in the previous four decades, but it was still in
+the alchemy stage. So far, symbols for various processes could only be
+worked out by cut-and-try, rule-of-thumb methods, using symbols
+already established, including languages and mathematics. None were
+completely satisfactory, but they worked fairly well within their
+narrow limits.
+
+As far as communication was concerned, the hashed-together symbology
+used by the S.M.M.R. was better than any conceivable code. The
+understanding required to "break" the "code" was well beyond the
+critical point. Anyone who could break it was, _ipso facto_, a member
+of the S.M.M.R.
+
+Most people didn't even realize that a conversation was taking place
+between two members, especially if a "cover conversation" was used at
+the same time.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+MacHeath's verbal discussion of the testing of the nuclei accelerator
+was just such a cover. Even before he had cracked the air lock, he had
+known that Dr. Theodore Nordred was standing on the other side of the
+thick wall.
+
+MacHeath pushed the heavy door open on its smooth hinges. "Oh, hello,
+Dr. Nordred. How's everything?"
+
+The heavy-set mathematician smiled pleasantly as MacHeath and Griffin
+came into the gun chamber. "I just thought I'd come down and see how
+you were getting along," he said. His voice was a low tenor, with
+just a touch of Midwestern twang. "Sometimes the creative mind gets
+bogged down in the nth-order abstractions that have no discernible
+connection with anything at all." He chuckled. "When that happens, I
+drop everything and go out to find something mundane to worry about."
+
+Nordred was only an inch shorter than the slim MacHeath, and he
+weighed in at close to two hundred pounds. At twenty-five, he had had
+the build of a lightweight wrestler; thirty more years had added
+poundage--a roll beneath his chin and a bulge at the belly--but he
+still looked capable of going a round or two without tiring. His shock
+of heavy hair was a mixture of mouse-brown and gray, and it seemed to
+have a tendency to stand up on end, which added another inch and a
+half to his height. His round face had a tendency to smile when he was
+talking or working with his hands; when he was deep in thought, his
+face usually relaxed into thoughtful blankness. He frowned rarely, and
+only for seconds at a time.
+
+"It seems to me you have enough to worry about, doctor," MacHeath said
+banteringly, "without looking for it." He put down his instrument case
+and took out a cigarette while Griffin closed the door to the
+acceleration tube.
+
+"Oh I don't have to look far," Nordred said. "How long do you think it
+will be before we can resume our work with the Monster?"
+
+"Ten days to two weeks," MacHeath said promptly.
+
+"I see." One his rare frowns crossed his face. "I wish I knew why the
+exciter arced across. It shouldn't have."
+
+"Don't you have any idea?" MacHeath asked innocently. At the same
+time, he opened his mind wide to net in every wisp and filament of
+Nordred's thoughts that he could reach.
+
+"None at all," admitted the mathematician. "Weakness in the
+insulation, I suppose, though it tested solidly enough." And his mind,
+as far back as his preconscious and the upper fringes of his
+subconscious, agreed with his words. MacHeath could go no deeper as
+yet; he didn't know Nordred well enough yet.
+
+There were suspicions in Nordred's mind that the insulation weakness
+must have been caused by deliberate sabotage, but he had no one to pin
+his suspicions on. Neither he nor anyone else connected with the
+Redford project was aware of the true status of Dr. Konrad Bern.
+
+"Well, let's hope it doesn't happen again," MacHeath said. "Balancing
+these babies so that they work properly is hard enough for a deuteron
+accelerator, but the Monster here is ten times as touchy."
+
+Nordred nodded absently. "I know. But our work can't be done with
+anything less." Nordred actually knew less about the engineering
+details of the big accelerator than anyone else on the project; he was
+primarily a philosopher-mathematician, and only secondarily a
+physicist. He was theoretically in charge of the project, but the
+actual experimentation was done by the other four men; Drs. Roger
+Kent, Paul Luvochek, Solomon Bessermann, and Konrad Bern. These four
+and their assistants set up and ran off the experiments designed to
+test Dr. Nordred's theories.
+
+MacHeath picked up his instrument case again, and the three men went
+out of the gun chamber, into the outer room, and then started up the
+spiral stairway that led to the surface, talking as they went. But the
+apparent conversation had little to do with the instruction that
+MacHeath was giving Griffin as they climbed.
+
+So when MacHeath stopped suddenly and patted at his coverall pockets,
+Griffin was ready for the words that came next.
+
+"Damn!" MacHeath said. "I've left my notebook. Will you go down and
+get it for me, Bill?"
+
+Dr. Nordred had neither understood nor noticed the actual
+instructions:
+
+"Bill, as soon as I give you an excuse, get back down there and check
+that gun chamber. Give it a thorough going-over. I don't really think
+you'll find a thing, but I don't want to take any chances at this
+stage of the game."
+
+"Right," said Griffin, starting back down the stairway.
+
+MacHeath and Dr. Nordred went on climbing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+David MacHeath sat at a table in the project's cafeteria, absently
+stirring his coffee, and trying to look professionally modest while
+Dr. Luvochek and Dr. Bessermann alternately praised him for his work.
+
+Luvochek, a tubby little butterball of a man, whose cherubic face
+would have made him look almost childlike if it weren't for the blue
+of his jaw, said: "You and those two men of yours have really done a
+marvelous job in the past four days, Mr. MacHeath--really marvelous."
+
+"I'll say," Bessermann chimed in. "I was getting pretty tired of
+looking at burned-out equipment and spending three-quarters of my time
+putting in replacement parts and wielding a soldering gun." Bessermann
+was leaner than Luvochek, but, like his brother scientist, he was
+balding on top. Both men were in their middle thirties.
+
+"I don't understand this jinx, myself," Luvochek said. "At first, it
+was just little things, but the accidents got worse and worse. And
+then, when the Monster blew--" He stopped and shook his head slowly.
+"I'd suspect sabotage, except that there was never any sign of
+tampering with the equipment I saw."
+
+"What do you think of the sabotage idea?" Bessermann asked MacHeath.
+
+MacHeath shrugged. "Haven't seen any signs of it."
+
+"Run of bad luck," said Luvochek. "That's all."
+
+As they talked MacHeath absorbed the patterns of thought that wove in
+and out in the two men's minds. Both men were more open than Dr.
+Nordred; they were easier for MacHeath to understand. Nowhere was
+there any thought of guilt--at least, as far as sabotage was
+concerned.
+
+MacHeath drank his coffee slowly and thoughtfully, keeping up his part
+of the three-way conversation while he concentrated on his own
+problem.
+
+One thing was certain: Nowhere in the minds of any of the personnel of
+the Redford Project was there any conscious knowledge of sabotage. Not
+even in the mind of Konrad Bern.
+
+Dr. Roger Kent, a tall, lantern-jawed sad-eyed man in his forties, had
+been hard to get through to at first, but as soon as MacHeath
+discovered that the hard block Kent had built up around himself was
+caused by grief over a wife who had been dead five years, he became as
+easy to read as a billboard. Kent had submerged his grief in work; the
+eternal drive of the true scientist to drag the truth out of Mother
+Nature. He was constitutionally incapable of sabotaging the very
+instruments that had been built to dig in after that truth.
+
+Dr. Konrad Bern, on the other hand, was difficult to read below the
+preconscious stage. Science, to him, was a form of power, to be used
+for "idealistic" purposes. He was perfectly capable of sabotaging the
+weapons of an enemy if it became necessary, whether that meant ruining
+a physical instrument or carefully falsifying the results of an
+experiment. Outwardly, he was a pleasant enough chap, but his mind
+revealed a rigidly held pattern of hatreds, fears, and twisted
+idealism. He held them tightly against the onslaughts of a hostile
+world.
+
+And that meant that he couldn't possibly have any control over
+whatever psionic powers he may have had.
+
+Unless--
+
+Unless he was so expert and so well-trained that he was better than
+anything the S.M.M.R. had ever known.
+
+MacHeath didn't even like to think about that. It would mean that all
+the theory of psionics that had been built up so painstakingly over
+the past years would have to be junked _in toto_.
+
+Something was gnawing in the depths of his mind. In the perfectly
+rational but utterly nonlogical part of his subconscious where hunches
+are built, something was trying to form.
+
+MacHeath didn't try to probe for it. As soon as he had enough
+information for the hunch to be fully formed, it would be ready to
+use. Until then, it would be worthless, and probing for it might
+interrupt the formation.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He was just finishing his coffee as Bill Griffin came in the door and
+headed toward the table where MacHeath, Luvochek, and Bessermann were
+sitting.
+
+MacHeath stood up and said: "Excuse me. I'll have to be getting some
+work done if you guys are ever going to get your own work done."
+
+"Sure."
+
+"Go ahead."
+
+"Thanks for the coffee," MacHeath added as he moved away.
+
+"Anytime," said Bessermann, grinning. "You guys just keep up the good
+work. When you fix 'em, they stay fixed. We haven't had a burnout
+since you came."
+
+"Maybe you broke our statistical jinx," said Luvochek, with a chubby
+smile.
+
+"Maybe," said MacHeath. "I hope so."
+
+For some reason, the gnawing in his hunch factory became more
+persistent.
+
+As he and Griffin walked toward the door, Griffin reported rapidly. "I
+checked everything in the gun chamber. No sign of any tampering.
+Everything's just as we left it. The dust film hasn't been disturbed."
+
+"It figures," said MacHeath.
+
+Outside, in the corridor, they met Dr. Konrad Bern hurrying toward the
+cafeteria. He stopped as he saw them.
+
+"Oh, hello, Mr. MacHeath, Mr. Griffin," he said. His white-toothed
+smile was friendly, but both of the S.M.M.R. agents could detect the
+hostility that was hard and brittle beneath the surface. "I wanted to
+thank you for the wonderful job you've been doing."
+
+"Why, thank you, doctor," said MacHeath honestly. "We aim to satisfy."
+
+Bern chuckled. "You're doing well so far. Odd streak of luck we've
+had, isn't it? Poor Dr. Nordred has been under a terrible strain; his
+whole life work is tied up in this project." He made a vague gesture
+with one hand. "Would you care for some coffee?"
+
+"Just had some, thanks," said MacHeath, "but we'll take a rain check."
+
+"Fine. Anytime." And he went on into the cafeteria.
+
+"Wow!" said Griffin as he walked on down the corridor with MacHeath.
+"That man is scared silly! But what an actor! You'd never know he was
+eating his guts out."
+
+"Sure he's scared," MacHeath said. "With all this sabotage talk going
+around, he's afraid there'll be an exhaustive investigation, and he
+can't take that right now."
+
+Griffin frowned. "I guess I missed that. What did you pick up?"
+
+"He's supposed to meet a Soviet agent tonight, and he's afraid he'll
+be caught. He doesn't know what happened to the first three, and he
+won't know what will happen to Number Four tonight.
+
+"We'll keep him around as long as he's useful. He's not a Bohr or a
+Pauli or a Fermi, but he--"
+
+MacHeath stopped himself suddenly and came to a dead halt.
+
+"My God," he said softly, "that's _it_."
+
+His hunch had hatched.
+
+After a moment, he said: "Harry is getting back from the target end of
+the tube now, Bill. He can't pick me up, so beetle it down to the tool
+room, get him, and get up to the workshop fast. If I'm not there,
+wait; I have a little prying to do."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"Can do," said Griffin. He went toward the elevator at an easy lope.
+
+David MacHeath went in the opposite direction.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When MacHeath returned to the workshop which he had been assigned,
+Bill Griffin and Harry Benbow were waiting for him. Beside the
+big-muscled Griffin, Harry Benbow looked even thinner than he was. He
+was a good six-two, which made him a head taller than Griffin, but,
+unlike many tall, lean men, Benbow had no tendency to slouch; he stood
+tall and straight, reminding MacHeath of a poplar tree towering
+proudly over the countryside. Benbow was one of those rare American
+Negroes whose skin was actually as close to being "black" as human
+pigmentation will allow. His eyes were like disks of obsidian set in
+spheres of white porcelain, which gave an odd contrast-similarity
+effect when compared with Griffin's china-blue eyes.
+
+If the average man had wanted to pick two human beings who were
+"opposites," he could hardly have made a better choice than Benbow and
+the short, thickly-built, blond-haired, pink-skinned Bill Griffin. But
+the average man would be so struck by the differences that he would
+never notice that the similarities were vastly more important.
+
+"You look as if you'd just been kissed by Miss America," Harry said as
+MacHeath came through the door.
+
+"Better than that," MacHeath said. "We've got work to do."
+
+"What's the pitch?" Griffin wanted to know.
+
+"Well, in the first place, I'm afraid Dr. Konrad Bern is no longer of
+any use to the Redford Project. We're going to have to arrest him as
+an unregistered agent of the Soviet Government."
+
+"It's just as well," said Harry Benbow gently. "His research hasn't
+done us any good and it hasn't done the Soviets any good. The poor
+guy's been on edge ever since he got here. All the pale hide around
+this place stirs up every nerve in him."
+
+"What got you onto this?" Griffin asked MacHeath.
+
+"A hunch first," MacHeath said. "Then I got data to back it up. But,
+first ... Harry, how'd you know about Bern's reactions? He keeps those
+prejudices of his down pretty deep; I didn't think you could go that
+far."
+
+"I didn't have to. He spent half an hour talking to me this morning.
+He was so happy to see a fellow human being--according to his
+definition of human being--that he was as easy to read as if _you_
+were doing the reading."
+
+MacHeath nodded. "I hate to throw him to the wolves, but he's got to
+go."
+
+"What was the snooping you said you had to do?" Griffin asked.
+
+"Dates. Times. Briefly, I found that the run of accidents has been
+building up to a peak. At first, it was just small meters that went
+wrong. Then bigger, more complex stuff. And, finally, the Monster
+went. See the pattern?"
+
+The other men nodded.
+
+"You're the therapist," Griffin said. "What do you suggest?"
+
+"Shock treatment," said David MacHeath.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Just how Dr. Konrad Bern got wind of the fact that a squad of FBI men
+had come to the project to arrest him that evening is something that
+MacHeath didn't know until later. He was busy at the time, ignoring
+anything but what he was interested in. It always fascinated him to
+watch the mind of a psychokinetic expert at work. He couldn't do the
+trick himself, and he was always amazed at the ability of anyone who
+could.
+
+It was like watching a pianist play a particularly difficult concerto.
+A person can watch a pianist, see every move he is making, and why he
+is making it. But being able to see what is going on doesn't mean that
+one can duplicate the action. MacHeath was in the same position.
+Telepathically, he could observe the play of emotions that ran through
+a psychokinetic's mind--the combinations of avid desire and the utter
+loathing which, playing one against another, could move a brick, a
+book, or a Buick if the mind was powerful enough. But he couldn't do
+it himself, no matter how carefully he tried to follow the raging
+emotions that acted as two opposing jaws of a pair of tongs to lift
+and move the object.
+
+And so engrossed was he with the process that he did not notice that
+Konrad Bern had eluded the FBI. He was unaware of what had happened
+until one of the Federal agents rapped loudly on the workshop door.
+
+Almost instantly, MacHeath picked up the information from the agent's
+mind. He glanced at Griffin and Benbow. "You two can handle it. Be
+careful you don't overdo it."
+
+Then he went to the door and opened it a trifle. "Yes?"
+
+The man outside showed a gold badge. "Morgan, FBI. You David
+MacHeath?"
+
+"Yes." MacHeath stepped outside and showed the FBI man his
+identification.
+
+"We were told to co-operate with you in this Konrad Bern case. He's
+managed to slip away from us somehow, but we know he's still in the
+area. He can't get past the gate."
+
+MacHeath let his mind expand until it meshed with that of Dr. Konrad
+Bern.
+
+"There is a way out," MacHeath snapped. "The acceleration tube."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Come on!" He started sprinting toward the elevators. He explained to
+the FBI agent as they went.
+
+"The acceleration tube of the ultracosmotron runs due north of here
+for two miles underground. The guard at the other end won't be
+expecting anyone to be coming from the inside of the target building.
+If Bern plays his cards right, he can get away."
+
+"Can't we phone the target building?" the FBI man asked.
+
+"No. We shut off all the electrical equipment and took down some of
+the wires so we could balance the acceleration fields."
+
+"Well, if he's on foot, we could send a car out there. We'd get there
+before he does. Uh ... wouldn't we?"
+
+"Maybe. But he'll kill himself if he sees he's trapped." That wasn't
+quite true. Bern was ready to fight to the death, and he had a heavy
+pistol to back him up. MacHeath didn't want to see anyone killed, and
+he didn't want stray bullets flying around the inside of that tube or
+in the target room.
+
+MacHeath and the FBI agent piled out of the elevator at the bottom of
+the shaft. Dr. Roger Kent was standing at the head of the stairs that
+spiraled down to the gun chamber. Dr. Kent knew that Bern had gone
+down the stairway, but he didn't know why.
+
+"He's our saboteur," MacHeath said quickly. "I'm going after him. As
+soon as I close the door and seal it, you turn on the pumps. Lower the
+air pressure in the tube to a pound per square inch below
+atmospheric. That'll put a force of about a ton and a quarter against
+the doors, and he won't be able to open them."
+
+Dr. Kent still didn't grasp the fact that Bern was a spy.
+
+"Explain to him, Morgan," MacHeath told the Federal agent. He went on
+down the spiral staircase, knowing that Kent would understand and act
+in plenty of time.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The door to the tube was standing open. MacHeath slipped on a pair of
+the sponge-soled shoes, noticing angrily that Bern hadn't bothered to
+do so. He went into the tube and closed the door behind him. Then he
+started down the blackness of the tube at a fast trot. Ahead of him,
+in the utter darkness, he could hear the click of heels as the
+leather-shod Bern moved toward the target end of the long tube.
+
+Neither of them had lights. They were unnecessary, for one thing,
+since there was only one direction to go and there were no obstacles
+in the path. Bern would probably have carried a flashlight if he'd
+been able to get his hands on one quickly, but he hadn't, so he went
+in darkness. MacHeath didn't want a light; in the darkness, he had the
+advantage of knowing where his opponent was.
+
+Every so often, Bern would stop, listening for sounds of pursuit,
+since his own footsteps, echoing down the glass-lined cylinder,
+drowned out any noise from behind. But MacHeath, running silently on
+the toes of his thick-soled shoes, kept in motion, gaining on the
+fleeing spy.
+
+A two-mile run is a good stretch of exercise for anyone, but MacHeath
+didn't dare slow down. As it was, Konrad Bern was already tugging
+frantically at the door that led to the target room by the time
+MacHeath reached him. But the faint sighing of the pumps had already
+told MacHeath that the air pressure had been dropped. Bern couldn't
+possibly get the door open.
+
+MacHeath's lungs wanted to be filled with air; his chest wanted to
+heave; he wanted to pant, taking in great gulps of life-giving oxygen.
+But he didn't dare. He didn't want Bern to know he was there, so he
+strained to keep his breath silent.
+
+He stepped up behind the physicist in the pitch blackness, and judging
+carefully, brought his fist down on the nape of the man's neck in a
+hard rabbit punch.
+
+Konrad Bern dropped unconscious to the floor of the tube.
+
+Then MacHeath let his chest pump air into his lungs in long, harsh
+gasps. Shakily, he lowered himself to the floor beside Bern and
+squatted on his haunches, waiting for the hiss of the bleeder valve
+that would tell him that the air pressure had been raised to allow
+someone to enter the air lock.
+
+It was Morgan, the FBI man, who finally cracked the door. Griffin and
+Dr. Kent were with him.
+
+"You all right?" asked Morgan.
+
+"I'm fine," MacHeath said, "but Bern is going to have a sore neck for
+a while. I didn't hit him hard enough to break it, but he'll get
+plenty of sleep before he wakes up."
+
+More FBI men came in, and they dragged out the unprotesting Bern.
+
+Dr. Kent said: "Well, I'm glad that's over. I'll have to get back and
+see what Dr. Nordred is raving about."
+
+"Raving?" asked MacHeath innocently.
+
+"Yes. While I was in the pump room reducing the pressure, he called me
+on the interphone. Said he'd been looking all over for me. He and
+Luvochek and Bessermann are up in the lab." He frowned. "They claim
+that one of the radiolead samples was floating in the air in the lab.
+It's settled down now, I gather, but it only weighs a fraction of what
+it should, though it's gaining all the time. And that's ridiculous.
+It's not at all what Dr. Nordred's theory predicted." Then he clamped
+his lips together, thinking perhaps he had talked too much.
+
+"Interesting," said MacHeath blandly. "Very interesting."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Senator Gonzales sat in Brian Taggert's sixth-floor office in the
+S.M.M.R. building and looked puzzled. "All right, I grant you that
+Bern couldn't have been the saboteur. Then why arrest him?"
+
+Dave MacHeath took a drag from his cigarette before he answered. "We
+had to have a patsy--someone to put the blame on. No one really
+believed that it was just bad luck, but they'll all accept the idea
+that Bern was a saboteur."
+
+"We would have had to arrest him eventually, anyway," said Brian
+Taggert.
+
+"Give me a quick run-down," Gonzales said. "I've got to explain this
+to the President."
+
+"Did you ever hear of the Pauli Effect?" MacHeath asked.
+
+"Something about the number of electrons that--"
+
+"No," MacHeath said quickly. "That's the Pauli _principle_, better
+known as the Exclusion Principle. The Pauli _Effect_ is a different
+thing entirely, a psionic effect.
+
+"It used to be said that a theoretical physicist was judged by his
+inability to handle research apparatus; the clumsier he was in
+research, the better he was with theory. But Wolfgang Pauli was a lot
+more than clumsy. Apparatus would break, topple over, go to pieces, or
+burn up if Pauli just walked into the room.
+
+"Up to the time he died, in 1958, his colleagues kidded about it,
+without really believing there was anything behind it. But it is
+recorded that the explosion of some vacuum equipment in a laboratory
+at the University of Goettingen was the direct result of the Pauli
+Effect. It was definitely established that the explosion occurred at
+the precise moment that a train on which Pauli was traveling stopped
+for a short time at the Goettingen railway station."
+
+The senator said: "The poltergeist phenomenon."
+
+"Not exactly," MacHeath said, "although there is a similarity. The
+poltergeist phenomenon is usually spectacular and is nearly always
+associated with teen-age neurotics. Then there's the pyrotic; fires
+always start in his vicinity."
+
+"But there's always a reason for psionic phenomena to react violently
+under subconscious control," Senator Gonzales pointed out. "There's
+always a psychological quirk."
+
+"Sure. And I almost fell into the same trap, myself."
+
+"How so?"
+
+"I was thinking that if Bern were the saboteur, all our theories about
+psionics would have to be thrown out--we'd have to start from a
+different set of precepts. _And I didn't even want to think about such
+an idea!_"
+
+"Nobody likes their pet theories overthrown," Gonzales observed.
+
+"Of course not. But here's the point: The only way that a scientific
+theory can be proved wrong is to uncover a phenomenon which doesn't
+fit in with the theory. A theoretical physicist is a mathematician; he
+makes logical deductions and logical predictions by juggling symbols
+around in accordance with some logical system. But the axioms, the
+assumptions upon which those systems are built, are nonlogical. You
+can't prove an axiom; if comes right out of the mind.
+
+"So imagine that you're a theoretical physicist. A really
+original-type thinker. You come up with a mathematical system that
+explains all known phenomena at that time, and predicts others that
+are, as yet, unknown. You check your math over and over again; there's
+no error in your logic, since it all follows, step by step."
+
+"O.K.; go on," Gonzales said interestedly.
+
+"Very well, then; you've built yourself a logical universe, based on
+your axioms, and the structure seems to have a one-to-one
+correspondence with the actual universe. Not only that, but if the
+theory is accepted, you've built your reputation on it--your life.
+
+"Now, what happens if your axioms--not the logic _about_ the axioms,
+but the axioms themselves--are proven to be wrong?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Brian Taggert took his pipe out of his mouth. "Why, you give up the
+erroneous set of axioms and build a new set that will explain the new
+phenomenon. Isn't that what a scientist is supposed to do?" His manner
+was that of wide-eyed innocence laid on with a large trowel.
+
+"Oh, _sure_ it is," said the senator. "A man builds his whole life,
+his whole universe; on a set of principles, and he scraps them at the
+drop of a hat. _Sure_ he does."
+
+"He claims he will," MacHeath said. "Any scientist worth the paper his
+diploma is printed on is firmly convinced that he will change his
+axioms as soon as they're proven false. Of course, ninety-nine per
+cent of 'em _can't_ and _won't_ and _don't_. They refuse to look at
+anything that suggests changing axioms.
+
+"Some scientists eagerly accept the axioms that they were taught in
+school and hang on to them all their lives, fighting change tooth and
+nail. Oh, they'll accept new ideas, all right--provided that they fit
+in with the structures based on the old axioms.
+
+"Then there are the young iconoclasts who don't like the axioms as
+they stand, so they make up some new ones of their own--men like
+Newton, Einstein, Planck, and so on. Then, once the new axioms have
+been forced down the throats of their colleagues, the innovators
+become the Old Order; the iconoclasts become the ones who put the
+fences around the new images to safeguard them. And they're even more
+firmly wedded to their axioms than anyone else. This is _their_
+universe!
+
+"Of course, these men proclaim to all the world that they are
+perfectly willing to change their axioms. And the better a scientist
+he is, the more he believes, in his heart-of-hearts, that he really
+would change. He really thinks, consciously, that he wants others to
+test his theories.
+
+"But notice: A theory is only good if it explains all known phenomena
+in its field. If it does, then the only thing that can topple it is a
+_new_ fact. The only thing that can threaten the complex structure
+formulated by a really creative, painstaking, mathematical physicist
+is _experiment_!"
+
+Senator Gonzales' attentive silence was eloquent.
+
+"Experiment!" MacHeath repeated. "That can wreck a theory quicker and
+more completely than all the learned arguments of a dozen men. And
+every theoretician is aware of that fact. Consciously, he gladly
+accepts the inevitable; but his subconscious mind will fight to keep
+those axioms.
+
+"_Even if it has to smash every experimental device around!_
+
+"After all, if nobody can experiment on your theory, it can't be
+proved wrong, can it?
+
+"In Nordred's case, as in Pauli's, this subconscious defense actually
+made itself felt in the form of broken equipment. Dr. Theodore Nordred
+was totally unconscious of the fact that he detested and feared the
+idea of anyone experimenting to prove or disprove his theory. He had
+no idea that he, himself, was re-channeling the energy in those
+machines to make them burn out."
+
+Brian Taggert looked at MacHeath pointedly. "Do you think the shock
+treatment you gave him will cause any repercussions?"
+
+"No. Griffin and Benbow held that block of radiolead floating in the
+air only while Dr. Nordred was alone in the lab. He pushed at it, felt
+of it, and moved it around for more than ten minutes before he'd admit
+the reality of what he saw. Then he called Luvochek and Bessermann in
+to look at it.
+
+"Griffin and Benbow let the sample settle to the desk, so that by the
+time the other two scientists got to the lab, the lead didn't have an
+apparent negative weight, but was still much lighter than it should
+be.
+
+"All the while that Bessermann and Luvochek were trying to weigh the
+lead block, to get an accurate measurement, Griffin and Benbow, three
+rooms away, kept increasing the weight slowly towards normal. And so
+far no one has invented a device which will give an instantaneous
+check on the weight of an object. A balance can't check the weight of
+a sample unless that weight is constant; there's too much time lag
+involved.
+
+"So, what evidence do they have? Scientifically speaking, none. They
+have no measurements, and the experiment can't be repeated. And only
+Nordred actually saw the sample _floating_. Luvochek and Bessermann
+will eventually think up a 'natural' explanation for the apparent
+steady gain in weight. Only Nordred will remain convinced that what he
+saw actually happened.
+
+"I don't see how there could be any serious repercussions in the field
+of physics." But he looked at Taggert for confirmation.
+
+Taggert gave it to him with an approving look.
+
+"It's a funny thing," said Gonzales musingly. "Some time back, we were
+in a situation where we had to go to the extreme of physical violence
+to keep from demonstrating to a scientist that psionic powers could
+be controlled, just to keep from ruining the physicist's work.
+
+"Now, we turn right around and demonstrate the 'impossible' to another
+physicist in order to pull his hard-earned axioms out from under him."
+He smiled wryly. "There ain't no justice in the world."
+
+"No," agreed MacHeath, "but the trick worked. He won't have any
+subconscious desire to smash equipment just to protect a theory that
+has already been smashed. On the contrary, he'll let them go through
+in order to find new data to build another theory on."
+
+"He'll never again be the man he was," said Taggert regretfully. "He's
+lost the force of his convictions. He won't be capable of taking a
+no-nonsense, dogmatic, black-and-white stand. But it was necessary."
+He made an odd gesture with one hand. "What else can you do with a man
+who's a psionic psychopath?"
+
+THE END
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Psichopath, by Gordon Randall Garrett
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