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, butwithout haste, through the chill, wind-swirled drizzle that filled theair above the streets of Arlington, Virginia. His matching bluecap-hood was pulled low over his forehead, and the clear, infraredradiating face mask had been flipped down to protect his chubby cheeksand round nose from the icy wind. 

No one noticed him particularly. He was just another average man whoblended in with all the others who walked the streets that day. No onerecognized him; his face did not appear often in public places, exceptin 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 theslightest touch of recognition. He wanted no one to connect him in anyway with his intended destination. 

It was not his first visit to the six-floor brick building that stoodon a street in a lower-middle-class district of Arlington. Actually, government business took him there more often than would have beensafe for the average man-on-the-street. For Senator Gonzales, theprocess of remaining incognito was so elementary that it was almostsubconscious. 

Arriving at his destination, he paused on the sidewalk to light acigarette, shielding it against the wind and drizzle with cuppedhands while his mind made one last check on the surroundings. Then hestrode quickly up the five steps to the double doors which weremarked: _The Society For Mystical And Metaphysical Research, Inc. _

Just as he stepped in, he flipped the face shield up and put on anold-fashioned pair of thick-lensed, black-rimmed spectacles. Then, hisface assuming a bland smile that would have been completely out ofplace on Senator Gonzales, he went from the foyer into the frontoffice. 

"Good afternoon, Mrs. Jesser, " he said, in a high, smooth, slightlyaccented voice that was not his own. "I perceive by your aura that youare feeling well. Your normal aura-color is tinged with a positivegolden hue. "

Mrs. Jesser, a well-rounded matron in her early forties, rose to thebait like a porpoise being hand-fed at a Florida zoo. "_Dear_ SwamiChandra! 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 Brahminvariety, nonetheless managed to radiate all the mystery of the East. "My well-being, dear Mrs. Jesser, is due to the fact that I have beencommuning for the past three months with my very good friend, theFifth Dalai Lama. A most refreshingly wise person. " Senator Gonzaleswas fond of the Society's crackpot receptionist, and he knew exactlywhat kind of hokum would please her most. 

"Oh, I _do_ hope you will find time to tell me _all_ about it, " shesaid effusively. "Mr. Balfour isn't in the city just now, " she wenton. "He's lecturing in New York on the history of flying saucersightings. Do you realize that this is the fortieth anniversary of thefirst saucer sighting, back in 1944?"

"The first _photographed_ sighting, " the Swami correctedcondescendingly. "Our friends have been watching and guiding us forfar longer than that, and were sighted many times before they werephotographed. "

Mrs. Jesser nodded briskly. "Of course. You're right, as always, Swami. "

"I am sorry to hear, " the Swami continued smoothly, "that I will notbe able to see Mr. Balfour. However, I came at the call of Mr. BrianTaggert, who is expecting me. "

Mrs. Jesser glanced down at her appointment sheet. "He didn't mentionan appointment to me. However--" She punched a button on the intercom. "Mr. Taggert? Swami Chandra is here to see you. He says he has anappointment. "

Brian Taggert's deep voice came over the instrument. "The Swami, asusual, is very astute. I have been thinking about calling him. Sendhim right up. "

"You may go up, Swami, " said Mrs. Jesser, wide-eyed. She watched inawe as the Swami marched regally through the inner door and began toclimb the stairs toward the sixth floor. 

 * * * * *

One way to hide an ex-officio agency of the United States Governmentwas to label it truthfully--_The Society For Mystical And MetaphysicalResearch_. In spite of the fact that the label was literally true, itsounded so crackpot that no one but a crackpot would bother to lookinto it. As a consequence, better than ninety per cent of themembership of the Society was composed of just such people. Only a fewmembers of the "core" knew the organization's true function andpurpose. And as long as such scatter-brains as Mrs. Jesser and Mr. Balfour were in there pitching, no one would ever penetrate to theactual core of the Society. 

The senator had already pocketed the exaggerated glasses by the timehe 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 theroom. His desk across the room was there for paperwork only, andTaggert had precious little of that to bother with. 

He took a puff from his heavy-bowled briar. "We're going to have tosend an agent in there. Someone who can be on the spot. Someone whocan get the feel of the situation first hand. "

"That'll be difficult. We can't just suddenly stick an unknown inthere and have an excuse for his being there. Couldn't Donahue orReeves--"

Taggert shook his head. "Impossible, John. Extrasensory perceptioncan't replace sight, any more than sight can replace hearing. You knowthat. "

"Certainly. But I thought we could get enough information that way totell us who our saboteur is. No dice, eh?"

"No dice, " said Taggert. "Look at the situation we've got there. Thepurpose of the Redford Research Team is to test the Meson UltimateDecay Theory of Dr. Theodore Nordred. Now, if we--"

Senator Gonzales, walking across the room toward Taggert, gesturedwith one hand. "I know! I know! Give me _some_ credit forintelligence! But we _do_ have one suspect, don't we? What about_him_?"

Taggert chuckled through a wreath of smoke. "Calm down, John. Or areyou trying to give me your impression of Mrs. Jesser in a conversationwith 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. Firstoff, we nearly lose Dr. Ch'ien, and, with him gone, the interstellardrive project would've been shot. Now, if this sabotage keeps up, theRedford project _will_ be shot, and that means we might have to stickto 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 mysteriouslyburning itself out, breaking down, and just generally goofing up. Thismorning, the primary exciter on the new ultracosmotron went haywire, and the beam of sodium nuclei burned through part of the acceleratortube 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 anearby ash disposal unit. "And you want to pick up our pet spy?"

Senator Gonzales scowled. "Well, I'd certainly call him our primesuspect. " But there was a certain lack of conviction in his manner. 

Brian Taggert didn't flatly contradict the senator. "Maybe. But youknow, 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 tosabotage. "

 * * * * *

In a room on the fifth floor, directly below Brian Taggert's office, ayoung man was half sitting, half reclining in a thickly upholsteredadjustable chair. He had dropped the back of the chair to a forty-fivedegree angle and lifted up the footrest; now he was leaning back inlazy comfort, his ankles crossed, his right hand holding a slowlysmoldering 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 belocated in about the same volume of space that his eyes seemed to befocused on. If Brian Taggert and Senator Gonzales had been in the roombelow, his eyes would still be looking at the ceiling. 

In repose, his face looked even younger than his twenty-eight yearswould have led one to expect. His close-cropped brown hair added tothe impression of youth, and the well-tailored suit on his slim, muscular body added to the effect. At any top-flight university, hecould have passes for a well-bred, sophisticated, intelligent studentwho had money enough to indulge himself and sense enough not to overdoit. 

He was beginning to understand the pattern that was being woven in theroom above--beginning to feel it in depth. 

Senator Gonzalez was mildly telepathic, inasmuch as he could pick upthoughts in the prevocal stage--the stage at which thought becomesdefinitely organized into words, phrases, and sentences. He could go alittle deeper, into the selectivity stage, where the linking processesof logic took over from the nonlogical but rational processes of thepreconscious--but only if he knew the person well. Where the senatorexcelled was in detecting emotional tone and manipulating emotionalprocesses, 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 ofBrian Taggert; he knew that he had not yet achieved the maturity tounderstand the multilayered depths of a mind like that. Eventually, perhaps. . . . 

Not that Senator Gonzales was a child, nor that he was emotionally orintellectually shallow. It was merely that he was not of Taggert'scaliber. 

The young man absently took another drag from his cigarette. Taggerthad explained the basic problem to him, but he was getting a widerpicture from the additional information that Senator Gonzales hadbrought. 

Dr. Theodore Nordred, a mathematical physicist and one of thetop-flight, high-powered, original minds in the field, had shown thatEinstein's final equations only held in a universe composed entirelyof normal matter. Since the great Einstein had died before thePrinciple of Parity had been overthrown in the mid-fifties, he hadbeen unable to incorporate the information into his Unified FieldTheory. Nordred had been able to show, mathematically, that Einstein'sequations were valid only for a completely "dexter, " or right-handeduniverse, or for a completely "sinister" or left-handed universe. 

Although the universe in which Man lived was predominantlydexter--arbitrarily so designated--it was not completely so. It had a"sinister" component amounting to approximately one one-hundred-thousandthof one per cent. On the average, one atom out of every ten million in theuniverse was an atom of antimatter. The distribution was unequal of course;antimatter could not exist in contact with ordinary matter. Most of it wasdistributed 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 theknown universe was not totally Einsteinian. In a purely Einsteinianuniverse, antigravity was impossible, but if the equations of Dr. Theodore Nordred were actually a closer approximation to true realitythan those of Einstein, then antigravity _might_ be a practicalreality. 

And that was the problem the Redford Research Team was working on. Itwas a parallel project to the interstellar drive problem, beingcarried on elsewhere. 

 * * * * *

The "pet spy, " as Taggert had called him, was Dr. Konrad Bern, amiddle-aged Negro from Tanganyika, who was convinced that only underCommunism could the colored races of the world achieve thetechnological organization and living standard of the white man. Hehad been trained as a "sleeper"; not even the exhaustiveinvestigations of the FBI had turned up any relationship between Bernand 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 anyinformation on the Redford Project into the hands of theopposition--it was no longer fashionable to call Communists "theenemy"--there was no reason why he shouldn't be allowed to contributeto 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 thephysicist. Three times the FBI, warned by S. M. M. R. Agents, had quietlyblocked the contact. Konrad Bern had been effectively isolated. 

But, at the project site itself, equipment failure had becomeincreasingly more frequent, all out of proportion to the normalaccident rate in any well-regulated laboratory. The work of theproject had practically come to a standstill; the ultra-secret projectreports to the President were beginning to show less and less progressin the basic research, and more and more progress in repairing damagedequipment. Apparently, though, increasing efficiency in repair workwas self-neutralizing; repairing an instrument in half the time merelymeant that it could break down twice as often. 

It had to be sabotage. And yet, not even the S. M. M. R. Agents couldfind any trace of intentional damage nor any thought patterns thatwould indicate deliberate damage. 

And Senator John Peter Gonzales quite evidently did _not_ want to facethe 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 hecrushed out his cigarette and got up from the chair. )

"I don't know how we're going to manage it, " said the senator. "Whatexcuse do we have for putting a new man on the Redford team?"

Brian Taggert grinned. "What they need is an expert repairtechnician--a man who knows how to build and repair complex researchinstruments. He doesn't have to know anything about the purpose of theteam 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 beengulling 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 acrossthe face of an oscilloscope. "The wave form is way off, " he saidflatly, "and the frequency is slithering all over the place. "

He squinted at the line for a moment then spoke to the man standingnearby. "Signal Harry to back her off two degrees, then run her upslowly, ten minutes at a time. "

The other man flickered the key on the side of the smallcarbide-Welsbach lamp. The shutters blinked, sending pulses of lightdown the length of the ten-foot diameter glass-walled tube in whichthe men were working. Far down the tube, MacHeath could see theanswering 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 fromhere. 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 thetesting instruments and disconnected them. It was possible tocompensate a little for the testing equipment, but a telephone, oreven an electric flashlight, would simply add to the burden. 

Bill Griffin shoved down the key on the lamp he was holding and lockedit into place. The shutters remained open, and the lamp shed a beam ofwhite light along the shining walls of the cylindrical tube. "How muchlonger 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 casehad been sitting on, and the two men started off down the tube, walking silently on the sponge-rubber-soled shoes which would notscratch 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. "Maybeit's just a run of bad luck. It could happen, you know. A statisticalrun of--"

"You don't believe that, any more than I do, " MacHeath said. 

"No. But I find it even harder to believe that a materialisticphilosophy like Communism could evolve any workable psionicdiscipline. "

"So do I, " agreed MacHeath. 

"But it can't be physical sabotage, " Griffin argued. "There's not atrace 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 ifin full agreement with himself. "So we follow the dictum of theMaster: 'Eliminate the impossible; whatever is left, no matter howimprobable, is the truth. ' And, since there is absolutely nothingleft, there is no truth. At the bottom, the whole thing is merely amatter of mental delusion. "

"Sherlock Holmes would be proud of you, Bill, " MacHeath said. "And soam I. "

Griffin looked at MacHeath oddly. "I wish I was a halfway decenttelepath, I'd like to know what's going on in your preconscious. "

"You'd have to dig deeper than that, I'm afraid, " MacHeath saidruefully. "As soon as my subconscious has solved the problem, I'll letyou know. "

"I've changed my mind, " said Griffin cheerfully. "I don't envy yourtelepathy. I don't envy a guy who has to TP his own subconscious tofind out what he's thinking. "

MacHeath chuckled softly as he turned the bolt that opened the door inthe "gun" end of the stripped-nuclei accelerator. The seals broke witha soft hiss. Evidently, the barometric pressure outside thetwo-mile-long underground tube had changed slightly during the timethey had been down there. 

"It'll be a week before we can test it, " MacHeath said in a tiredvoice. "Even after we get it partly in balance. It'll take that longto evacuate the tube and sweep it clean. "

 * * * * *

It was the first sentence he had spoken in the past hour or so, and itwas purely for the edification of the man who was standing on theother side of the air lock, although neither Griffin nor MacHeath hadactually seen him as yet. 

Griffin was not a telepath in the sense that the S. M. M. R. Used theword, but to a non-psionicist, he would have appeared to be one. Membership in the "core" group of the _Society for Mystical andMetaphysical Research_ required, above all, _understanding_. And, withthat understanding, a conversation between two members need consistonly of an occasional gesture and a key word now and then. 

The word "understanding" needs emphasis. Without understanding ofanother human mind, no human mind can be completely effective. Withoutthat understanding, no human being can be completely free. 

And yet, the English word "understanding" is only an approximation tothe actual process that must take place. _Total_ understanding, in onesense, would require that a person actually _become_ anotherperson--that he be able to feel, completely and absolutely, everyemotion, every thought, every bodily sensation, every twinge ofmemory, every judgment, every decision, and every sense of personalidentity that is felt by the other person, no more and no less. 

Such totality is, obviously, neither attainable nor desirable. Theresult would be a merger of identities, a total unification. And, as aconsequence, a complete loss of one of the human beings involved. 

Optimum "understanding" requires that a judgment be made, and that, inturn, requires _two_ minds--not a fusion of identity. There must beone to judge and another to be judged, and each mind plays bothroles. 

_Love thy neighbor as thyself. _ But the original Greek word wouldtranslate better as "respect and understand" than as the modernEnglish "love. " The founders of our modern religions were not fools;they simply did not have the tools at hand to formulate theirknowledge properly. As understanding increases, a critical point isreached, which causes a qualitative change in the human mind. 

First, self-understanding must come. The human mind operates throughsimilarities, 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 theuniverse 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 belinked 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 humanimagination, is called a symbol. Symbols are the bridges by which thehuman mind can reach and manipulate the universe in which it exists. With the proper symbols and the understanding to use them, the humanmind is limited only by its own inherent structural restrictions. 

One of the most active research projects of the S. M. M. R. Was theconstruction of a more powerful symbology. Psionics had madetremendous strides in the previous four decades, but it was still inthe alchemy stage. So far, symbols for various processes could only beworked out by cut-and-try, rule-of-thumb methods, using symbolsalready established, including languages and mathematics. None werecompletely satisfactory, but they worked fairly well within theirnarrow limits. 

As far as communication was concerned, the hashed-together symbologyused by the S. M. M. R. Was better than any conceivable code. Theunderstanding required to "break" the "code" was well beyond thecritical point. Anyone who could break it was, _ipso facto_, a memberof the S. M. M. R. 

Most people didn't even realize that a conversation was taking placebetween two members, especially if a "cover conversation" was used atthe same time. 

 * * * * *

MacHeath's verbal discussion of the testing of the nuclei acceleratorwas just such a cover. Even before he had cracked the air lock, he hadknown that Dr. Theodore Nordred was standing on the other side of thethick 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 Griffincame into the gun chamber. "I just thought I'd come down and see howyou were getting along, " he said. His voice was a low tenor, withjust a touch of Midwestern twang. "Sometimes the creative mind getsbogged down in the nth-order abstractions that have no discernibleconnection with anything at all. " He chuckled. "When that happens, Idrop everything and go out to find something mundane to worry about. "

Nordred was only an inch shorter than the slim MacHeath, and heweighed in at close to two hundred pounds. At twenty-five, he had hadthe build of a lightweight wrestler; thirty more years had addedpoundage--a roll beneath his chin and a bulge at the belly--but hestill looked capable of going a round or two without tiring. His shockof heavy hair was a mixture of mouse-brown and gray, and it seemed tohave a tendency to stand up on end, which added another inch and ahalf to his height. His round face had a tendency to smile when he wastalking or working with his hands; when he was deep in thought, hisface usually relaxed into thoughtful blankness. He frowned rarely, andonly for seconds at a time. 

"It seems to me you have enough to worry about, doctor, " MacHeath saidbanteringly, "without looking for it. " He put down his instrument caseand took out a cigarette while Griffin closed the door to theacceleration tube. 

"Oh I don't have to look far, " Nordred said. "How long do you think itwill 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 theexciter arced across. It shouldn't have. "

"Don't you have any idea?" MacHeath asked innocently. At the sametime, he opened his mind wide to net in every wisp and filament ofNordred's thoughts that he could reach. 

"None at all, " admitted the mathematician. "Weakness in theinsulation, I suppose, though it tested solidly enough. " And his mind, as far back as his preconscious and the upper fringes of hissubconscious, agreed with his words. MacHeath could go no deeper asyet; he didn't know Nordred well enough yet. 

There were suspicions in Nordred's mind that the insulation weaknessmust have been caused by deliberate sabotage, but he had no one to pinhis suspicions on. Neither he nor anyone else connected with theRedford project was aware of the true status of Dr. Konrad Bern. 

"Well, let's hope it doesn't happen again, " MacHeath said. "Balancingthese babies so that they work properly is hard enough for a deuteronaccelerator, but the Monster here is ten times as touchy. "

Nordred nodded absently. "I know. But our work can't be done withanything less. " Nordred actually knew less about the engineeringdetails of the big accelerator than anyone else on the project; he wasprimarily a philosopher-mathematician, and only secondarily aphysicist. He was theoretically in charge of the project, but theactual experimentation was done by the other four men; Drs. RogerKent, Paul Luvochek, Solomon Bessermann, and Konrad Bern. These fourand their assistants set up and ran off the experiments designed totest Dr. Nordred's theories. 

MacHeath picked up his instrument case again, and the three men wentout of the gun chamber, into the outer room, and then started up thespiral stairway that led to the surface, talking as they went. But theapparent conversation had little to do with the instruction thatMacHeath 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 andget it for me, Bill?"

Dr. Nordred had neither understood nor noticed the actualinstructions:

"Bill, as soon as I give you an excuse, get back down there and checkthat gun chamber. Give it a thorough going-over. I don't really thinkyou'll find a thing, but I don't want to take any chances at thisstage 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, absentlystirring his coffee, and trying to look professionally modest whileDr. Luvochek and Dr. Bessermann alternately praised him for his work. 

Luvochek, a tubby little butterball of a man, whose cherubic facewould have made him look almost childlike if it weren't for the blueof his jaw, said: "You and those two men of yours have really done amarvelous job in the past four days, Mr. MacHeath--really marvelous. "

"I'll say, " Bessermann chimed in. "I was getting pretty tired oflooking at burned-out equipment and spending three-quarters of my timeputting in replacement parts and wielding a soldering gun. " Bessermannwas leaner than Luvochek, but, like his brother scientist, he wasbalding on top. Both men were in their middle thirties. 

"I don't understand this jinx, myself, " Luvochek said. "At first, itwas just little things, but the accidents got worse and worse. Andthen, when the Monster blew--" He stopped and shook his head slowly. "I'd suspect sabotage, except that there was never any sign oftampering 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 inand out in the two men's minds. Both men were more open than Dr. Nordred; they were easier for MacHeath to understand. Nowhere wasthere any thought of guilt--at least, as far as sabotage wasconcerned. 

MacHeath drank his coffee slowly and thoughtfully, keeping up his partof the three-way conversation while he concentrated on his ownproblem. 

One thing was certain: Nowhere in the minds of any of the personnel ofthe Redford Project was there any conscious knowledge of sabotage. Noteven in the mind of Konrad Bern. 

Dr. Roger Kent, a tall, lantern-jawed sad-eyed man in his forties, hadbeen hard to get through to at first, but as soon as MacHeathdiscovered that the hard block Kent had built up around himself wascaused by grief over a wife who had been dead five years, he became aseasy to read as a billboard. Kent had submerged his grief in work; theeternal drive of the true scientist to drag the truth out of MotherNature. He was constitutionally incapable of sabotaging the veryinstruments that had been built to dig in after that truth. 

Dr. Konrad Bern, on the other hand, was difficult to read below thepreconscious stage. Science, to him, was a form of power, to be usedfor "idealistic" purposes. He was perfectly capable of sabotaging theweapons of an enemy if it became necessary, whether that meant ruininga physical instrument or carefully falsifying the results of anexperiment. Outwardly, he was a pleasant enough chap, but his mindrevealed a rigidly held pattern of hatreds, fears, and twistedidealism. He held them tightly against the onslaughts of a hostileworld. 

And that meant that he couldn't possibly have any control overwhatever psionic powers he may have had. 

Unless--

Unless he was so expert and so well-trained that he was better thananything the S. M. M. R. Had ever known. 

MacHeath didn't even like to think about that. It would mean that allthe theory of psionics that had been built up so painstakingly overthe past years would have to be junked _in toto_. 

Something was gnawing in the depths of his mind. In the perfectlyrational but utterly nonlogical part of his subconscious where hunchesare built, something was trying to form. 

MacHeath didn't try to probe for it. As soon as he had enoughinformation for the hunch to be fully formed, it would be ready touse. Until then, it would be worthless, and probing for it mightinterrupt the formation. 

 * * * * *

He was just finishing his coffee as Bill Griffin came in the door andheaded toward the table where MacHeath, Luvochek, and Bessermann weresitting. 

MacHeath stood up and said: "Excuse me. I'll have to be getting somework 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 goodwork. When you fix 'em, they stay fixed. We haven't had a burnoutsince you came. "

"Maybe you broke our statistical jinx, " said Luvochek, with a chubbysmile. 

"Maybe, " said MacHeath. "I hope so. "

For some reason, the gnawing in his hunch factory became morepersistent. 

As he and Griffin walked toward the door, Griffin reported rapidly. "Ichecked 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 thecafeteria. He stopped as he saw them. 

"Oh, hello, Mr. MacHeath, Mr. Griffin, " he said. His white-toothedsmile was friendly, but both of the S. M. M. R. Agents could detect thehostility that was hard and brittle beneath the surface. "I wanted tothank 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'vehad, isn't it? Poor Dr. Nordred has been under a terrible strain; hiswhole life work is tied up in this project. " He made a vague gesturewith 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 waseating his guts out. "

"Sure he's scared, " MacHeath said. "With all this sabotage talk goingaround, he's afraid there'll be an exhaustive investigation, and hecan'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'llbe caught. He doesn't know what happened to the first three, and hewon'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 aPauli 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 ofthe tube now, Bill. He can't pick me up, so beetle it down to the toolroom, 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 thebig-muscled Griffin, Harry Benbow looked even thinner than he was. Hewas 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 stoodtall and straight, reminding MacHeath of a poplar tree toweringproudly over the countryside. Benbow was one of those rare AmericanNegroes whose skin was actually as close to being "black" as humanpigmentation will allow. His eyes were like disks of obsidian set inspheres of white porcelain, which gave an odd contrast-similarityeffect 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 andthe short, thickly-built, blond-haired, pink-skinned Bill Griffin. Butthe average man would be so struck by the differences that he wouldnever notice that the similarities were vastly more important. 

"You look as if you'd just been kissed by Miss America, " Harry said asMacHeath 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 ofany use to the Redford Project. We're going to have to arrest him asan unregistered agent of the Soviet Government. "

"It's just as well, " said Harry Benbow gently. "His research hasn'tdone us any good and it hasn't done the Soviets any good. The poorguy's been on edge ever since he got here. All the pale hide aroundthis 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 thoseprejudices of his down pretty deep; I didn't think you could go thatfar. "

"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 hisdefinition 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 togo. "

"What was the snooping you said you had to do?" Griffin asked. 

"Dates. Times. Briefly, I found that the run of accidents has beenbuilding up to a peak. At first, it was just small meters that wentwrong. Then bigger, more complex stuff. And, finally, the Monsterwent. 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 menhad come to the project to arrest him that evening is something thatMacHeath didn't know until later. He was busy at the time, ignoringanything but what he was interested in. It always fascinated him towatch the mind of a psychokinetic expert at work. He couldn't do thetrick himself, and he was always amazed at the ability of anyone whocould. 

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 heis making it. But being able to see what is going on doesn't mean thatone can duplicate the action. MacHeath was in the same position. Telepathically, he could observe the play of emotions that ran througha psychokinetic's mind--the combinations of avid desire and the utterloathing which, playing one against another, could move a brick, abook, or a Buick if the mind was powerful enough. But he couldn't doit himself, no matter how carefully he tried to follow the ragingemotions that acted as two opposing jaws of a pair of tongs to liftand move the object. 

And so engrossed was he with the process that he did not notice thatKonrad Bern had eluded the FBI. He was unaware of what had happeneduntil one of the Federal agents rapped loudly on the workshop door. 

Almost instantly, MacHeath picked up the information from the agent'smind. He glanced at Griffin and Benbow. "You two can handle it. Becareful 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 DavidMacHeath?"

"Yes. " MacHeath stepped outside and showed the FBI man hisidentification. 

"We were told to co-operate with you in this Konrad Bern case. He'smanaged to slip away from us somehow, but we know he's still in thearea. He can't get past the gate. "

MacHeath let his mind expand until it meshed with that of Dr. KonradBern. 

"There is a way out, " MacHeath snapped. "The acceleration tube. "

"What?"

"Come on!" He started sprinting toward the elevators. He explained tothe FBI agent as they went. 

"The acceleration tube of the ultracosmotron runs due north of herefor two miles underground. The guard at the other end won't beexpecting 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 ofthe wires so we could balance the acceleration fields. "

"Well, if he's on foot, we could send a car out there. We'd get therebefore he does. Uh . . . Wouldn't we?"

"Maybe. But he'll kill himself if he sees he's trapped. " That wasn'tquite true. Bern was ready to fight to the death, and he had a heavypistol to back him up. MacHeath didn't want to see anyone killed, andhe didn't want stray bullets flying around the inside of that tube orin the target room. 

MacHeath and the FBI agent piled out of the elevator at the bottom ofthe shaft. Dr. Roger Kent was standing at the head of the stairs thatspiraled down to the gun chamber. Dr. Kent knew that Bern had gonedown the stairway, but he didn't know why. 

"He's our saboteur, " MacHeath said quickly. "I'm going after him. Assoon as I close the door and seal it, you turn on the pumps. Lower theair pressure in the tube to a pound per square inch belowatmospheric. That'll put a force of about a ton and a quarter againstthe 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 ondown the spiral staircase, knowing that Kent would understand and actin plenty of time. 

 * * * * *

The door to the tube was standing open. MacHeath slipped on a pair ofthe sponge-soled shoes, noticing angrily that Bern hadn't bothered todo so. He went into the tube and closed the door behind him. Then hestarted 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 theleather-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 obstaclesin the path. Bern would probably have carried a flashlight if he'dbeen able to get his hands on one quickly, but he hadn't, so he wentin darkness. MacHeath didn't want a light; in the darkness, he had theadvantage 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 onthe toes of his thick-soled shoes, kept in motion, gaining on thefleeing spy. 

A two-mile run is a good stretch of exercise for anyone, but MacHeathdidn't dare slow down. As it was, Konrad Bern was already tuggingfrantically at the door that led to the target room by the timeMacHeath reached him. But the faint sighing of the pumps had alreadytold MacHeath that the air pressure had been dropped. Bern couldn'tpossibly get the door open. 

MacHeath's lungs wanted to be filled with air; his chest wanted toheave; 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 hestrained to keep his breath silent. 

He stepped up behind the physicist in the pitch blackness, and judgingcarefully, brought his fist down on the nape of the man's neck in ahard rabbit punch. 

Konrad Bern dropped unconscious to the floor of the tube. 

Then MacHeath let his chest pump air into his lungs in long, harshgasps. Shakily, he lowered himself to the floor beside Bern andsquatted on his haunches, waiting for the hiss of the bleeder valvethat would tell him that the air pressure had been raised to allowsomeone to enter the air lock. 

It was Morgan, the FBI man, who finally cracked the door. Griffin andDr. Kent were with him. 

"You all right?" asked Morgan. 

"I'm fine, " MacHeath said, "but Bern is going to have a sore neck fora while. I didn't hit him hard enough to break it, but he'll getplenty 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 andsee what Dr. Nordred is raving about. "

"Raving?" asked MacHeath innocently. 

"Yes. While I was in the pump room reducing the pressure, he called meon the interphone. Said he'd been looking all over for me. He andLuvochek and Bessermann are up in the lab. " He frowned. "They claimthat 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 whatit 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 clampedhis 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 theS. M. M. R. Building and looked puzzled. "All right, I grant you thatBern couldn't have been the saboteur. Then why arrest him?"

Dave MacHeath took a drag from his cigarette before he answered. "Wehad to have a patsy--someone to put the blame on. No one reallybelieved that it was just bad luck, but they'll all accept the ideathat Bern was a saboteur. "

"We would have had to arrest him eventually, anyway, " said BrianTaggert. 

"Give me a quick run-down, " Gonzales said. "I've got to explain thisto 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_, betterknown as the Exclusion Principle. The Pauli _Effect_ is a differentthing entirely, a psionic effect. 

"It used to be said that a theoretical physicist was judged by hisinability to handle research apparatus; the clumsier he was inresearch, the better he was with theory. But Wolfgang Pauli was a lotmore than clumsy. Apparatus would break, topple over, go to pieces, orburn 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 isrecorded that the explosion of some vacuum equipment in a laboratoryat the University of Göttingen was the direct result of the PauliEffect. It was definitely established that the explosion occurred atthe precise moment that a train on which Pauli was traveling stoppedfor a short time at the Göttingen railway station. "

The senator said: "The poltergeist phenomenon. "

"Not exactly, " MacHeath said, "although there is a similarity. Thepoltergeist phenomenon is usually spectacular and is nearly alwaysassociated with teen-age neurotics. Then there's the pyrotic; firesalways start in his vicinity. "

"But there's always a reason for psionic phenomena to react violentlyunder subconscious control, " Senator Gonzales pointed out. "There'salways 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 aboutpsionics would have to be thrown out--we'd have to start from adifferent set of precepts. _And I didn't even want to think about suchan idea!_"

"Nobody likes their pet theories overthrown, " Gonzales observed. 

"Of course not. But here's the point: The only way that a scientifictheory can be proved wrong is to uncover a phenomenon which doesn'tfit in with the theory. A theoretical physicist is a mathematician; hemakes logical deductions and logical predictions by juggling symbolsaround in accordance with some logical system. But the axioms, theassumptions upon which those systems are built, are nonlogical. Youcan't prove an axiom; if comes right out of the mind. 

"So imagine that you're a theoretical physicist. A reallyoriginal-type thinker. You come up with a mathematical system thatexplains all known phenomena at that time, and predicts others thatare, as yet, unknown. You check your math over and over again; there'sno 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 onyour axioms, and the structure seems to have a one-to-onecorrespondence with the actual universe. Not only that, but if thetheory 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 theerroneous set of axioms and build a new set that will explain the newphenomenon. Isn't that what a scientist is supposed to do?" His mannerwas 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 thedrop of a hat. _Sure_ he does. "

"He claims he will, " MacHeath said. "Any scientist worth the paper hisdiploma is printed on is firmly convinced that he will change hisaxioms as soon as they're proven false. Of course, ninety-nine percent of 'em _can't_ and _won't_ and _don't_. They refuse to look atanything that suggests changing axioms. 

"Some scientists eagerly accept the axioms that they were taught inschool and hang on to them all their lives, fighting change tooth andnail. Oh, they'll accept new ideas, all right--provided that they fitin with the structures based on the old axioms. 

"Then there are the young iconoclasts who don't like the axioms asthey stand, so they make up some new ones of their own--men likeNewton, Einstein, Planck, and so on. Then, once the new axioms havebeen forced down the throats of their colleagues, the innovatorsbecome the Old Order; the iconoclasts become the ones who put thefences around the new images to safeguard them. And they're even morefirmly wedded to their axioms than anyone else. This is _their_universe!

"Of course, these men proclaim to all the world that they areperfectly willing to change their axioms. And the better a scientisthe is, the more he believes, in his heart-of-hearts, that he reallywould change. He really thinks, consciously, that he wants others totest his theories. 

"But notice: A theory is only good if it explains all known phenomenain 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 structureformulated by a really creative, painstaking, mathematical physicistis _experiment_!"

Senator Gonzales' attentive silence was eloquent. 

"Experiment!" MacHeath repeated. "That can wreck a theory quicker andmore completely than all the learned arguments of a dozen men. Andevery theoretician is aware of that fact. Consciously, he gladlyaccepts the inevitable; but his subconscious mind will fight to keepthose axioms. 

"_Even if it has to smash every experimental device around!_

"After all, if nobody can experiment on your theory, it can't beproved wrong, can it?

"In Nordred's case, as in Pauli's, this subconscious defense actuallymade itself felt in the form of broken equipment. Dr. Theodore Nordredwas totally unconscious of the fact that he detested and feared theidea of anyone experimenting to prove or disprove his theory. He hadno idea that he, himself, was re-channeling the energy in thosemachines to make them burn out. "

Brian Taggert looked at MacHeath pointedly. "Do you think the shocktreatment you gave him will cause any repercussions?"

"No. Griffin and Benbow held that block of radiolead floating in theair only while Dr. Nordred was alone in the lab. He pushed at it, feltof it, and moved it around for more than ten minutes before he'd admitthe reality of what he saw. Then he called Luvochek and Bessermann into look at it. 

"Griffin and Benbow let the sample settle to the desk, so that by thetime the other two scientists got to the lab, the lead didn't have anapparent negative weight, but was still much lighter than it shouldbe. 

"All the while that Bessermann and Luvochek were trying to weigh thelead block, to get an accurate measurement, Griffin and Benbow, threerooms away, kept increasing the weight slowly towards normal. And sofar no one has invented a device which will give an instantaneouscheck on the weight of an object. A balance can't check the weight ofa sample unless that weight is constant; there's too much time laginvolved. 

"So, what evidence do they have? Scientifically speaking, none. Theyhave no measurements, and the experiment can't be repeated. And onlyNordred actually saw the sample _floating_. Luvochek and Bessermannwill eventually think up a 'natural' explanation for the apparentsteady gain in weight. Only Nordred will remain convinced that what hesaw actually happened. 

"I don't see how there could be any serious repercussions in the fieldof 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 werein a situation where we had to go to the extreme of physical violenceto keep from demonstrating to a scientist that psionic powers couldbe controlled, just to keep from ruining the physicist's work. 

"Now, we turn right around and demonstrate the 'impossible' to anotherphysicist 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 anysubconscious desire to smash equipment just to protect a theory thathas already been smashed. On the contrary, he'll let them go throughin order to find new data to build another theory on. "

"He'll never again be the man he was, " said Taggert regretfully. "He'slost the force of his convictions. He won't be capable of taking ano-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 manwho's a psionic psychopath?"

THE END

 * * * * *