"Very much so; the bonuses take care of the isolation angle very nicely. They're making a game of being Siberians. They know it won't be too long and they know why we have to be absolutely sure that a lot of stuff stays hush-hush."

"Good. Next, Dutch Deissner is making independent noises and is getting big ideas. Full partnership, no less." "He'll get himself squashed like a bug."

"Maybe, but so far he's been doing most of the squashing and Mister Big is burning like a torch."

"Umm... um... mm." Maynard thought for a moment. "So you think EastHem actually will bomb?" "They're sure to." Spehn glanced across the table at Ilyowicz and Li who both nodded. "Not too long, I think, after the general strike is called-especially when we foul it up. Extra-heavy stuff on all our military installations, and really dirty stuff-one-hundred-percent-lethal nerve gas-on all our biggest cities. Wait a couple of months and take over."

"But retaliation-oh, sure, evacuation of the upper strata, they figure they have too many people, anyway." "Check. They figure on losing millions of peasants and workers. They plan on getting a lot of people away, but I can't get even an inkling as to where. Do either of you fellows have any ideas on that?"

Li shook his head and Ilyowicz said, "No. I do not believe it can be a developed planet; I do not think that such a project could have been carried out so tracelessly. My thought is that it is a temporary hide-out merely, on some distant virgin planet."

"That makes sense," Spehn said. "How are you making out on the subs and the big jets, Guerd?"

"Satisfactory," the admiral replied. "Everybody with half a brain is with us. We'll be ready as soon as those missile-killers come through. How are they doing on them, Mr. Maynard?"

"It took a long time to develop controls rigid enough to stand the gravs, but they're in full production now. You can start picking them up at Base next Thursday morning."

"Fine!" Dann glanced at the two Asiatics. "How are you two doing? Your jobs are tougher than ours." "Different, but easier, if anything," Ilyowicz said, and Li nodded twice. "All really intelligent persons are opposed to government by terrorism. A surprisingly large number of such persons proved to have enough psionic ability so that our so-called mystics could teach them to receive and to transmit thought. Thus we have no cells, no meetings, the absolute minimum of physical contact, and no traceable or detectable communications. Thus, the Nameless One has not now and will not have any suspicion that he and five hundred seventy three of his butchers will die on signal."

The Westerners gasped. East was vastly different from West. "But if you can do that, why...?" Dann began, but shut himself up. That was their job, not his.

"Right." Maynard approved the unspoken thought. "Well, does that cover it?"

"Not quite-one thing bothers me," Spehn said. "The minute we blockade Earth the whole financial system of the galaxy collapses."

"You tell him, Paul," Maynard said. "You're Deston and Deston."

"Covered like a sucker's bet." Lansing laughed and slapped himself zestfully on the leg. "That's the prize joker of the whole business. GalBank-the First Galaxian Bank of Newmars-opens for business day after tomorrow. Have you got any idea of what a solid-cash basis even one installation like Project Barbizon is? Or especially Rhenia Four, that's bringing in a net profit of a megabuck an hour? And DesDes owns 'em by the dozen. h.e.l.l, we could fight an interstellar war out of petty cash and never miss it from the till. Son, if Dutch and Slobski had any idea of how much hard-cash money we've got it'd scare the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds right out of their pants."

"I see." Spehn thought for a moment. "I never thought of it before, but the way leybyrdite is taking everything over, no ordinary bank could handle it, at that. And May nard, I've studied the material you gave us on your board-of-directors government of the Galactic Federation and I'll vote for it. Nothing else has ever worked, so it's time something different was tried."

"It won't be easy, but I'm pretty sure it can be made to work. After all, there have been quite a few self-cleaning boards of directors that have lasted for generations; showing substantial profits, yet adhering rigorously to the Principle of Enlightened Self-Interest. Examples, the largest firms in existence.

"To succeed, our board must both adhere to that Principle and show a profit-the profit in this case being in terms of the welfare of the human race as a whole. Is there anything else to come before this meeting?"

was nothing else.

"That's it, then. Round it off neatly, Miss Champion -the adjournment and so forth-as usual."

Chapter 12 HIGHER EDUCATION.

Andrew Adams had what was probably the finest mind of any strictly human being of his age. He had a voracious and insatiable appet.i.te for knowledge; his brain was an unfilled and unfillable reservoir. He was without prejudice, inhibition, or bias. He could, and frequently did, toss a laboriously-developed theory or hypothesis of his own down the drain in favor of someone else's anyone else's-that gave even slightly better predictions than did his own.

Being what he was, it was inevitable that when the Destons gave Adams his first real insight into telepathy and, through it, into the unimaginably vast and theretofore almost hermetically sealed universe of psionics, he dropped his old researches in favor of the new. He and his wife studied, more and ever more intensively, the possibilities and potentialities of the mind as the mind. Scholar-like, however, they needed to a.n.a.lyze and digest all the information available having any hearing upon the subject. Therefore, since there was no esoterica of that type in the Procyon's library, they went back to Earth.

The Adams apartment was a fairly large one; five rooms on the sixteenth floor of Grantland Hall in Ann Arbor, overlooking the somewhat crowded but beautifully landscaped campus of the University of Michigan. Their living room was large-seventeen by twenty five feet-but it was the Adams, not the ordinary, concept of a living room. Almost everything in it was designed for books and tapes; everything in it was designed for study.

First, they went through their own library's stores of philosophy, of metaphysics, of paraphysics, of occultism, of spiritualism, of voodooism, of scores of kinds of cultism and even more kinds of crackpotism, from Forteanism up-or down. They studied thousands of words to glean single phrases of truth. Or, more frequently, bits of something that could be developed into truth or into something having to do with truth. Then they exhausted the resources of the University's immense library; after which they requested twenty two exceedingly rare tomes from the Crerar Library of Chicago. This was unusual, since scholars usually came to the Crerar instead of vice-versa, but Adams was Andrew Adams of the College; one of the very biggest of the Big Brains. Wherefore: It can be arranged, Dr. Adams," Crerar's head librarian told him, as one bibliophile to another. "These are replicas, of course-most of the originals are in Rome-and not one of them has been consulted for over five years. I'm glad to have you study these volumes, if for no other reason than to show that they are not really dead wood."

Thus it came finally about that Andrew and Stella Adams sat opposite each other, holding hands tightly across a small table, staring into each other's eyes and thinking at and with each other in terms and symbols many of which cannot be put into words.

"But it has to be some development or other of Campbell's Fourth Nume," she insisted. "It simply can't be anything else."

"True," he agreed. "However, Campbell had only a glimmering of a few of the-facets? Basics?-of that nume. So let's go over the prime basics again-the takeoff points-the spring-boards-to see if possible where our thinking has been at fault."

"Very well. Fourth Nume, the-Level? Region? Realm?-of belief, of meaning, of ability to manipulate and to understand-of understanding of and manipulation of the phenomena of reality existing in the no-s.p.a.ce-no-time continuum of..."

"A moment," Adams broke in. "Non-s.p.a.ce-non-time is preferable, I believe. And aren't those symbols contradictory and mutually exclusive?"

"By no means. In the totality of universes it is not only possible but necessary to manipulate both the immaterial and the material aspects of energy without reference to either time or s.p.a.ce. Like this-" and her symbology went far beyond language.

"I see. My error. I was fouling it up. Shall we try again?"

"Not yet. We may find more. Non-s.p.a.ce-non-time manipulation, then, and also n-s-n-t attributes, phenomena, and being. Most important-the sine qua non-is the ultimate basic s.e.x. Prerequisite, a duplex pole of power; two very-strongly-linked and very powerful poles, one masculine and one feminine..."

"A moment, Stella, I'll have to challenge that nuance of thought. If we are dealing with pure, raw, elemental force-as I think we are-we've been thinking too nicelynicey on that, especially you. The thought should be, I'm pretty sure; neither masculine and feminine nor manly and womanly but starkly male and just as starkly female."

"You're probably right, Andy... you are right. So I'll think starkly female; as starkly so as an alley cat in heat. Shall we... no, let's finish checking the list."

They finished checking, and neither could perceive any other sources of error in the nuances of their thoughts. They tried it again, and this time it-whatever it was-clicked. Or rather, the result was not a click, but a sonic boom. Both bodies went rigid for seconds; then each drew a tremendously deep breath; as much from relaxation of tension as from realization of accomplishment. Then, poring over a street map of Calcutta, they went mentally to India; to the home of Mahatma Rajaras Molandru, who was one of the greatest sages then alive and who was also a Fellow of the College of Study.

"Is it permitted, Mahatma, that we converse with you and learn?" the fused minds asked.

So calm, so serene was the Great Soul's mind that he neither showed nor felt surprise, even at this almost incredible full meeting of minds. "You are very welcome, friends Andrew and Stella. You have now attained such heights, however, that I have little or nothing to give you and much to receive from you."

While the old Mahatma did get much more than he gave, the Adamses got enough new knowledge from him so that when they left India they no longer needed maps. Their linkage had a sureness and a dirigibility that not even the Destons were to match for many years.

From India they went to China, where they had a long and somewhat profitable interview with Li Hing Wong. Thence to Russia and Feodr Ilyowicz; where results were negligible.

"Andy, I never did like that man," Stella said, when the short and unsatisfactory interview was over. And on such contact as this I simply can't stand him. Secretive-sly-he wouldn't really open up at all-all take and no give-that is not the way a good psiontist should act."

"I noticed that; but the loss is really his. It made it impossible for us to give him anything... but that att.i.tude is perhaps natural enough-his whole heritage is one of secretiveness. Where next, my dear?"

They went to Tibet and to the Gobi and to Wales and to Rome and to Central Africa and to Egypt and to various other places where ancient, unpublished lore was to be found. They sifted this lore and screened it; then, after having sent a detector web of thought throughout the s.p.a.ce and subs.p.a.ce of half the galaxy, they found and locked minds with Carlyle and Barbara Deston.

"Do not be surprised, youngsters," the Adams duplex began.

Huh?" Deston yelped. "Clear to h.e.l.langone out here? And in subs.p.a.ce besides?"

"Distance is no longer important. Neither is the nature of the environment. Moreover, we are about to visit you in person."

"Without a locus of familiarity? You can't."

"That is no longer necessary, either. Here we are." Seated side by side on a love-seat facing the Destons, the Adamses spoke the last three words aloud, in perfect unison.

Deston did not jump clear off of the davenport quite. "Out here into the middle of subs.p.a.ce and we're doing G.o.d-knows-how-many megapa.r.s.ecs a minute relative to anything? So you've mastered absolute trams-spatial perception?"

"By no means. We have, however, been able to enlarge significantly our hyper-sphere of action. We have learned much."

"That's the understatement of the century. But before you try to teach us any such advanced stuff as that, there's something simple-that is, it should be simple that's been bothering me no end. You got a little time now, Doe?"

"Lots of it, Babe. Go ahead."

"Okay. Well, since I never got beyond calculus, and not very advanced calc at that, I don't know any more about high math than a pig does about Sunday. But you and I both know what we mean by plain, common, ordinary, every-day reality. We know what we mean when we say that matter exists. Check, to here?"

"In the sense in which you are using the terms reality' and matter', yes."

"Okay. Matter exists in plain, ordinary, three-dimensional s.p.a.ce. Matter is composed of atoms. Therefore atoms must exist and must have reality in three-dimensional s.p.a.ce. So why can't any atomic physicist tri-di a working model of an atom? One that will work? One that human eyes can watch work? So that the ordinary human mind can understand how and why it works?"

"That's rank over-simplification, my boy. Why, the very concept of subatomic phenomena and of subs.p.a.ce is so..."

"I know it is. That's exactly what I'm b.i.t.c.hing about. Basically, nature is simple, and yet you Big Brains can't handle it except by inventing mathematics so horribly complex that it has no relationship at all to reality. You can't understand it yourselves. You don't-at least I'm pretty sure you don't-really understand-like I understand that chair there, I mean-time or subs.p.a.ce or s.p.a.ce or anything else that's really fundamental. So do you mind if I stick my amateur neck 'way out and make a rank amateur's guess as to why and why not?"

"I'm listening, Babe, with my mind as well as my ears."

Barbara grinned suddenly. "Out of the mouths of babes -one Babe in this case-et cetera," she said.

"Okay, little squirt, that'll be enough out of you. Doc, I think there's one, and probably more than one, fundamental basic principle that n.o.body knows anything about yet. And that when you find them, and work out their laws, everything will snap into place so that even such a dumbster as I am will be able to see what the real score is. So you think I'm a squirrel food, don't you?"

"By no means. Many have had similar thoughts..." "I know that, too, but now we jump clear off the far end. Do you read science fiction?"

"Of course."

"You're familiar, then, with the triangle of electromagnetics, electro-gravitics, and magneto-gravitics. That's just a wild stab, of course, but one gets you a hundred that there's something, somewhere, that will tie everything up together-subs.p.a.ce, hunches, telekinetics, witches, and all that stuff."

Adams leaned forward eagerly. "Have you done any work on it?"

"Who, me? What with?" Deston laughed, but there was no trace of levity in the sound. "What would I be using for a brain? That's your department, Doc."

Adams smiled and started to say something, but broke off in the middle of a word. His smile vanished. He sat immobile, eyes unfocussed, for minute after minute. He sat there for so long that Deston, afraid to move, began to think that he had suffered some kind of a seizure.

Finally, however, Adams came out of his trance. He and Stella got up as one and, without a word, turned to leave the room.

"Hey!" Deston protested. "Wait up, Doc! What gives?" Adams licked his lips. "I can't tell you, Babe. I'd be the laughing-stock of the scientific world-especially since I can't conceive of any possible instrumentation to test it."

"After that, you've got to talk. So start."

"The trigger was your flat statement-axiomatic to you-that the atom exists in three dimensions. Since that alleged fact can not be demonstrated, it probably is not true. If it is not true, the reverse-the Occam's-Razor explanation-would almost have to he that s.p.a.ce possesses at least four physical dimensions."

"h.e.l.l's... flaming... afterburners..." Deston breathed.

"Exactly. The fact that this theory-to my knowledge, at least-has never been propounded seriously does not affect its validity. It explains every phenomena with which I am familiar and conflicts with none."

There was a long silence, which Deston broke. "Except one, maybe. According to that theory, psionic ability would be the ability to perceive and to work in the fourth physical dimension of s.p.a.ce. Sometimes in time, too, maybe. But in that case, if anybody's got it why hasn't everybody? Can you explain that?"

"Quite easily. Best, perhaps, by a.n.a.logy. You'll grant that to primitive man it was axiomatic that the Earth was flat? Two-dimensional?"

"Granted."

"That belief became untenable when it was proved conclusively that it was round'. At that point cosmology began. The Geocentric Theory was replaced by the Heliocentric. Then the Galactic. Where are we now? We don't know. Note, however, that with every advance in science the estimated size of the physical universe has increased."

"But what has that got to do with psionics?"

"I'm coming to that. While intelligence may not have increased very greatly over the centuries, mental ability certainly has. My thought is that the process of evolution has been, more and more frequently, activating certain hitherto-dormant portions of the brain; specifically, those portions responsible for the so-called supra-normal' abilities."

"Oh, brother! You really went out into the wild blue yonder after that one, professor."

"By no means. It may very well be that not all lines of heredity carry any of the genes necessary to form the required cells, even in the dormant state, and it is certain that there is a wide variation in the number and type of those cells. But have you ever really considered Lee Chaytor? Or George Wesley?"

"Just what everybody knows. They were empiricists -pure experimenters, like the early workers with electricity. They kept on trying until something worked. The theory hasn't all been worked out yet, is all."

" Everybody knows' something that, in all probability, simply is not true. I believed it myself until just now; but now I'm almost sure that I know what the truth is. They both were-they must have been-tremendously able psiontists. They did not publish the truth because there was no symbology in which they could publish it. There still is no such symbology. They concealed their supra-normal abilities throughout their lives because they did not want to be laughed at-or worse."

Deston thought for a minute. "That's really a bolus... what can we-any or all of us-do about it?"

"I'm not sure. Data insufficient-much more work must be done before that question can be answered. As we said, Stella and I have learned much, but almost nothing compared to what is yet to be learned. To that end-but it is long past bedtime. Shall all eight of us meet after breakfast and learn from each other?"

"It'll be a one-way street, professor," Deston said, "but thanks a million for the compliment, anyway. We shall indeed."

The Adamses left the room and Carlyle Deston stared unseeingly at the doorway through which they had pa.s.sed.

And next morning after breakfast the four couples sat at a round table, holding hands in a circle.

Very little can be said about what actually went on. It cannot be told in either words or mathematics. There is no symbology except the esoteric jargon of the psiontist-as meaningless to the non-psionic mind as the proverbial "The gostak distims the doshes"-by the use of which such information can be transmitted.

Results, however, were enormous and startling; and it must be said here that not one of the eight had any suspicion then that the Adams fusion had any help in doing what it did. Andrew Adams' mind was admittedly the greatest of its time; combining with its perfect complement would enhance its power; everything that happened was strictly logical and only to be expected.

The physical results of one phase of the investigation, that into teleportation, can be described. Each pair of minds was different, of course. Each had abilities and powers that the others lacked; some of which were fully developable in the others, some only partially, some scarcely at all. Thus, when it came to the upper reaches of the Fourth Nume, even Adams was shocked at the power and scope and control that flared up instantly in the Trains' minds as soon as the doors were opened.

"Ah," Adams said, happily, "That explains why you would not start out without them."

"And how!" Deston agreed; and it did.

It is also explained why Cecily had always been, in Bernice's words, "such a s.e.x-flaunting power-house." It accounted for Train's years of frustration and bafflement. At long, long last, they had found out what they were for.

"You two," Adams said, "have, among other things, a power of teleportation that is almost unbelievable. You could teleport, not merely yourselves, but this entire starship and all its contents, to any destination you please."

"They could, at that," Deston marveled. "Go ahead and do it, so Bobby and I can see how much of the technique we can learn."

"I'm afraid to." Cecily licked her lips. "Suppose we-I, my part of it, I mean-scatter our atoms all over total s.p.a.ce?"

"We won't," Train said. Although he had not known it before, he was in fact the stronger of the two. "Give us a target, Babe. We'll hit it to a gnat's eyeball."