Jerry.

Burgess shook his head. "We can only guess. Our theory is that he's used the duplicator to make the entire room self-sustaining. Normally we could wait till he runs out of material to feed the duplicator, but—we can't wait on the lives of those two men. Nor can we chance his expanding his universe."

Norcriss frowned. "Expanding it?"

Burgess nodded. "By, perhaps, feeding the duplicator with the room itself. With a pickaxe, he can start hewing down the very walls, or even have the duplicator build a robot that will take care of its need for material to build with. Against this development, we have surrounded the room completely with a force-shield, limiting his outward progress to two feet of concrete in any direction. But the room is approximately thirty feet square, and twenty feet high. With all that mass he could exist in there for years."

"And my job is to get him out," said Jerry.

"Yes. The government feels that a Contact specialist's the only kind of man to send into this madman's world. You men are used to extra-somatic experiences—and you have learned to live with danger without losing your heads."

"Well," said Jerry, getting up, "I guess that sums up the situation sufficiently."

Burgess nodded, sadly. "Any further briefing is useless. Impossible, really. I've told you the situation, and you can certainly imagine the danger. But as for the solution, well.... You'll just have to feel your way, and do whatever you think best."

Jerry paused beside Burgess at the door to the hall. "One thing, though, Doctor; when I get into the influence of the machine, what kind of universe will I be in? Mine or Mawson's?"

"I can only theorize on that," said Burgess. "My guess would be that you'll find both in there, one vying for supremacy over the other. This fight won't be man to man. It will be universe against universe."

II

There had been no sensation at all as Jerry stepped through the flat sheet of grayness in the doorway; no more physical awareness than a blind man might feel when passing through the beam of a powerful light. Perhaps there was a slight sensation of the mere presence of the energies that kept the opacity in existence—but that sensation, Jerry knew, was psychological, not actual.

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