Von Ulrich sat down in the contour chair and filled a pipe.

"Remember, Barton when you took your test for basketball duty? The dead man's float?"

"I sort of remember it, sir. It was fun."

Von Ulrich flinched. "Fun? I've gone over that report on your test, Barton. It doesn't make sense. What the hell are you anyway? A damned freak, a mutation, an alien in disguise?"

The dead man's float had been pleasant for Barton, that was all he could remember about it. They had taken off all Barton's clothes so that nothing touched Barton's body but a blacked-out head-mask through which to get air. He had been put in a tank of water at body temperature upside down and floated there. There was no sensation. It had been one of the happiest times of his life. Like floating on air. Hearing nothing, seeing nothing, feeling nothing except his own existence. Not even able to tell which was right side up, or right side down, cross-wise or whatnot. He had been told to keep still, but nobody had needed to tell him to do that.The first two or three hours of that dead man's float is a good test for basketball duty, Barton. It's a kind of final isolation of the human organism. Normal human beings can take a couple of hours of it usually. They like it. Every human being to some extent likes to return to the womb. But after a couple of hours most human beings start going to pieces, short-circuiting. The reason is the deprivation of any outside stimuli. Something has to feed in through some source--some reception source--the skin, ears, nose, the eyes. These things feeding in, they orient a person, tells him when he's thinking, feeling, gives him stimuli for additional thinking. With all these turned off, a person is simply left with a closed circuit. This begins to go round and round and distorts and magnifies and ruptures the whole thinking process. The floater becomes anxious, then very anxious, then he begins having hallucinations, finally becomes completely disoriented. All this happens to a normal human being inside, at the most, three or four hours. No human being should be able to remain sane after four hours of the dead man's float, Barton. But remember how long you lay there in that tank?"

"I didn't care how long it was."

"Three days," Von Ulrich said. "The neurophysiologist in charge there kept checking your reaction and finally he had to take you out of the tank, not because you were short-circuiting, but because he was. The impression was that you would have been delighted with the 

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