Abner Streitman Long was Resident Professor of Psychology at Mandar University. He was also one of the world's foremost and best-known experimenters in the area of parapsychology, also called Extra-Sensory Perception, also called psionics.

The government, as a matter of principle, didn't believe in psionics. But the government, also as a matter of principle, kept a psionics expert handy, just in case.

The "just in case" had maybe happened.

Professor Long sat in Marshall's office and listened stolidly to the problem. The expert was a tall, barrel-chested man with a fantastic shock of white hair exploding out in all directions from his head. His nose was bulbous, his jaw out-thrust, his eyes deepset, his ears hairy, his hands huge and his feet huger. He looked like a dressed-up lumberjack, of the old school.

He listened, and they talked, and every once in a while he nodded, and said, "Huh." His voice was, predictably, basso profundo.

Then they were finished, and Professor Long summed it all up. "He changes the temperature of objects. Yes?"

"Yes," said Marshall.

"You looked for a machine. Yes?"

"Yes, and we didn't find it."

"And your thermodynamics people said no such machine could exist anyway, yes?"

"That's right."

"Then why did you look for it?"

"Because," said Marshall desperately, "we'd seen it in action. That is, we'd seen the result of its use."

"Yes," said the professor. He sucked on his lower lip and abstractedly watched his thumbs twiddle. "Pyrotic," he announced at last.

"I beg your pardon?" asked Marshall.

"Pyrotic," repeated the professor. "Yes? Yes. Pyrotic. Do you know what that is?"

"No," said Marshall.

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