had a shock.

"Paranormal powers," muttered Hatcher's second in command, and the others mumbled agreement. Hatcher ordered silence, studying the specimen from Earth.

After a long moment he turned his senses from the Earthman. "Incredible—but it's true enough," he said. "I'd better report. Watch him," he added, but that was surely unnecessary. Their job was to watch McCray, and they would do their job; and even more, not one of them could have looked away to save his life from the spectacle of a creature as odd and, from their point of view, hideously alien as Herrell McCray.

Hatcher hurried through the halls of the great buried structure in which he worked, toward the place where the supervising council of all probes would be in permanent session. They admitted him at once.

Hatcher identified himself and gave a quick, concise report:

"The subject recovered consciousness a short time ago and began to inspect his enclosure. His method of doing so was to put his own members in physical contact with the various objects in the enclosure. After observing him do this for a time we concluded he might be unable to see and so we illuminated his field of vision for him.

"This appeared to work well for a time. He seemed relatively undisturbed. However, he then reverted to physical-contact, manipulating certain appurtenances of an artificial skin we had provided for him.

"He then began to vibrate the atmosphere by means of resonating organs in his breathing passage.

"Simultaneously, the object he was holding, attached to the artificial skin, was discovered to be generating paranormal forces."

The supervising council rocked with excitement. "You're sure?" demanded one of the councilmen.

"Yes, sir. The staff is preparing a technical description of the forces now, but I can say that they are electromagnetic vibrations modulating a carrier wave of very high speed, and in turn modulated by the vibrations of the atmosphere caused by the subject's own breathing."

"Fantastic," breathed the councillor, in a tone of dawning hope. "How about communicating with him, Hatcher? Any progress?"

"Well ... not much, sir. He suddenly panicked. We don't know why; but we thought we'd better pull back and let him recover for a while."

The council 

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