theory that the pattern of all social behavior was determined by a complicated meshing of symbiotic waves. According to him, these waves held the key to the urge of kind to mate with kind; they were the basis of all physical attraction and all physical antipathy. It was very scientific. I never understood a word.

When he finished the briefing, he led me into a small lab that looked like a cross between the cockpit of a B-39 and an operating room for midgets. There was a big contour chair in the center of the lab. "Sit in the chair, Freddy," Panda ordered.

I sat in the chair, but I was beginning to get worried. "Look," I said, narrowing my eyes and steeling my voice, "just in case something goes wrong, I'd like to leave a few words for posterity. I'd like to state that I am proud to—"

"Stop blubbering, Freddy," Panda snapped, giving me a look that would have carved a duck. "This isn't going to hurt."

She was right, Dr. MacCluett said. All they were going to do was use a radio electroencephalograph on me. That radio electroencephalograph was just a series of modified FM transmitters which they were going to set up around me. Those transmitters would pick up my wave patterns and transmit them over to that receiver in the corner. That receiver would flash the pattern to that oscilloscope beside it. I would be as safe as a baby in its mother's arms. Safer even. Those FM transmitters weren't going to drop hot cigarette ashes on me. They weren't going to drip gin in my eyes. "Just lean back and relax," Dr. MacCluett finished.

I leaned back and tried to relax. Those FM transmitters, I had an idea, were going to have their job cut out for them. That oscilloscope was probably going to turn out to be the blankest oscilloscope in the country.

The way it is, I'm more familiar with appearing on TV than on radio. I felt lost without a camera pointing at me. "You want me to suffer a little?" I asked uncertainly. "You want me to lash my beard a few times?"

Dr. MacCluett gave me an unfriendly glance. For a while I sat there and watched them out of the corners of my eyes. Then I began to get restless again. "You reading me all right, Dr. MacCluett?" I called. He didn't bother to answer. Just went on staring at that oscilloscope. "This is remarkable," I heard him mutter. "We must make a photographic record of this. Thus must primitive man's waveform have appeared when he was forced to battle the hairy mammoth."

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