I was deeply interested.

"Is there any way you could prove or disprove the theory, doctor?" I asked.

Dixon shrugged. "How are you going to prove it? Forcing the living mind temporarily out of its comfortable symbiotic partnership in the body might prove it. But how can you force out a thing of immaterial photons? Nothing but electric force could do it...."

That moment, as it turned out, was the beginning of the stunning events that followed.

Until then, Dixon had been merely hypothesizing. But now his dark face changed, and he was silent in intense thought.

"I believe," he said finally, "that it might be done, by amplifying the electroshock treatment used on psychotic patients by Cerletti and Bini in nineteen thirty-nine. You remember their patients could remember nothing of elapsing time while under shock? Their minds must have been out of their bodies for a moment!

"Suppose I increased the electroshock strength to force the mind out a little longer? The subject, when he came back to normal, might then remember his sensations as a disembodied mind."

Burke slowly nodded. "Sounds possible. But you'll never find out. You've no one to test the idea on, and never will have."

I don't know why it was that I didn't hesitate a moment in speaking up. I had not the slightest doubt.

"You can use me as your subject, doctor," I said.

I believe now it was my vain desire to emulate Dixon, my consciousness of my own lack of brilliance, that made me seize a chance to distinguish myself in an epochal experiment.

"You, Ellis?" Burke looked shocked.

But Dixon didn't. A little light leaped into his eyes as he looked at me.

He liked me, I think. But that liking meant not a straw when compared to the intensity with which he pursued any research.

"You know, of course, that it would be dangerous?" he warned. "The object would be to force your mind free of your body for all of a few minutes, then let it return so you can describe your sensations.

"This body-mind partnership, if it really exists, must be about the closest symbiosis in existence. Tampering with the partnership might have disastrous 

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