night," he said.

"Dad and Mom have been up for hours."

"And you?"

"Positively minutes." Jane came to him, face upraised. He kissed her and momentarily forgot his troubles.

But it all ended too soon. Breakfast was leisurely, and then they were off, back to Merion.

They arrived at the laboratory in an hour, and then the bustle of activity herded Dave's introspective feelings out of his mind.

He discovered that the night of relaxation had sharpened his mind. He ran through the program once more in the remote lab, and then they announced that he was ready to try the real thing.

Dave went to the jeep. Jane followed.

"Dave—be careful."

"As possible," he agreed. He kissed her and then started off towards the remote lab that still held the crystal clamped in the electrodes.

They wanted physicists, huh? He'd show them, whoever they were. He'd fox them. The trick was completely incomprehensible, but however they did it, it was as neat a program of treachery as had been invented in all history. In an earlier day the enemy went for the leaders, the generals and the admirals and the kings and emperors. Now it was the engineers and physicists, for it was science that carried victory. The most brilliant military strategist was a mere cork bobbing on the rim of a whirlpool if he were not equipped with the latest and best that could come from applied physics.

But Dave was not a physicist. He was just a scribbler of articles, an occasional writer of fiction. So Dave was not the man they wanted. Let them sit and chew their fingernails while he, a zero quantity as far as they were concerned, toyed with the crystal. It wouldn't be practical to waste the crystal on him, any more than it was practical to hurl a can of SPAM[1] at a convoy escort.

Dave arrived at the remote lab and went to work. They checked him through the video and the sound channel both ways, and then Dave turned toward the crystal.

"The power," he said, "is being built up, as you can hear in 

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