which were opposite to zero charge and positive mass. He looked into the abstract often, and at one period he tried to reconcile the rather high-altitude suggestion that the positron, the positive electron, was equivalent to the usual electron traveling backwards in time. All the math available said that there was no way of telling one concept from the other; that the effects of a positron would be the same as the effect of an electron in reversed timefield. This completely abstract concept also covered the negatron and the anti-neutron.

Peter abandoned the concept of nuclear time fields and picked up the meson theory. He studied spin and angular momentum and tried to correlate the energies involved in spin and binding forces.

He got into crystallography and into the lattice structure of regular crystalline masses and into the theory of amorphous substances. His trail led him through the study of distorted crystalline structure and semi-fractured crystalline regeneration. At one time he found himself absorbed in a study of machining versus coining and although he knew why and how a rolled, or coined, screw thread was stronger than a cut thread, he read the whole article again and got new hope from it.

Peter sent many things through his equipment, which he now called his "Matter Reducer" and he studied the results analytically.

He was busy; he was completely occupied from awakening to bedtime, and in order to take his next important step forward, Peter cut down on his sleeping time. He worked and he studied almost eighteen hours a day. He ate with one hand and used the other to turn the pages of his books; sometimes he did not eat. He existed on cans of soup and loaves of sliced bread because they took little time to prepare. He consumed jars of peanut butter and crackers by the package. Now and then he would take time off to munch an apple, taking time off because apple juice made it rather awkward to handle a book at the same time. He shaved when his face became uncomfortable; although he bathed regularly, most of the bathing was a case of shocking himself awake after too little sleep by a deluge of water. Now and then he would go to sleep with his book on his lap, to wake up a few hours later and resume his study.

It was ten days before he realized that he had not seen Norma since their last parting, and even this he did not realize until she came to his laboratory and found him haggard from loss of sleep and thin from overwork and undereating.

Norma herself was 

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