"Sorry," Roysland said, still grinning. "But take a look at these readings. I think you'll—"

"Wait a minute!" Kiffer interrupted. "I'm not interested in meter readings right now! What happened or didn't happen to you?"

"Is he all right?"

"What's going on up there?"

"Need any help?"

The voices came almost simultaneously to Kiffer's phones. He could see the second jeep tearing up dust between the gun emplacement and the target tower.

"He's O.K.," Kiffer snapped. "Big false alarm! I think we ought to have an explanation."

The answering burst of catcalling and jeers made Roysland wince. "O.K., fellers! O.K.! Please accept my abject and snivelling apologies."

"Explain yourself," Kiffer said in a monarchial tone. "You were supposed to be out here testing this thing on yourself; you wrote a very heart-rending note to that effect. I don't blame you for getting cold feet, but you could at least have notified us."

"I didn't get cold feet," Roysland said. "Look at the cerebrograph reading and compare it with the firing record."

Kiffer looked and then said: "Then you did take it! But according to this, all it did was cause a very faint petit mal convulsion. You probably didn't even notice it."

"I didn't," Roysland said. "I don't know what that projector is supposed to do, but it sure isn't a mindjammer!"

Kiffer looked again at the records. "Maybe you weren't far enough away from the projector," he said doubtfully. "Maybe the distance—"

"Impossible," said Roysland. "The beam doesn't disperse appreciably over a distance of half a light-year; you know that. And the wave form is exactly the same.

"No, I'm afraid we've just run up against another blind alley."

Kiffer shook his head slowly. "I don't believe it," he said. "The Enlissa didn't have their ship armed with this thing for nothing. We must have connected it up wrong, somehow."

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