w neutrino-counter was developed. But now we come
to what you have been so good as to christen the Sugihara Effect--the
neutrino picking up a negative charge and, in effect, turning into an
electron, and then losing its charge, turning back into a neutrino, and
then, as in the case of metal heated to incandescence, being emitted
again as a photon.

"At first, we thought this had no connection with the spaceship
insulation problem we are under contract to work out, and we agreed to
keep this effect a Team secret until we could find out if it had
commercial possibilities. But now, I find that it has a direct
connection with the collapsed-matter problem. When the electron loses
its negative charge and reverts to a neutrino, there is a definite
accretion of interatomic binding-force, and the molecule, or the
crystalline lattice or whatever tends to contract, and when the neutrino
becomes a photon, the nucleus of the atom contracts."

* * * * *

Heym ben-Hillel was sitting oblivious to everything but his young
colleague's words, a slice of the flesh of the unclean beast impaled on
his fork and halfway to his mouth.

"Yes! Certainly!" he exclaimed. "That would explain so many things I
have wondered about: And of course, there are other forces at work
which, in the course of nature, balance that effect--"

"But can the process be controlled?" Suzanne Maillard wanted to know.
"Can you convert electrons to neutrinos and then to photons in
sufficient numbers, and eliminate other effects that would cause
compensating atomic and molecular expansion?"

Kato grinned, like a tomcat contemplating the bones of a fish he has
just eaten.

"Yes, I can. I have." He turned to MacLeod. "Remember those bullets I
got from you?" he asked.

MacLeod nodded. He handloaded for his .38-special, and like all advanced
cases of handloading-fever, he was religiously fanatical about
uniformity of bullet weights and dimensions. Unlike most handloaders, he
had available the instruments to secure such uniformity.

"Those bullets are as nearly alike as different objects
can be," Kato said. "They weigh 158 grains, and that means
one-five-eight-point-zero-zero-zero-practically-nothing. The diameter is
.35903 inches. All right; I've been subjecting those bullets to
different radiation-bombardments, and the best results have given me a
bullet with a diameter of .35892 inches, and the weight is unchanged. In
other words,