of
information pertaining to any problem we may give it. Four, to combine
and recombine any number of items required to form new concepts. Five,
to formulate theories, test them and draw conclusions helpful to us in
any matter in work."

It will have been noticed that these specifications vary in one
important respect from those of the Eniacs and Univacs of Earth. Since
we of Earth can not peyondire, we do not expect that ability from our
computers.

The Stretts could, and did.

* * * * *

When Sandra came back into the office at five o'clock she found Hilton
still sitting there, in almost exactly the same position.

"Come out of it, Jarve!" She snapped a finger. "That much of _that_ is
just simply too damned much."

"You're so right, child." He got up, stretched, and by main strength
shrugged off his foul mood. "But we're up against something that is
really a something, and I don't mean perchance."

"How well I know it." She put an arm around him, gave him a quick, hard
hug. "But after all, you don't have to solve it this evening, you know."

"No, thank God."

"So why don't you and Temple have supper with me? Or better yet, why
don't all eight of us have supper together in that bachelors' paradise
of yours and Bill's?"

"That'd be fun."

And it was.

Nor did it take a week for Beverly Bell to recover from the Ordeal of
Eight. On the following evening, she herself suggested that the team
should take another shot at that utterly fantastic _terra incognita_ of
the multiple mind, jolting though it had been.

"But are you sure you can take it again so soon?" Hilton asked.

"Sure. I'm like that famous gangster's moll, you know, who bruised easy
but healed quick. And I want to know about it as much as anyone else
does."

They could do it this time without any help from Tuly. The linkage
fairly snapped together and shrank instantaneously to a point. Hilton
thought of Terra and there it was; full size, yet occupying only one
infinitesimal section of a dimensionless point. The multi-mind visited
relatives of all eight, but could not make intelligible contact. If
asleep, it caused pleasant dreams; if awake, pleasant thoughts of the
loved one so far away in space; but that was all. It visited mediums, in
trance and otherwise--many of whom, not surprisingly now, were
genuine--with whom it held lucid conversations. Even in linkage,
however, the multi-mind knew that none of the med