n Philips from
his diagram long enough to invite her to the Spring Festival by reciting
a low-voiced string of nuclear equations carefully compounded to make
them sound naughty unless they're properly identified with full
attention. She looks up and says, "What if he doesn't make the
connection?"

Philips replies, "Well, if he can prove to that tough bunch that there
is no possible advance in learning through a combination of Astronomy,
Medicine, and Psychology, he'll make it on that basis. It's just as
important to close a door as it is to open one, you know. But it's one
rough deal to prove negation. Maybe we'll have James the Holden on our
hands for another semester. Martha will like that."

"Talking about me?"

There is a rolling motion, sort of like a bushel of fish trying to leap
back into the sea. The newcomer is Martha Fisher. At fifteen, her eyes
are bright, and her features are beginning to soften into the beginning
of a beauty that will deepen with maturity.

"James," says Tony Dirk. "We figured you'd like to have him around
another four months. So we gimmicked him."

"You mean that test-trio?" chuckles Martha.

"How's he doing?"

"When I left, he was wriggling his way through probability math, showing
the relationship between his three subjects and the solution for random
choice figures which may or may not be shaded by known or not-known
agency. He's covered Mason's History of Superstition and--"

"Superstition?" asks a Japanese.

Martha nods. "He claimed superstition is based upon fear and faith, and
he feared that someone had tampered with his random choice of subjects,
and he had faith that it was one of his buddies. So--"

Martha is interrupted by a shout. The years have done well by James
Holden, too. He is a lithe sixteen. It is a long time since he formed his
little theory of human pair-production and it is almost as long since
he thought of it last. If he reconsiders it now, he does not recognize
his part in it because everything looks different from within the circle.
His world, like the organization of the Universe, is made up of schools
containing classes of groups of clusters of sets of associations created
by combinations and permutations of individuals.

"I made it!" he says.

James has his problems. Big ones. Shall he go to Harvard alone, or shall
he go to coeducational California with the hope that Martha will follow
him? Then there was the fun awaiting him at Heidelberg, the