ither."

The others nodded in a chorus of silent agreement.

NOCTURNE--TEMPO DI VALSE

"Now what the hell's the matter with me?" thought Paul Wendell. He could
feel nothing. Absolutely nothing: No taste, no sight, no hearing, no
anything. "Am I breathing?" He couldn't feel any breathing. Nor, for
that matter, could he feel heat, nor cold, nor pain.

"Am I dead? No. At least, I don't _feel_ dead. Who am I? What am I?" No
answer. _Cogito, ergo sum._ What did that mean? There was something
quite definitely wrong, but he couldn't quite tell what it was. Ideas
seemed to come from nowhere; fragments of concepts that seemed to have
no referents. What did that mean? What is a referent? A concept? He felt
he knew intuitively what they meant, but what use they were he didn't
know.

There was something wrong, and he had to find out what it was. And he
had to find out through the only method of investigation left open to
him.

So he thought about it.

SONATA--ALLEGRO CON BRIO

The President of the United States finished reading the sheaf of papers
before him, laid them neatly to one side, and looked up at the big man
seated across the desk from him.

"Is this everything, Frank?" he asked.

"That's everything, Mr. President; everything we know. We've got eight
men locked up in St. Elizabeth's, all of them absolutely psychotic, and
one human vegetable named Paul Wendell. We can't get anything out of
them."

The President leaned back in his chair. "I really can't quite understand
it. Extra-sensory perception--why should it drive men insane? Wendell's
papers don't say enough. He claims it can be mathematically worked
out--that he _did_ work it out--but we don't have any proof of that."

The man named Frank scowled. "Wasn't that demonstration of his proof
enough?"

A small, graying, intelligent-faced man who had been sitting silently,
listening to the conversation, spoke at last. "Mr. President, I'm afraid
I still don't completely understand the problem. If we could go over it,
and get it straightened out--" He left the sentence hanging expectantly.

"Certainly. This Paul Wendell is a--well, he called himself a psionic
mathematician. Actually, he had quite a respectable reputation in the
mathematical field. He did very important work in cybernetic theory, but
he dropped it several years ago--said that the human mind couldn't be
worked at from a mechanistic angle. He studied various branches of
psychology, and even