in a vague way when he
announced his cosmo-plasma, the great underlying matrix in which time
and space and the universe are embedded. Now van Manderpootz announces
the ultimate unit, the universal particle, the focus in which matter,
energy, time, and space meet, the unit from which electrons, protons,
neutrons, quanta, spations, and chronons are all constructed. The riddle
of the universe is solved by what I have chosen to name the cosmon." His
blue eyes bored into me.

"Magnificent!" I said feebly, knowing that some such word was expected.
"But what good is it?"

"What good is it?" he roared. "It provides--or will provide, once I work
out a few details--the means of turning energy into time, or space into
matter, or time into space, or--" He sputtered into silence. "Fool!" he
muttered. "To think that you studied under the tutelage of van
Manderpootz. I blush; I actually blush!"

One couldn't have told it if he were blushing. His face was always
rubicund enough. "Colossal!" I said hastily. "What a mind!"

That mollified him. "But that's not all," he proceeded. "Van Manderpootz
never stops short of perfection. I now announce the unit particle of
thought--the psychon!"

This was a little too much. I simply stared.

"Well may you be dumbfounded," said van Manderpootz. "I presume you are
aware, by hearsay at least, of the existence of thought. The psychon,
the unit of thought, is one electron plus one proton, which are bound so
as to form one neutron, embedded in one cosmon, occupying a volume of
one spation, driven by one quantum for a period of one chronon. Very
obvious; very simple."

"Oh, very!" I echoed. "Even I can see that that equals one psychon."

He beamed. "Excellent! Excellent!"

"And what," I asked, "will you do with the psychons?"

"Ah," he rumbled. "Now we go even _past_ the heart of the matter, and
return to Isaak here." He jammed a thumb toward the robot. "Here I will
create Roger Bacon's mechanical head. In the skull of this clumsy
creature will rest such intelligence as not even van Manderpootz--I
should say, as _only_ van Manderpootz--can conceive. It remains merely
to construct my idealizator."

"Your idealizator?"

"Of course. Have I not just proven that thoughts are as real as matter,
energy, time, or space? Have I not just demonstrated that one can be
transformed, through the cosmon, into any other? My idealizator is the
means of transforming psychons to quanta, just as, for instance,