a
Crookes tube or X-ray tube transforms matter to electrons. I will make
your thoughts visible! And not your thoughts as they are in that numb
brain of yours, but in _ideal_ form. Do you see? The psychons of your
mind are the same as those from any other mind, just as all electrons
are identical, whether from gold or iron. Yes! Your psychons"--his voice
quavered--"are identical with those from the mind of--van Manderpootz!"
He paused, shaken.

"Actually?" I gasped.

"Actually. Fewer in number, of course, but identical. Therefore, my
idealizator shows your thought released from the impress of your
personality. It shows it--ideal!"

Well, I was late to the office again.

* * * * *

A week later I thought of van Manderpootz. Tips was on tour somewhere,
and I didn't dare take anyone else out because I'd tried it once before
and she'd heard about it. So, with nothing to do, I finally dropped
around to the professor's quarter, found him missing, and eventually
located him in his laboratory at the Physics Building. He was puttering
around the table that had once held that damned subjunctivisor of his,
but now it supported an indescribable mess of tubes and tangled wires,
and as its most striking feature, a circular plane mirror etched with a
grating of delicately scratched lines.

"Good evening, Dixon," he rumbled.

I echoed his greeting. "What's that?" I asked.

"My idealizator. A rough model, much too clumsy to fit into Isaak's
iron skull. I'm just finishing it to try it out." He turned glittering
blue eyes on me. "How fortunate that you're here. It will save the world
a terrible risk."

"A risk?"

"Yes. It is obvious that too long an exposure to the device will extract
too many psychons, and leave the subject's mind in a sort of moronic
condition. I was about to accept the risk, but I see now that it would
be woefully unfair to the world to endanger the mind of van Manderpootz.
But you are at hand, and will do very well."

"Oh, no I won't!"

"Come, come!" he said, frowning. "The danger is negligible. In fact, I
doubt whether the device will be able to extract _any_ psychons from
_your_ mind. At any rate, you will be perfectly safe for a period of at
least half an hour. I, with a vastly more productive mind, could
doubtless stand the strain indefinitely, but my responsibility to the
world is too great to chance it until I have tested the machine on
someone else. You should be