him think about one. Wherefore, the first free evening they had, while they were sitting
close together on a davenport near the fireplace in their living-room, she said:
“I know how much you really want to explore deep space. I do, too. I’m sure we could
accomplish something worth while, and I’d like very much to leave a size five-bee
footprint on the sands of time, too. There’s a way we can do it.”
Deston stiffened. “I’d like to believe that, pet. I’d give my right leg to the hip and one,
eye-but what’s the use of kidding ourselves? Your last buck, even if I’d lay it on that kind
of a line, wouldn’t cover the nut.”
“The way things are now, no. But listen. What is the one single thing that all civilization
needs most desperately?”
“Uranium. You know that as well as I do.”
“I know; but I want you to think very seriously about the reality, the intensity, and the
importance of that need. So elucidate.”
“Okay.” Deston shrugged his shoulders. “It’s the sine qua non of interstellar flight; of
running the Chaytor engine. While all the uranium does is trigger the power intake, the
bigger the Chaytor the bigger its Wesley has to be and the faster the uranium gets used
up. Uranium’s so scarce that except for controls its price would be fantastic. Hence the
black market, where its price is fantastic. Hence bribery, corruption, and so forth. Half of
the deviltry and skulduggery on all ninety six planets is due to the hard fact that the
supply of uranium cannot be made to equal the demand. Sufficient?” “Sufficient. Now for
it. I’ve been hinting, but you’ve been shying away from psionics as though it were some-
thing to be ashamed of, and it isn’t. In space we were all too horribly busy to do anything
about it, but now I’m going to slug you with it. Carl, I know that you’re the first real
metal-dowser that ever lived. Don’t ask me how I know; I just know. If you’ll just get
serious and really work on your latent abilities you’ll be able to find any metal you please
as easily as I can find oil.”
Tightening his arm, he swung her around and stared into her eyes. “I know all about
things that way. Hunches. So how do I go about learning to dowse metal?”
“Like I did. I started on coal, holding a lump in my hand. I concentrated on it until I could
sense everything about it, clear down to its atomic structure. Then, looking at a map and
spreading it out, I could see every coal deposit on the planet. So here’s a piece of
copper tube and a blueprint of this house. Concentrate as hard as you possibly can; then
you’ll know what I mean.”
“Oh-so you’ve been laving for me.”
“Of course I have. This is the first time we’ve had any time.”
“Okay. I’ll give it the good old college try.”
He tried it. He tried over and over again. For half an hour he put everything he had into
the effort. Then, coming out of his near-trance, he wiped his sweating face and said, “I
can’t swing it alone, pet. There must be some way for you to show me how the damn
thing goes-if I’ve got what it takes.”
“Of course you have!” she snapped. “Don’t think for a single second you haven’t-I know
you have, I tell you!” “If you know it, it’s so and I believe it. But the question still is-how?
But say, you can read my mind, can’t you?”
Her eyes widened. “Why, I don’t know. I never tried to, of course … but what good would
that do?”
“Just a hunch. With that close a contact, maybe some of your knowledge will rub off onto
me. Especially if you push.”
“I’ll push, all right; but remember, no resistance. With such a chilled-steel mind as yours,
nothing could get through.”
“No resistance. Just the opposite. I’ll pull you in with every tractor I can bring to bear.
Across a table?” “Uh-uh, this is better. Closer.”
They gripped hands and stared into each other’s eyes. For a long two minutes nothing
happened; then Barbara broke contact. “I got a little,” she said. “You were fighting with a
boy twice your size. A red-haired boy with a lot of freckles.”
“Huh? Spike McGonigle-that was twelve or fifteen years ago and I haven’t thought of the
guy since! But I got something, too. You were at a party, wearing a red dress cut down
to here and emerald ear-rings. You put a slightly pie-eyed chicken colonel flat on his face
because be wouldn’t take `no’ for an answer.”
“Not on his face, surely … oh, yes, I remember. But this isn’t what we wanted, at all.
However, it’s something; so let’s keep on with it, shall we?”
They kept it up until bed-time, and went at it again immediately after breakfast next
morning. Progress was maddeningly slow, but it was progress. Progress marked by a
succession of stabbing, fleeting pains, each of which was followed by the opening of an
entire vista of one-ness. They (lid not complete the operation that day, or in three more,
or in a week; but finally, the last vista opened, they sat for minutes in what was neither
ecstasy nor consternation, but something having the prime elements of both. For full
mental rapport is the ultimate intimacy; more intimate by far than any other union
possible.
Barbara licked her bloodless lips and said, not in words but purely in thought, “Oh, Carl!
So this is what telepathy really is!”
“Must be.” He was not speaking aloud, either. “What the people who talk about telepathy
don’t know about it!” “Oh, this is wonderful! But it isn’t what we were after at all.”
“But it may very well be a prerequisite, hon. I won’t be just watching you do it now; we’ll
be doing it as one. So break out your bottle of crude oil.”
“Oh, that won’t be necessary. I know oil so well that we won’t need a sample, not even a
map. Look-it goes like this … see?”
“See! Listen, Bobby. How could anybody ever learn such an incredibly complex technique
as that all by himself? How did you ever learn it?”
“Looked at that way … I guess maybe I didn’t. I must have been born with it.”
“‘That makes sense. Now let’s link up and take that copper atom apart clear down to
whatever makes up its theta, mu, and pi mesons.”
But they didn’t. Much to the dismayed surprise of both, their combined attack was no
more effective than Deston’s alone had been. He frowned at the sample in thought, then
said, “Okay. The thing’s beginning to make sense.”
“What sense?” she demanded. “Not to me, it isn’t. Is this another of your hunches?”
“No. Logic. I’m not sure yet, but one more test and I will be. Water. You won’t need a
sample?”
“No more than with oil. It’s just about the same technique. Like this . . . there. But it
doesn’t get me anywhere. Does it you?”
“Definitely. Look, Bobby. Water, gas, oil, and coal. Oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon.
Oxygen, the highest, is atomic number eight. Maybe you can-what’ll we call it?
`Handle’?-handle the lower elements, but not the higher ones. So maybe both of us
together can handle ’em all. If this hypothesis is valid, you already know helium, lithium,
beryllium. . . .”
“Wait up!” she broke in. “I wouldn’t recognize any one of them if it should stop me on the
street and say hello.”
“You just think you wouldn’t. How about boron, as in boric acid? Eve-wash, to you?”
Her mind flashed to the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. “I do know it, at that. I’ve
never handled it, but I can.”
“Nice. How about sodium, as in common salt?” “Can do.”
“Chlorine, the other half of salt?”
“That hurt a little-took a little time,-but I made it” “Fine! The hypothesis begins to look
good. Now we’ll tackle calcium together. In bones-my thick skull, for instance.”
“Ouch! That really hurt, Carl. And you did it. I couldn’t have, possibly, but I followed you
in and I know it now. But golly, it felt like … like it was stretching my brain all out of
shape. Like giving birth to a child, something. I told you you’re stronger than I am, Carl,
but I want to learn it all. So go right ahead, but take it a little slower, please.”
“Slow it is, sweetheart,” and they went ahead.
And in a couple of days they could handle a$ the elements of the periodic table.
Then and only then did they go back to what they had started out to do. Seated side by
side, each grasping the short length of metal, they stared at the blueprint and allowed-or,
rather, impelled-their perception to pervade the entire volume of the house.