The lights in the room went out; the lighted target circle bobbed slowly up and down. He found it not too difficult to bring his spot of light into the circle and match the bobbing motion.
Then his chair turned upside down.
When he recovered from his surprise at finding himself hanging head down in the dark, he saw that the spot of light had drifted away from the circle. Frantically he brought them together, swung past and had to correct.
The chair swung one way, the circle another, and a loud explosion took place at his left ear. The chair bucked and teetered; a jolt of electricity convulsed his hands and he lost j the circle entirely.
Matt began to get sore. He forced his spot back to the circle and nailed it. "Gotcha!" ;
Smoke poured through the room, making him cough, ' watering his eyes, and veiling the target. He squinted and; hung on grimly, intent only on hanging onto that pesky circle of light-through more explosions, screaming painful) noise, flashing lights, wind in his eyes, and endless, crazy emotions of his chair. '
Suddenly the room lights flared up, and the mechanical 1 voice said: "Test completed. Carry out your next assignment."
Once he was given a handful of beans and a small bottle, and was told to sit down and place the bottle at a mark on ;,-the floor and locate in his mind the exact position of the ; bottle. Then he was to close his eyes and drop the beans one at a time into the bottle-if possible.
He could tell from the sound that he was not making many hits, but he was mortified to find, when he opened his eyes, that only one bean rested in the bottle.
He hid the bottom of his bottle in his fist and queued up at the examiner's desk. Several of those lined up had a goodly number of beans in their bottles, although he noted two with no beans at all. Presently he handed his bottle to the examiner. "Dodson, Matthew, sir. One bean."