"Look yourself," interrupted the doctor, leaning over to wave the tape under Fred's nose. "Chance would give you twenty per cent right—one out of five. Look at your result."
Fred took the tape and studied it. "You've read it wrong. This says several million per cent."
"It says zero per cent. Nil. Not one answer right, Fred. The millions are the probabilities of that deviation ... oh, never mind. See the big black zero?"
"Yes, Doc."
"That is your result. It's statistically almost impossible, but you've done it. You did it with the puzzle in the competition. You did not get one single, solitary answer right. Not one! Even a machine gets one out of five right, Fred. Don't you see?"
No, he didn't, and it seemed to be just what Elsie was always complaining about. He lacked this and lacked that. And now he couldn't even do what a machine did.
"Okay, Doc," Fred said tiredly. "So I'm dumber than a machine. That figures."
"If you talk like that, you are," snapped Doctor Howard Sprinnell. "You have the highest negative Psi rating in the Solar System. No clairvoyance, no telepathy, no induced hallucinations, no precognitions, no telekinesis, no psi-screens, no interference of any kind. When we send you out into—well, never mind, Fred. The main point at present is that you are a very, very rare observer."
"That's fine," Fred said. "Look, Doc, I feel beat."
"You're meant to. Hell, man, I've been tiring you for two hours now. And what's more, I'll give you a little warning in advance. We aren't going to let you eat for three days either. You're going to be so tired that your body is going to loosen its grip. Don't worry, you won't die. Ten people have done this before you and they're all right. You'll meet them all soon. Now just hold still."