There was something wrong, and he had to find out what it was. And he had to find out through the only method of investigation left open to him.
So he thought about it.
Sonata—Allegro con Brio
THE PRESIDENT of the United States finished reading the sheaf of papers before him, laid them neatly to one side, and looked up at the big man seated across the desk from him.
"Is this everything, Frank?" he asked.
"That's everything, Mr. President; everything we know. We've got eight men locked up in St. Elizabeth's, all of them absolutely psychotic, and one human vegetable named Paul Wendell. We can't get anything out of them."
The President leaned back in his chair. "I really can't quite understand it. Extra-sensory perception—why should it drive men insane? Wendell's papers don't say enough. He claims it can be mathematically worked out—that he did work it out—but we don't have any proof of that."
The man named Frank scowled. "Wasn't that demonstration of his proof enough?"
A small, graying, intelligent-faced man who had been sitting silently, listening to the conversation, spoke at last. "Mr. President, I'm afraid I still don't completely understand the problem. If we could go over it, and get it straightened out—" He left the sentence hanging expectantly.
"Certainly. This Paul Wendell is a—well, he called himself a psionic mathematician. Actually, he had quite a respectable reputation in the mathematical field. He did very important work in cybernetic theory, but he dropped it several years ago—said that the human mind couldn't be worked at from a mechanistic angle. He studied various branches of psychology, and eventually dropped them all. He built several of those queer psionic machines—gold detectors, and something he called a hexer. He's done a lot of different things, evidently."