Gary Elvin leaned back in his chair and surveyed, with satisfaction, the thirty heads bent studiously over their desks. For perhaps five minutes the idyll lasted, until Donald Schermerhorn brought his test up to the desk and asked permission to go to the library. Elvin was both amazed and disappointed; but at once he reassured himself. The test had been simply too hard for Donald. Nonetheless, as soon as Donald was out of the room, Elvin checked his examination against the key. As he turned through the pages, his fingers began to tremble. Donald had answered everything--and answered it correctly. Before Elvin had finished checking Donald's test, ten more students had left theirs on the desk and headed for the school library. Within ten minutes Elvin was fighting a disorganizing bewilderment far worse than the rocket-hallucination. Every examination was completed, and none that he checked had as much as one mistake. Elvin wished he could believe that whole-sale cheating had taken place, but he knew that was impossible because of the precautions he always took. * * * * * All of the tenth graders were back from the library by that time. They had each brought two or more books. Elvin's body went rigid with anger when he saw what was currently passing among them for the skill of reading. They were methodically turning pages almost as quickly as they could move their hands from one side of the books to the other, all with the appearance of engrossed attention. Elvin banged a ruler on his desk. One or two faces looked up. "This has gone far enough!" he cried. "You asked for the privilege of free reading, but I do not intend you to make a farce of it." A hand went up. "Yes, Marilyn?" "But we are reading, Mr. Elvin. Honestly." "Oh, I see." His voice was thickly sarcastic. "And what's the title of your book?" "Toynbee's _Study of History_." "You've given up Grace Livingston Hill? Could you summarize Toynbee for us, Marilyn?" "In another ten minutes, Mr. Elvin. I still have sixty pages to read." Elvin turned savagely to another girl. "Mabel Travis! What are you reading?" The buxom girl looked up languidly. For a split second her big eyes seemed focused on a distant prospective. "Why--why this, Mr. Elvin." She held up her book so he could see the title. "_Hypnotism in Theory and Practice_," he snorted. And Mabel's I/Q was 71! "You've outgrown the comics, Mabel?" "In a sense, yes, Mr. Elvin." Elvin was saved from further disorientation by the interruption of an office messenger with a special bulletin announcing a second period assembly. By the time he had read it, his anger was under control. He let the reading go on and spent the rest of the period plodding through the examinations. There was not an error in any of the papers. From the prospective of the day's events, Elvin later realized that, however personally unnerving, his own particular crisis had been a minor one.