"Yes. Why? There wasn't anything...?" "No, no, nothing at all. Just as I said. I'll be seeing you." He rang off, hoping that nothing he had said was now making Sandra Richardson suspicious, and resumed his pacing up and down the floor. Now another question came into his mind. The same test would be run several times again before final conclusions could be made. Should he wait for them to see if this thing happened again before starting anything with Richardson and his colleagues? But even as he asked himself the question, he knew the answer. If this never again happened in any future test, the fact would remain that it had happened once and could not be forgotten or brushed aside. It must be cleared up. Something had happened to Richardson's mind. He decided to take Abe Franstein, his head psychologist, into his confidence. As he dialed Franstein's bungalow, he recalled with a sense of comfort that the brilliant little man was not only a world authority in his particular subject, but that he was said to be able to read, write, and converse in a staggering number of languages, some of them obscure Oriental dialects. When Franstein answered the call, Snow asked him to drop in for coffee after dinner. II "Well, I must say," said Franstein as they sipped their coffee, "yours is the first glum face I've seen around here since that test this afternoon. Here we are, within sight of our goal at last, and look at you! Weren't you satisfied?" "Before I go into that," Snow replied, "there are a few things I want to ask you." "About the test?" "In a way, but principally about Richardson. Have you ever had any reason to suspect that there is anything unusual about him?" "In what way?" "In your line." Franstein produced an enormous meerschaum pipe and proceeded to fill it from an untidy plastic pouch as he replied. "Yes, there is. One very unusual thing." "There is?" "He's got a very rare type of mind. It's probably perfectly balanced." The little man lit his pipe and continued: "The vast majority of us have some sort of imbalance, mentally. He hasn't. When I say imbalance, I mean the sort of thing that makes for genius, a phenomenal memory, an outstanding, effortless talent, amnesia, any form of insanity, or even something like a violent temper. Anything, so to speak, overemphasized." "Is it physical? I mean, does it have anything to do with the size or weight of the brain, or anything like that?" "You can take the brain of a genius and that of an ordinary person of average intelligence, and find them exactly the same in measurements and tissue condition. The popular conception of the genius as a man with a bulging forehead is so much nonsense. Plenty of lunatics and retarded individuals have bulging foreheads." "Then what does it have to do with?"