The other man grinned. "Try me! We shook you up a little bit last year, but you didn't seem to get the idea." "Last year was different." Lessing scowled. "As for our 'fairy tale', we happen to have a staggering body of evidence that says that it's true." "If the papers you've already published are a preview, we think it's false as Satan." "And our controls are above suspicion." "So far, we haven't found any way to set up logical controls," said Melrose. "We've done a lot of work on it, too." "Oh, yes--I've heard about your work. Not bad, really. A little misdirected, is all." "According to your Theory, that is." "Wildly unorthodox approach to psionics--but at least you're energetic enough." "We haven't been energetic enough to find an orthodox approach that got us anywhere. We doubt if you have, either. But maybe we're all wrong." Melrose grinned unpleasantly. "We're not unreasonable, your Majesty. We just ask to be shown. If you dare, that is." Lessing slammed his fist down on the desk angrily. "Have you got the day to take a trip?" "I've got 'til New Year." Lessing shouted for his girl. "Get Dorffman up here. We're going to the Farm this afternoon." The girl nodded, then hesitated. "But what about your lunch?" "Bother lunch." He gave Melrose a sidelong glare. "We've got a guest here who's got a lot of words he's going to eat for us...." * * * * * Ten minutes later they rode the elevator down to the transit levels and boarded the little shuttle car in the terminal below the Hoffman Center. They sat in silence as the car dipped down into the rapid-transit channels beneath the great city, swinging northward in the express circuit through Philadelphia and Camden sectors, surfacing briefly in Trenton sector, then dropping underground once again for the long pull beneath Newark, Manhattan and Westchester sectors. In less than twenty minutes the car surfaced on a Parkway channel and buzzed north and east through the verdant Connecticut countryside. "What about Tommy?" Lessing asked Dorffman as the car sped along through the afternoon sun. "I just finished the prelims. He's not cooperating." Lessing ground his teeth. "I should be running him now instead of beating the bushes with this--" He broke off to glare at young Melrose. Melrose grinned. "I've heard you have quite a place up here." "It's--unconventional, at any rate," Lessing snapped. "Well, that depends on your standards. Sounds like a country day school, from what I've heard. According to your papers, you've even used conventional statistical analysis on your data from up here." "Until we had to throw it out. We discovered that what we were trying to measure didn't make sense in a statistical analysis." "Of course, you're sure you were measuring _something_." "Oh, yes. We certainly were." "Yet you said that you didn't know what." "That's right," said Lessing. "We don't."