"So I _said_. But let me try to describe to you the situation as it happened." He paused, not for dramatic effect, but to take a moment to force himself to recall what Flinn could see must have been a very painful experience. "We are on the command ship," Wilmer continued, "at a safe distance from the atoll. Everything is in readiness, checked and double-checked by me, personally. The automatic firing process is in progress. The last countdown has commenced. Five, four, three, two, one, zero. _Nothing happens._ "I'll simplify the subsequent chain of events. After a reasonable interval, a volunteer pilot and myself and one other man fly by helicopter to the atoll. We climb the tower. I'm sweating and so are the others. We're standing beside a _live hydrogen bomb_. I disconnect the power sources and do various things to render the device safe. Then we check. Everything--_everything_--is in working order. There is absolutely no reason why the thing failed to detonate. Yet it did fail. "We fly back to the command ship. We hold an emergency conference. We're sitting there staring at each other. Then this--this man, Dobbs, starts to laugh. We think it is hysterics, due to the tremendous strain that everyone has been under. But apparently it isn't. He laughs and laughs and laughs. Finally he manages to say: 'You can't figure it out, can you? Well, I know. Old Dobbsie knows. _It didn't explode because I willed it not to!_'" Flinn's mind was almost too tired to accept what he had heard. "Are you trying to tell me--" "Figure it out for yourself," Wilmer said flatly. "It's your field. Telepathy, telehypnosis, and what's left?" "_Psychokinesis_," Flinn said in a stifled voice. "Right. Psychokinesis. Mind over matter." * * * * * Ordinarily, Patrick Flinn would have used the morning ride over Washington's broad avenues to good advantage--this was his first visit to the nation's capital--but his mind was too filled with the preceding day's revelations to permit anything save minimal sightseeing. "I hate to keep repeating myself," Wilmer was saying, "but I must be certain you understand what's at stake here." "I know," Flinn answered with some impatience. "I'm not to reveal, under any circumstances, the fact that I have telepathic powers." "Correct." The physicist sat in the seat beside Flinn, and Hayes was in front beside the driver. "Your job is to find out just how much this man can do. We'd like to know the _way_ he does it, too, but that's secondary." "It strikes me," Flinn mused, "that anyone who can influence a fusion bomb can do anything."