“I am right,” Cloud said, quietly. “Unless all the mathematics I know is basically, fundamentally fallacious, they’ve _got_ to be deliberate; they simply _can’t_ be accidental. On the other hand, except for a few we know about which don’t change the general picture in the least, I can’t see any more than you can how they can possibly be deliberate, either.” “Are you trying to set up a paradox?” “No. It’s already set up. I’m trying to knock it down.” Cloud’s thought died away; his mind became a mathematical wilderness of such complexity that the woman, able mathematician that she was and scan as she would, was lost in seconds. He finally shrugged himself out of it. “Another blind alley,” he reported, sourly. “With sufficient knowledge, any possible so-called paradox can be resolved,” Joan mused, her mind harking back to the, to her, starkly unbelievable hypothesis Cloud had stated so baldly. “But I simply _can’t_ believe it, Storm!” “I can’t, either, hardly. However, it’s easier for me to believe that than that all our basics are false. So that makes it another part of our job to find out what, or who, or why.” “Ouch! With a job of that magnitude on your mind, I’ll make myself scarce. When you come up for air sometime give me a call on the squawk-box and we’ll study concentration. ’Bye.” She turned, started for the door. “Wait a minute, Joan—why not start the ground-work now?” “That’s a thought—why not? But get away from that big table.” She placed two chairs and they sat down knee to knee; almost eye to eye. “Now, Storm, come in. _Really_ come in, this time; the first time you didn’t really even half try.” “I did so!” he protested. “I tried then and I’m trying now. Just _how_ do I go about it?” “I can’t tell you that, Storm; _nobody_ can tell you that.” She was thinking now, not talking. “There are no words, no symbology, even in the provinces of thought. And I can’t do it for you: you _must_ do it yourself. But if you can’t—and you really can’t be expected to, so soon—I’ll come into your mind and try to _show_ you what I mean.” She did so. There was a moment of fitting; of snuggling . . . there was a warmly intimate contact, much warmer and much more intimate than anything telepathic that either had ever experienced before; but it was not what they were after. Joan tried a different approach. “Well, if that won’t work, let’s try this. Just imagine, Storm, that every cell of my brain—no, let’s keep it on the immaterial level; every individual ultimate element of my mind—is a lock, but you can see exactly what the key must be like. You must make every corresponding unit of your mind into the appropriate key. . . . No? We’ll try again. Imagine that each element of my mind is half of a jigsaw puzzle—make yours fill out each picture. . . .” “I can’t. Don’t you know, Joan, how many thousands of millions of. . . .”