"Yes, you. Eckisster's needling is effective in a limited way, but yours is not only effective, but efficient. You ask the kind of questions that make people think instead of the kind that make people mad. Where Eckisster jabs in all directions and people jump, you use your needle with the deftness and precision of a physician using a hypodermic. Eckisster doesn't know what he wants and he doesn't know how to get it. And he wants somebody else to do it for him, whatever it is. On the other hand, you know what you want and how to get it without making everybody hate you, and you'll do the job yourself, if necessary. "You gave your staff men, Commander Allerdyce, even me, credit for finding out what the mindjammer effect was. But the credit belongs to you. If it weren't for your incessant needling, your ability to arouse interest in seemingly dull facts, your sometimes radical theories, and your propensity for asking searching questions, I doubt if we'd have our answer yet. "The core of this problem wasn't just the fact that several phenomena combined to give the mindjammer; that was a purely physical effect. The big problem was to get human beings to take their individual fields of thought, work with them in relation to other fields of thought, and come up with useful information that could be fitted together to explain the whole. "Eckisster's type of needling might make a man _work_ harder, it might even make him _think_ harder--but it won't make him think in a different way or look at data from a new angle. Even when your theories are wrong, you use them in such a way that they uncover the data which proves them wrong. And then you're perfectly willing to drop them and work out a new hypothesis and get people to try to destroy or confirm it." He stood up and smoothed a palm over his gray hair. "And now, if you'll excuse me," he said, "I have some more things to work on. I have a hunch that these subelectronic polar harmonics can do a lot more to the human brain than just knock it silly. When you feel better, I'll tell you all about it." He turned and walked out the door. Roysland lay back on his bed and looked at the ceiling. Me, a needler? he thought, ME? THE END