Oridin moved softly behind him. A multiple-calculator made its appearance in the room. Paper flew from under Caddo's pencil. Sweat poured from his space-browned face. The two clocks on the wall recorded the turning of the earth and the planetoid Azair. Caddo forgot about Oridin. He forgot about everything except the figures that revolved in his brain. Oridin moved out into the warm artificial atmosphere of his planetoid. He was a recluse again. He was alone. A momentary contact with the greed, and avarice of the human race had been wiped away. Far out in space was a glow of rockets. A ship was going to land. It had seemed only a short time since Caddo had landed. But that was three terrestrial days ago. This was the patrol. "I've a prisoner for you," Oridin informed the captain. "It's Caddo." "Caddo! He's the No. 1 universal enemy. Man, you'll grow rich with the rewards offered on nine planets for his capture." "You can have the reward," Oridin said. "Take him away. He's a nuisance." They found Caddo in the lounge of Oridin's house chewing on a book of logarithms. His mind was gone. He could only babble figures. His fingers twitched with cramps from writing with a pencil and punching the keys of the calculating machine. Every spark of vitality had been taken from his body. The batteries of his force armor had burned out. "What's the matter with him?" the captain asked. "He wanted too much," Oridin replied. "I gave him a simple little formula for success, but the formula ceases to be simple as the definition for success grows more demanding. Had he sought perfection, Caddo would have seen that even this was unrecognizable, although the certainty was only halfway to infinity--" "Sorry, Mr. Oridin, but I'm not a mathematician," the captain said. "There's nothing difficult in the formula. It proves that certainty is unrecognizable. You'll have to admit that a goal, to be reached has to follow a path and that path is determined by two points. The beginning is one and the second one makes the ultimate objective certain. Therefore the second point is certainty. But certainty is unrecognizable--" Oridin brought forth his formula and allowed the captain to read it. The patrol officer blinked his eyes and scratched his head. Oridin wrote his formula out: J = (a + 1) times infinity/2