"It scared me silly, but my first thought was; _Migod, I nearly flew out the window_--just as matter-of-fact about it as if I'd been sleepwalking and woke up and said, _Oh, I almost walked down those stairs_. And then I guess I woke up the rest of the way and really realized what was happening, and the next thing I knew, I was lying cross-ways on the bed, with all the breath knocked out of me." His body had tensed again with the growing excitement in his voice; sensing it, he shivered and moved closer into the warmth of her arms. "Fran, don't let me do anything _now_!" Slowly, under the reassurance of her touch, he felt the spasm dissolve, flow into words again. "When I woke up, I thought it had all been a dream--I mean, I wanted to believe I'd dreamed it, but I knew better. I wandered out here into the living room, and just kind of went through the motions of breakfast, without noticing what I was doing. After a while I--well, located myself sitting at the table, staring at my coffee and realizing it had gone cold. I wasn't thinking, Fran, I wasn't thinking about anything. I was just staring at that coffee and wishing it was good and hot again, and--and then it started _steaming_. "Fran, I didn't touch it, I just looked at it. I looked at it, and suddenly I wasn't just looking at a cup-of-coffee any more. I began to see it--really _see_ it. I began to see the relationships of every component in the cup and the coffee, the chemical and molecular--no, that's not what I mean, either--I could see, not really with my eyes, the entire series of relationships between all the overlapping fields of energy--no--" he broke off again, helplessly. "I can't make sense of it for you. I don't have the words, maybe there aren't any--I could _see_ it, you understand; I didn't try to explain it, even to myself. I can't, now. It's just--everything's _motion_, and I could reach out and--and speed it up, or slow it down, and I'd heated it up--" he shook his head a little and was silent, clinging to her. * * * * * Her voice was levelled when she spoke, a flat surface spread thin over panic; toneless. "I'm not a--a nuclear physicist, but it sounds as if you were trying to put the theory of atoms and force-fields into one word. Like--matter not being solid but just little bits of loose energy whirling around and building up into atoms and the atoms into molecules." "That--I guess so. As if I'd learned to--oh, to see into them. But how? _Why?_" "It takes in a lot of territory," she said, still the flat stretched toneless voice. "Just to wake up and find out you had it, whatever it was." He hardly heard. He drew himself upright, his hands clasped, tensing, searching for words. "Like--like ice and water and steam are all the same thing, only we see them differently. We just see different aspects of the same thing, and it's all the same, all this--_motion_. And I could control it! I could control _everything_!" "Max--"