Dr. Thomas Banning had been a class mate of Jim Cochran when they were both in their first couple of years of college. Banning had gone on into medicine, specializing in brain studies, while Jim had turned to chemistry. The two had been out of touch for several years. Tom Banning was the first one Jim thought of, not only because of their old friendship, but because he had read recent papers describing some of Tom's new work on the frontier of electroencephalography. He called first on the phone, then arranged for a personal visit. Sam went with him. They had closed down all Prospector work while they were to be away. * * * * * Tom met them and was introduced to Sam as he ushered them into his own modest laboratory. "This isn't the plush sort of surroundings you've become used to," he said as he showed them around. "The Government isn't spending billions these days trying to find out how the human mind works." Jim could well understand Tom's bitterness. Doing research on the frontiers of the mind, he was forced to spend his own money for much of his laboratory equipment. "I can sympathize, but that's about all," said Jim. "I just work here myself." "Tell me about your problem. On the phone, that sounded interesting enough to make a man's day brighter. You said something about an unknown life form with electrical pulses that might be related to brain waves?" Jim nodded. "That's the way it looks to me." "But where does this life form exist? Surely it can be identified!" "If I told you, you'd throw me out or call the paddy wagon. Look at these, first." Jim and Sam spread out the long folds of chart they had accumulated through days of recording. "Does it look like anything to you?" asked Jim. Tom Banning frowned. "Well, it certainly _could_ be an EEG record of some kind. The apparatus--" "The apparatus was nothing but a single electrical probe, and the signal was transmitted under very unsatisfactory conditions." "Signal transmitted, you say? Just where did this come from, Jim? You didn't come all this way just to pull my leg." "No," said Jim wearily. "If anybody's leg is being pulled, it's mine. I wanted to see if you could recognize it as having any similarity to an EEG. Then I wanted to ask about your work you reported in your last paper. The one on 'EEG as a Brain Stimulus and Communication Medium'." "Yes? What did you want to know about that?" "You've had some success in taking the EEG waves of one person and applying them to the brain of another person so that the latter understood some of the thoughts of the first person while being stimulated by his brain waves." "Yes." "Would it be possible to do that with this record?"