Benton stopped, flexed thick biceps, clenched his fists and opened them several times, then propelled his stubby body toward a decanter full of Bourbon. "It's possible," he conceded, downing a quick drink, "but I don't believe it. I'm not subject to hallucinations, you know, but I'll go along with the possibility. Let's see.... It was four o'clock when it happened, which means I'd been working for seven hours. I worked sixteen hours yesterday and then had three hours sleep. It's eight o'clock now and I don't feel sleepy. Knowing me, do you think I was exhausted to the point of mental instability? If it'll help you come to a decision, I'll do a few cube roots for you." Dr. Albie rubbed his chin reflectively. "I won't press that point," he said. "But suppose you go over the entire episode and maybe we can arrive at a proper conclusion." "Hah! 'Proper' if it supports your premise, eh? O.K.--I was feeding current events into Urei's memory cells, using the third vision screen. The other two were being used by two of the men; Joe Ebert was showing Urei some exposures from Mt. Palomar and somebody was feeding him a thesis on electronics. I was giving him the three-star edition of the _Bulletin_, incidentally. Newspapers being filled with opinion, rather than fact, I had set the control panel on _Segregate_, so Urei wouldn't use the stuff as true data." "Exactly what were you showing when you got the impulse?" Benton gave another quick smile. "'Compulsion' is a better word," he said. "Besides, I told you I don't know the answer to that question; that's what I've been studying ever since. Look, here's the first page of the _Bulletin_. On the reverse is the second.... What made Urei take control of my body.... How can I tell? Urei scans so fast that I'm not sure whether he digested the second page in the instant I turned the paper, or whether it was something on the first that influenced him." Dr. Albie almost frowned again. "You're not approaching this with an open mind," he accused. "We're not supposed to accept that he took over your body; that's what we're trying to determine. Besides, Urei wasn't built to digest and correlate data as it's being fed. He merely records it, to be used later when a problem is given him to solve." * * * * * If he had heard that, Urei might have rendered a silent, but nonetheless cosmic, chuckle. But he didn't, being busy with thirty or forty other things. As a matter of fact, Dr. Albie wasn't too accurate in making that statement. If he had said that Urei's predecessor operated that way, and as far as was known, Urei did also, Albie would have been nearer correct. He didn't _know_, nor did any other man, exactly how Urei functioned.