arched in a question.

"Exploration and ..." he paused; the nurse tucked a dark gray blanket all around him. He raised his thin white hand and crossed two fingers ... "and we hope, a negative biopsy."

There was no pain. Whatever the anesthetist had worked out was doing nicely. The overhead light, however, was giving him a headache and the operating room was damned cold. Jonas and Holsclaw weren't talking much, and what they did say wasn't loud enough for Bart to get. He studied their faces. "I'll know by their faces," he assured himself, "and if it's widespread malignancy I'll proceed with plan B."

The sweat was heavy on Jonas' forehead. The sterile mask hid his nose and mouth, but his eyes, behind the lenses of his glasses, looked moist and tired. The surgeon's gloved fingers manipulated, probed, cut. Finally, he turned to a waiting nurse.

"Get this analyzed right away." That was it, the tissue ... was it cancerous or not? The atmosphere grew heavy. Bart watched the second hand on the large wall-clock swing slowly around its perimeter, and then around again and again. The nurse reentered and spoke softly to the doctor. The two doctors whispered, explaining to each other with hand motions what they were going to do.

This is it. Bart was certain. Well, he'd fool the hell out of the know-it-all doctors. He closed his eyes and thought. The years he had spent sharpening his perception, his ability to transfer his thoughts, were just the groundwork for this greatest experiment of all. He had transferred thought waves in all forms to all corners of this world with the highest percentage of accuracy. Now Plan B, the alternate plan, was to transfer himself! He was willing himself out of his own body. He could feel the perspiration trickle down his arms with the effort. It had to work. He had to cheat them out of their mutilation. No, he couldn't fail. He strained against the confines of his body, burdening his brain with thought, and suddenly he was free. Bart wanted to shriek with laughter. He'd outwitted them. There stood gray-faced Jonas working over that shell, not even realizing that it was an empty body. It was like a television play or something; everyone clustered around a poor stiff on the operating table, repeating the litany of the saw-bones. "Scalpel ... sponge ... clamps ..."

Bart mentally chuckled and fluttered himself upwards; above the square-shaped hospital with its rows of tiny windows. Beyond the polluted air of the city. Up and up, until there was nothing to look back on. Nothing.

Now Bart perceived something ahead. It appeared to be a body of land. It looked marvelously appealing, dark greens, bright yellows, and all the shades in between. He hurried forward, eager to explore what lay ahead. But as he drew closer, becoming more excited over its possibilities, he struck a cold hard surface which repelled him. It was like glass and through it Bart could see a poorly defined figure some distance away. Bart was intrigued. This was a mental barrier thrown up by the fellow on the other side. Well, he'd give the guy some competition. Bart concentrated on cracking the wall, building a visual picture of the break-through in his mind.

"It's useless. You can't enter here."

"Why do you oppose me?" Bart tested the unseen wall, but found no weakness in its structure.

"We don't care for your sort."

"Is that so. And how have you classified me?"

"As a coward. A suicide. A man of meager resources."

"I'm nothing of the kind. In the first place, I did not commit suicide." Bart wished he could kick at the invisible wall. "I willed myself away from an imperfect shell. I severed the mind from the body."

"Why?"

"Because I had cancer of the larynx, and I'd never have been able to talk again. I'd be less than a man."

"You are less than a man now." There was a long period of no exchange. Bart decided he had not made himself clear. "I didn't want to live without being able to communicate with other men and