and other institutions of like qualifications, and you'll scrap that insane Index—"

Baker tapped the desk placatingly. "The grant to Clearwater, yes. As for the Index, if it should fail in its applicability to this clear-cut Ellerbee case I would be the first to want to know why. But I assure you there is no flaw in the Index. It has been tried too many thousands of times."

Ellerbee's place was in Virginia, in a dairying area in the hills. The last ten miles of the road were not the kind to attract visitors. The road was steep and narrow in places that turned sharply around the hillsides. No guardrails blocked the descent into the steep gullies. It was definitely a region for people who liked solitude. The farms that lay in the valleys of the hills were neat and well-cared for, however. The people Fenwick passed on the road didn't look like the recluse type.

Ellerbee's farm was one of the best looking in the vicinity. It had the look of being cared for by a man who could do everything. The huge barn and the corrals were as neat as a garden, and the large white frame farmhouse stood out like a monument against the green pasture.

A woman and two children were in the garden beside the house as Fenwick drove up. "May I help you? I'm Mrs. Ellerbee," the woman said.

Fenwick explained who he was and his purpose in coming. "Jim's been expecting you," the woman said. "His laboratory is the long white building back of the house. He's out there now."

Jim Ellerbee met him at the door. "You didn't bring Dr. Baker," he said almost accusingly.

"Later," said Fenwick. "I came, as I promised. Dr. Baker wants my report on your facilities and production methods. Then he will come up to make his own inspection."

There was doubt in Ellerbee's eyes, as if he was used to such stories. "Maybe it would be best if I marketed the crystals in any form I can," he said.

He led Fenwick through a number of rooms of expensive, precision electronic equipment. Then they passed through a set of double doors, which Fenwick observed acted as a thermal lock between the crystal growing room and the rest of the building. It reminded him of George Durrant's laboratory at Clearwater.

"This is where the crystals are grown," said Ellerbee. "I suppose you're familiar with such processes. Here we must use a very precisely controlled sequence of co-crystallization to get layers of desired thickness—"

Fenwick wasn't listening. He had suddenly observed the second man in the room, a rather small, swarthy man, who moved with quiet precision among a row of tanks on the far side of the room. There was a startling quality about the man that Fenwick was unable to define, a strangeness.

Ellerbee caught the direction of his glance. "Oh," he said. "You must meet my neighbor, Sam Atkins. Sam is in this as deep or even deeper than I am. I think perhaps he's more responsible for the communicator crystals."

The man turned as his name was mentioned, and came toward them. "You were the one who developed the crystals," he said in a soft, persuasive voice, to Jim Ellerbee.

"This is my setup," Ellerbee explained with a wave of his hand to indicate the laboratory surroundings. "But Sam has been working with me for about a year on this thing. When Sam moved in, we found we were both radio hams and electronic bugs. I'd been fooling around with crystal growing, trying to design some new type transistors. Then Sam suggested some experiments in co-crystallization—using different chemicals that will crystallize in successive layers in one crystal.

"We stumbled on one combination that made a terrific amplifier. Then we found it would actually radiate to a distant point all by itself. Finally, we discovered that its radiation was completely nonelectromagnetic. There is no way we have yet found of detecting the radiation from the crystal—except by means of another piece of the same crystal.

"I know it's against all the rules in the books. It just doesn't make sense. But there it is. It works."

Sam Atkins had turned away for a moment to attend to one of the tanks, but Fenwick found himself intensely aware of the man's presence. There was nothing he could put his finger on. He just knew, with such intense certainty, that Sam Atkins was there.

"What does Mr. Atkins do?" Fenwick asked. "Does he have a dairy farm, too?"

Ellerbee nodded. "His place is right next to mine. Since we started this project Sam has practically lived here, however. He's a bachelor, and so he takes most of his meals with us."

"Seems strange—" Fenwick mused, "two men like you, way out here in the country, doing work on a level with that of the best crystal labs in the country. I should think you'd both rather be in academic or industrial work."

Ellerbee smiled and looked up through the windows to the meadows beyond. "We're free out here," he said.

Fenwick thought of Baker. "You are that," he said.

"You said you wanted to investigate the whole production process. We'll start here, if you like, and I'll show you every step in our process. This tank contains an ordinary alum solution. We start building on a seed crystal of alum and continue until we reach a precise thickness. Here is a solution of chrome alum. You'll note the insulated tanks. Room temperature is maintained within half a degree. The solutions are held to within one-tenth of a degree. Crystal dimensions must be held to tolerances of little more than the thickness of a molecule—"

The gimmick to fool him and cheat him. Where was it? Fenwick asked himself. Baker was sure it was here. If so, where could it be? There was no trickery in the crystal laboratory—unless it was the trickery of precision refinement of methods. Only men of great mechanical skill could accomplish what Ellerbee and his friend were doing. Genius behind the milking machine! Fenwick could almost sympathize with Baker in his hiding behind the ridiculous Index. Without some such protection a man could encounter shocks.

The crackpot fringe.

Where else would credence have been given to the phenomenon of a crystal that seemed to radiate in a nonelectromagnetic way?

But, of course, it couldn't actually be doing that. All the books, all the authorities, and the known scientific principles said it couldn't happen. Therefore, it wouldn't have happened—outside the crackpot fringe.

If Ellerbee and Atkins weren't trying to foist a deliberate deception, where were they mistaken? It was possible for such men as these to make an honest mistake. That would more than likely turn out to be the case here. But how could there be a mistake in the production of a phenomenon such as Fenwick had witnessed? How could that be produced through some error when it couldn't even be done by known electronic methods—not just as Fenwick had seen it.

Throughout the morning Ellerbee led him down the rows of tanks, explaining at each step what was happening. Sometimes Sam Atkins offered a word of explanation also, but always he stayed in the background. The two farmers showed Fenwick how they measured crystal size down to the thickness of a molecule while the crystals were growing.

A sudden suspicion crossed Fenwick's mind. "If those dimensions are so critical, how did you determine them in the first place?"

"Initially, it was a lucky accident," said Sam Atkins.

"Very lucky," said Fenwick, "if you were able to accidentally obtain a crystal of fifteen layers or so and have each layer even approximately correct."

Sam smiled blandly. "Our first crystals were not so complex, you understand. Only three layers. We thought we were building transistors, then. Later, our mathematics showed us the advantage of additional layers and gave us the dimensions."

The mathematics that Baker said a kid could poke holes in. Fenwick didn't know. He hadn't checked the math.

Where was the gimmick?

In the afternoon they took him out for field tests again. A