in now of what
they had observed.

Dr. Ormond looked over at Cavender.

"And you, Wally?" he asked. "You were sitting rather far back, to be
sure--"

Cavender smiled and shrugged.

"Sorry, Dr. Al. I just wasn't looking in that direction at the moment.
The first suggestion I had that anything unusual was going on was when
Perrie let out that wild squawk."

There was general laughter. Perrie grinned and flushed.

"Well, I'd have liked to hear _your_ squawk," she told Cavender, "if
you'd seen a miracle happen right before your nose!"

"Not a miracle, Perrie," Ormond said gently. "We must remember that.
We are working here with natural forces which produce natural
phenomena. Insufficiently understood phenomena, perhaps, but never
miraculous ones. Now, how closely did this materialization appear to
conform to the subjective group image we had decided on for our
exercise?"

"Well, I could only see it, of course, Dr. Al. But as far as I saw it,
it was exactly what we'd ... no, wait!" Perrie frowned, wrinkling her
nose. "There was something added!" She giggled. "At least, I don't
remember anyone saying we should imagine the sandwich wrapped in a
paper napkin!"

Across the room, a woman's voice said breathlessly, "Oh! A _green_
paper napkin, Perrie?"

Perrie looked around, surprised. "Yes, it was, Mavis."

Mavis Greenfield hesitated, said with a nervous little laugh, "I
suppose I did that. I added a green napkin after we started the
exercise." Her voice quavered for an instant. "I thought the image
looked neater that way." She looked appealingly at the students around
her. "This is really incredible, isn't it."

They gave her vague smiles. They were plainly still floating on a
cloud of collective achievement--if they hadn't created that sandwich,
there could have been nothing to see!

It seemed to Cavender that Dr. Ormond's face showed a flicker of
strain when he heard Mavis' explanation. But he couldn't be sure
because the expression--if it had been there--was smoothed away at
once. Ormond cleared his throat, said firmly and somewhat chidingly.
"No, not incredible, Mavis! Although--"

He turned on his smile. "My friends, I must admit that you _have_
surprised me! Very pleasantly, of course. But what happened here is
something I considered to be only a very remote possibility tonight.
You are truly more advanced than I'd realized.

"For note this. If even one of you had been lagging behind the others,
if th