don't envy a guy who has to TP his own subconscious to
find out what he's thinking."

MacHeath chuckled softly as he turned the bolt that opened the door in
the "gun" end of the stripped-nuclei accelerator. The seals broke with
a soft hiss. Evidently, the barometric pressure outside the
two-mile-long underground tube had changed slightly during the time
they had been down there.

"It'll be a week before we can test it," MacHeath said in a tired
voice. "Even after we get it partly in balance. It'll take that long
to evacuate the tube and sweep it clean."

* * * * *

It was the first sentence he had spoken in the past hour or so, and it
was purely for the edification of the man who was standing on the
other side of the air lock, although neither Griffin nor MacHeath had
actually seen him as yet.

Griffin was not a telepath in the sense that the S.M.M.R. used the
word, but to a non-psionicist, he would have appeared to be one.
Membership in the "core" group of the _Society for Mystical and
Metaphysical Research_ required, above all, _understanding_. And, with
that understanding, a conversation between two members need consist
only of an occasional gesture and a key word now and then.

The word "understanding" needs emphasis. Without understanding of
another human mind, no human mind can be completely effective. Without
that understanding, no human being can be completely free.

And yet, the English word "understanding" is only an approximation to
the actual process that must take place. _Total_ understanding, in one
sense, would require that a person actually _become_ another
person--that he be able to feel, completely and absolutely, every
emotion, every thought, every bodily sensation, every twinge of
memory, every judgment, every decision, and every sense of personal
identity that is felt by the other person, no more and no less.

Such totality is, obviously, neither attainable nor desirable. The
result would be a merger of identities, a total unification. And, as a
consequence, a complete loss of one of the human beings involved.

Optimum "understanding" requires that a judgment be made, and that, in
turn, requires _two_ minds--not a fusion of identity. There must be
one to judge and another to be judged, and each mind plays both
roles.

_Love thy neighbor as thyself._ But the original Greek word would
translate better as "respect and understand" than as the modern
English "l