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, d