aid Fenwick. "I've heard it called that before."

"One of the things, above all else, which the Index was designed to
accomplish," said Baker, "was the screening out of all elements that
might be ever so remotely associated with the crackpot fringe. And
believe me, you'll never know how strong it is in this country! Every
two-bit tinkerer wants a handout to develop his world-shaking gadget
that will suppress the fizz after the cap is removed from a pop bottle,
or adapt any apartment-size bathtub for raising tropical fish."

"You ever heard of the flotation process?" said Fenwick abruptly.

Baker frowned at the sudden shift of thought. "Of course--"

"What would the world be like without the flotation process?"

"The metals industry would be vastly different, of course. Copper would
be much scarcer and higher priced. Gold--"

"A ton of ore and maybe a pound of recovered metal, right?" said
Fenwick. "Move a mountain of waste to get anything of value. Crush
millions of tons of rock and float out the pinpoint particles of metal
on bubbles of froth."

"That's a rough description of what happens."

"You've heard of high-grading."

"Of course. A somewhat colloquial term used in mining."

"The high-grader takes a pick and digs for anything big enough to see
and pick up with his hands. He doesn't worry about the small stuff that
takes sweat and machinery to recover."

"I suppose so. I fail to see the significance--"

"You're high-grading, Bill," said Fenwick. He leaned across the desk and
spoke with bitter intensity. "You're high-grading and you should be
using a flotation process."

Fenwick slowly drew back in his chair. Baker felt overwhelmed by the
sudden intensity he had never before seen displayed in John Fenwick. Any
reaction on his part seemed suddenly inadequate. "I fail to see any
connection--," he said finally.

Fenwick looked at him steadily. "Human creativeness can be mined only by
flotation methods. It's in low-grade ore. Process a million stupid
notions and find a pin point of genius. Turn over enormous wastes of
human thought and recover a golden principle. But turn your back on
these mountains of low-grade material and you shut out the wealth of
creative thought that is buried in them. More than that, by high-grading
only where rich veins have appeared in the past, you're mining lodes
that have played out."

"An ingenious analogy," said Baker, recovering with a smile now. "But
it's hardly an acc