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 rise behind
the barn was about a mile from a similar rise on Sam Atkins' place. They
communicated across that distance in all the ways, including various
kinds of co