“Just Anglesey, who’s not a formally trained esman at all. But he took it up after he was crippled, and showed such a natural aptitude that he was shipped out here when he volunteered. It’s so hard to get anyone for Jupiter V that we aren’t fussy about degrees. At that, Ed seems to be operating Joe as well as a Ps.D. could.”

“Ah, yes. Your pseudojovian. I’ll have to examine that angle pretty carefully, too,” said Cornelius. In spite of himself, he was getting interested. “Maybe the trouble comes from something in Joe’s biochemistry. Who knows? I’ll let you into a carefully guarded little secret, Dr. Viken: psionics is not an exact science.”

“Neither is physics,” grinned the other man. After a moment, he added more soberly: “Not my brand of physics, anyway. I hope to make it exact. That’s why I’m here, you know. It’s the reason we’re all here.”

* * *

Edward Anglesey was a bit of a shock the first time. He was a head, a pair of arms, and a disconcertingly intense blue stare. The rest of him was mere detail, enclosed in a wheeled machine.

“Biophysicist originally,” Viken had told Cornelius. “Studying atmospheric spores at Earth Station when he was still a young man—accident, crushed him up, nothing below his chest will ever work again. Snappish type, you have to go slow with him.”

Seated on a wisp of stool in the esprojector control room, Cornelius realized that Viken had been soft-pedaling the truth.

Anglesey ate as he talked, gracelessly, letting the chair’s tentacles wipe up after him. “Got to,” he explained. “This stupid place is officially on Earth time, GMT. Jupiter isn’t. I’ve got to be here whenever Joe wakes, ready to take him over.”

“Couldn’t you have someone spell you?” asked Cornelius.

“Bah!” Anglesey stabbed a piece of prot and waggled it at the other man. Since it was native to him, he could spit out English, the common language of the station, with unmeasured ferocity. ‘‘Look here. You ever done therapeutic esping? Not just listening in, or even communication, but actual pedagogic control?”

“No, not I. It requires a certain natural talent, like yours.” Cornelius smiled. His ingratiating little phrase was swallowed without being noticed by the scored face opposite him. “I take it you mean cases like, oh, re-educating the nervous system of a palsied child?”

“Yes, yes. Good enough example. Has anyone ever tried to suppress the child’s personality, take him over in the most literal sense?”

“Good God, no!”

“Even as a scientific experiment?” Anglesey grinned. “Has any esprojector operative ever poured on the juice and swamped the child’s brain with his own thoughts? Come on, Cornelius, I won’t snitch on you.”

“Well…it’s out of my line, you understand.” The psionicist looked carefully away, found a bland meter face and screwed his eyes to that. “I have, uh, heard something about…Well, yes, there were attempts made in some pathological cases to, uh, bull through…break down the patient’s delusions by sheer force—”