Waldo was surprised to find himself holding the cup alone. It was a pleasant triumph; at the time he left Earth, seventeen years before, it had been his invariable habit never to attempt to grasp anything with only one hand. In Freehold, of course, he frequently handled small objects one-handed, without the use of waldoes. The years of practice must have improved his control. Excellent! So, feeling rather cocky, he drank the cupful with one hand, using extreme care not to slop it onhimself. It was good coffee, too, he was bound to admit - quite as good as the sort he him­self made from the most expensive syrup extract - better, perhaps

When Schneider offered him coffeecake, brown with sugar and cinnamon and freshly rewarmed, he swaggeringly accepted it with his left hand, without asking to be relieved of the cup. He continued to eat and drink, between bites and sips resting and steadying his forearms on the edges of the tank

The conclusion of the Kaffeeklatsch seemed a good time to broach the matter of the deKalbs. Schneider admitted know­ing McLeod and recalled, somewhat vaguely it seemed, the incident in which he had restored to service McLeod's broom­stick. ‘Hugh Donald is a good boy,' he said. ‘Machines I do not like, but it pleasures me to fix things for boys.

‘Grandfather,' asked Waldo, ‘will you tell me how you fixed Hugh Donald McLeod's ship?

‘Have you such a ship you wish me to fix?

‘I have many such ships which I have agreed to fix, but I must tell you that I have been unable to do so. I have come to you to find out the right way.

Schneider considered this. ‘That is difficult. I could show you, but it is not so much what you do as how you think about it. That makes only with practice.

Waldo must have looked puzzled, for the old man looked at him and added, ‘It is said that there are two ways of looking at everything. That is true and less than true, for there are many ways. Some of them are good ways and some are bad. One of the ancients said that everything either is, or is not. That is less than true, for a thing can both be and not he. With practice one can see it both ways. Sometimes a thing which is for this world is a thing which is not for the Other World. Which is important, since we live in the Other World.

‘We live in the Other World?

‘How else could we live? The mind - not the brain, but the mind - is in the Other World, and reaches this world through the body. That is one true way of looking at it, though there are others.

‘Is there more than one way of looking at deKalb receptors?

‘Certainly.

‘If I had a set which is not working right brought in here, would you show me how to look at it?

‘It is not needful,' said Schneider, ‘and I do not like for machines to be in my house. I will draw you a picture.

Waldo felt impelled to insist, but he squelched his feeling. ‘You have come here in humility,' he told himself, ‘asking for instruction. Do not tell the teacher how to teach.

Schneider produced a pencil and a piece of paper, on which he made a careful and very neat sketch of the antennae sheaf and main axis of a skycar. The sketch was reasonably accurate as well, although it lacked several essential minor details

‘These fingers,' Schneider said, ‘reach deep into the Other World to draw their strength. In turn it passes down this pillar' - he indicated the axis - to where it is used to move the car.

A fair allegorical explanation, thought Waldo. By consider­ing the ‘Other World' simply a term for the hypothetical ether, it could be considered correct if not complete. But it told him nothing. ‘Hugh Donald,' Schneider went on, ‘was tired and fretting. He found one of the bad truths.

‘Do you mean,' Waldo said slowly, ‘that McLeod's ship failed because he was worried about it?

‘How else?

Waldo was not prepared to answer that one. It had become evident that the old man had some quaint superstitions; never­theless he might still be able to show Waldo what to do, even though Schneider did not know why. ‘And what did you do to change it?

‘I made no change; I looked for the other truth.

‘But how? We found some chalk marks-

‘Those? They were but to aid me in concentrating my at­tention in the proper direction. I drew them down so,' - he illustrated with pencil on the sketch - ‘and thought how the fingers reached out for power. And so they did.

‘That is all? Nothing more?

‘That is enough.

Either, Waldo considered, the old man did not know how he had accomplished the repair, or he had had nothing to do with it - sheer and amazing coincidence. He had been resting the empty cup on the rim of his tank, the weight supported by the metal while his fingers merely steadied it. His preoccupation caused him to pay too little heed to it; it slipped from his tired fingers, clattered and crashed to the floor

He was much chagrined. ‘Oh, I'm sorry, Grandfather. I'll send you another.

‘No matter. I will mend.' Schneider carefully gathered up the pieces and placed them on the desk. ‘You have tired,' he added. ‘That is not good. It makes you lose what you have gained. Go back now to your house, and when you have rested, you can practise reaching for the strength by yourself.

It seemed a good idea to Waldo; he was growing very tired, and it was evident that he was to learn nothing specific from the pleasant old fraud. He promised, emphatically and quite in­sincerely, to practise ‘reaching for strength', and asked Schnei­der to do him the favour of summoning his bearers

The trip back was uneventful. Waldo did not even have the spirit to bicker with the pilot

Stalemate. Machines that did not work but should, and machines that did work but in an impossible manner. And no one to turn to but one foggy-headed old man. Waldo worked lackadaisically for several days, repeating, for the most part, investigations he had already made rather than admit to himself that he was stuck, that he did not know what to do, that he was, in fact, whipped and might as well call Gleason and admit it

The two ‘bewitched' sets of deKalbs continued to work whenever activated, with the same strange and incredible flex­ing of each antenna. Other deKalbs which had failed in opera­tion and had been sent to him for investigation still refused to function. Still others, which had not yet failed, performed beautifully without the preposterous fidgeting

For the umpteenth time he took out the little sketch Schneider had made and examined it. There was, he thought, just one more possibility: to return again to Earth and insist that Schneider actually do in his presence, whatever it was he had done which caused the deKalbs to work. He knew now that he should have insisted on it in the first place, but he had been so utterly played out by having to fight that devilish thick field that he had not had the will to persist

Perhaps he could have Stevens do it and have the process stereophotoed for a later examination. No, the old man had a superstitious prejudice against artificial images

He floated gently over to the vicinity of one of the inopera­tive deKalbs. What Schneider had claimed to have done was preposterously simple. He had drawn chalk marks down each antenna so, for the purpose of fixing his attention. Then he had gazed down them and thought about them ‘reaching out for power', reaching into the Other World, stretching- Baldur began to bark frantically

‘Shut up, you fool!' Waldo snapped, without taking his eyes off the antennae

Each separate pencil of metal was wiggling, stretching. There was the low, smooth hum of perfect operation

Waldo was still thinking about it when the televisor deman­ded his attention. He had never been in any danger of crack­ing up mentally as Rambeau had done; nevertheless, he had thought about the matter in a fashion which made his head ache. He was still considerably bemused when he cut in his end of the sound-vision circuit. ‘Yes?