"Oh, you mean the guy inside the helmet should be able to turn it off while the operator thinks it is still on. Right?"

"Right. Now, I was thinking that very few people can wiggle their ears. I can wiggle my ears. It is a talent I have. So if the operator put a helmet on me and I wiggled my ears—let's say three times—the helmet would be off when the operator thought it was still on."

"I can't wiggle my ears," said Flip.

"Precisely," I said. "So the helmet would work on you but, as I can wiggle my ears, it would not work on me."

"Can't be done," he said. "Not with the state of the art. There are no ear-wiggling switches."

"Not even a tip of an ear?" I pleaded.

He saw I was pretty desperate. He thought. Then he looked at the little manual I had been reading. "Huh," he snorted disparagingly, "a scaled-down operator's manual. Worthless." He reached down to the bottom of the carton and he brought out a huge, thick manual, enough to break a man's arm: Design, Theory, Maintenance and Repair Manual for Technicians.

In a moment he was absorbed in huge, spread-out schematics. "Aha!" said Flip. "A multimanifold, bypass-input, shunt circuit!" He put a finger on it impressively. "Right there!"

I sat hoping.

He looked into the helmet. He unfastened a small cover and looked in. "These are Yippee-Zip Manufacturing Company components. You're lucky. They're standard in computers. We got their stuff by the ton."

"You can do something?" I said breathlessly.

"If I put a mutual-proximity breaker switch in this circuit right here, and if it is activated, the front light will go on but the helmet will be null and void."

Although the chart was huge, the part he was pointing at—and the whole setup in there actually—was no bigger than my thumbnail. I said, "But I can't get the tip of my ear in there! It would be too risky!"

"No, no, no. A mutual-proximity breaker switch is in two parts. They use them on spaceships. When one spaceship gets too close to another spaceship, it trips a switch in the other's computers and shunts in an avoidance direction."

"I don't understand."

"Look, I put Part A of the switch in the helmet circuit. The subject it isn't supposed to work on wears Part B in his hair. When they come together, Part B interacts with Part A and the helmet, she don't work but she looks like she is working." He saw I was befuddled. "I'll get some," he said and rushed out.

In about ten minutes he came back up through the tunnel. He had sixteen cartons. They were small but heavy.

"You can't wear anything too big in your hair," I protested.

He laughed. He opened one carton. There were two little lead boxes in it, each marked differently. "This one," said Flip, "goes in the helmet. This one the guy puts in his hair."

"They'd be noticed!" I protested.

"No, no, no," he said. "You don't get it." He opened up the box for the helmet side. In it, carefully positioned by tiny prongs, was the tiniest speck I have seen in some time. He opened up the other one. Same thing. "Mini-micro circuitry components," he said.

"But why the heavy lead boxes?" I said. "Are they radioactive?"

"Oh, no, no, no," said Flip. "If you keep them in the parts store unshielded, they activate other components around them. Computers won't work that have these in them. The computer field hits one of these in the parts store and all it will register is collision! So they put sets of them in shielded boxes."

He got right to work. He put the helmet part of the switch into the helmet. It was very delicate work, done with a huge magnifier and a little screw-adjustable set of prongs and snips. Indeed, it never would be detected! It was like working with molecules.

It took him a long time. Finally he had it. "Now, I will show you," he said.

He put the helmet on a chair. He put one of his innumerable meters under it. He turned it on. The meter read like mad. That helmet was really putting out! I shuddered.

Then he opened the little lead box of Part B and with prongs put the tiny bit on the chair. The meter went dead. The front light of the helmet glowed brightly. He hit the helmet switch several times. On and off went the light but the meter did nothing. Then he put the tiny bit back in its lead box, turned the helmet on and the meter went mad!

I had been thinking very hard. I knew what I would have to do. And I also knew what I would have to do with Flip. The secret must not get out.

"Fix them all!" I said.

Happily he went to work.

I dozed and read some comic books. The day wore on. I saw he was getting down to the last helmet. It was sunset.

My original plan had been, when he was finished, to pretend I wanted the illusion inspected on the mountain-top and then push him through it. But Faht Bey was so touchy these days. A dead technician splattered all over the hangar floor might also excite the appetites of the assassin pilots—they earlier had wanted to kill technicians.

No, I had a better plan by far. I excused myself and went into the bedroom. I closed the door. Out of his sight and hearing, I fished a recorder from the vault. I studied the manual on how to make a hypnostrip.

I made a strip. I said, "When you are finished with the hypnohelmets you will forget everything about these hypnohelmets being in my room. You will forget you changed them. You will think you were called for to repair the alarm system and that while you were here, that is all you did. When I remove the helmet from your head, you will see nothing and feel nothing until I say 'Thank you.' You will then ask me if the alarm system is all right. Then you will be awake and normal. You will forget you have heard this recording."

I went back in where he was working. I had the strip in my pocket.

He finished the last helmet. "All done," said Flip. He carried the helmets, back in their boxes, to the vault and cleaned everything up.

I brought back the last helmet and one Part B box. "All done but the test," I said.

"The meter tells you that."

"I don't know about meters. Tests should be live. Do you mind?"

"Sure, go ahead," said Flip. "But if it don't work, then spaceships will be crashing all over the place. Those things are reliable."

I opened up the lead Part B box. I took the tiny scrap out and put it in his hair. I put the helmet on his head. I turned on the switch.

He went out like a light! The thing I had put in his hair was a dust speck! The real Part B was doubled in a lead box in the other room!

I slipped the recorded strip into the helmet slot. It went right through, just like it was supposed to.

I took the helmet off his head. He just sat there with his eyes shut. I took the dust speck out of his hair.

I removed the helmet and lead box from the room. I closed the vault. I came back and laid some of his tools beside the trick floor plate in the secret office where he'd been working.

All was ready. I said, "Thank you."

He looked at me, his eyes still kind of glazed, and he said, "Is the alarm system all right?"

"I sure appreciate your coming here to fix it," I said.

"Yeah," said Flip, looking perfectly normal, "there wasn't much wrong with it after all. You got to step on that floor plate real hard and twist your foot to set the alarm off in the hangar. Just remember that."

He gathered up his tools and, humming to himself, left.

I had stolen one of his test meters. I went and got a helmet. I got a real Part B of the switch. I took it out of the lead box. I put it under the helmet. I turned the helmet on.

The meter was DEAD!

Hurray! Oh, was I the right one now!

Shortly I would be in a position to seduce any girl, make my whole staff bow down on sight, maybe even get somebody to rob a bank for me. I could untrain Silva But above all I could order Utanc to love me and get into my bed!