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A cube of ice in a glass of water at zero degrees Celsius exhibits certain properties and performs certain actions at its surface. Some of the molecules drift away, to become one with the liquid. Other molecules from the liquid become attached to the crystalline ice. But, the ice cube remains essentially an entity. Over a period of time, it may change slowly, since dissolution takes place faster than crystallization at the corners of the cube. Eventually, the cube will become a sphere, or something very closely approximating it. But the change is slow, and, once it reaches that state, the situation becomes static.

But, if you add heat, more and more and more, the ice cube will change, not only its shape, but its state. What it was previously capable of doing only slightly and impermanently, it can now do completely. The critical point has been passed.

Roughly–for the analog itself is rough–the same things occurs in the human mind. The psionic abilities of the human mind are, to a greater or lesser degree, there to begin with, just as an ice cube has the ability to melt if the proper conditions are met with.

The analogy hardly extends beyond that. Unlike an ice cube, the human mind is capable of changing the forces outside it–as if the ice could seek out its own heat in order to melt. And, too, human minds vary in their inherent ability to absorb understanding. Some do so easily, others do so only in spotty areas, still others cannot reach the critical point before they break. And still others can never really understand at all.

No one who had not reached his own critical point could become a “core” member of the S.M.M.R. It was not snobbery on their part; they understood other human beings too well to be snobbish. It was more as though a Society for Expert Mountain Climbers met each year on the peak of Mount Everest–anyone who can get up there to attend the meeting is automatically a member.

Spencer Candron sat down in a nearby chair. “All right, so I refrain from doing any more damage than I have to. What’s the objective?”

Taggert put his palms on his muscular thighs and leaned forward. “James Ch’ien is still alive.”

Candron had not been expecting the statement, but he felt no surprise. His mind merely adjusted to the new data. “He’s still in China, then,” he said. It was not a question, but a statement of a deduction. “The whole thing was a phony. The death, the body, the funeral. What about the executions?”

“They were real,” Taggert said. “Here’s what happened as closely as we can tell:

“Dr. Ch’ien was kidnaped on July 10th, the second day of the conference in Peiping, at some time between two and three in the morning. He was replaced by a double, whose name we don’t know. It’s unimportant, anyway. The double was as perfect as the Chinese surgeons could make him. He was probably not aware that he was slated to die; it is more likely that he was hypnotized and misled. At any rate, he took Ch’ien’s place on the rostrum to speak that afternoon.

“The man who shot him, and the man who threw the flame bomb, were probably as equally deluded as to what they were doing as the double was. They did a perfect job, though. The impersonator was dead, and his skin was charred and blistered clear up to the chest–no fingerprints.

“The men were tried, convicted, and executed. The Chinese government sent us abject apologies. The double’s body was shipped back to the United States with full honors, but by the time it reached here, the eye-cone patterns had deteriorated to the point where they couldn’t be identified any more than the fingerprints could. And there were half a hundred reputable scientists of a dozen friendly nations who were eye-witnesses to the killing and who are all absolutely certain that it was James Ch’ien who died.”