By Mary Elizabeth Counselman
Five young men—coming to the brink of a discovery that would have revolutionized the world—find madness and death.
The whole business began at Ray Chetham's, the night of July 2nd. Just shows you, that, how close we are to the weird and the unbelievable even in the most ordinary of settings. But whenever men get together and start thinking, really thinking—well, anything can happen. Anything.
We had met, as usual, for our weekly poker session. Just the five of us, pals since high school days. Chet, Perry Lester, Tom Scofield, and Boyton Greer. And me, Joe Littleton.
There we were, five ordinary American business men. Lounging around the table in Chet's apartment, sleep-eyed, in shirt sleeves, drinking and smoking companionably and arguing about things in general.
Perry was popping off about the next election, Boy griping about the hand Tom had dealt him, when Chet suddenly remarked to me out of a clear sky:
"Joe—suppose someone could change the spots on a card merely by willing them to change. See what I mean? Simply by thinking about it. And why not? Look here. Everything we see in this room is nothing but a collection of atoms, held together by—what? Some kind of centrifugal force. If that force were all at once destroyed, everything in the universe would
