Albert, formerly the factotum of Professor Balloe, who had retired the year before—to the delight of the students, but to the distress of Albert (“No one ever appreciated me half as much as Professor Balloe emeritus”)—then took the candidate down to a small room in the basement. There he had his face cast in paraffin. Into the nostrils of this facial mask, once it was removed, were inserted two metal tubes. After that, the candidate was sent back upstairs to the “pool.” It was not really a pool at all—students never like to call anything by its proper name—but a large room containing a tank filled with water. The candidate, or, in cadet slang, the “patient,” was made to strip and climb into the water, which was gradually heated until it matched his body temperature. For some the cutoff point came at twenty-eight, for others at thirty degrees Celsius. Once the test subject’s body temperature was reached—signaled by an upraised arm of the freely floating “patient”—one of the assistants attached the paraffin mask. Salt was then added to the water—not potassium cyanide, as was attested by those who had already been through the “loony dip,” but ordinary table salt, in amounts large enough to allow the “patient” (also referred to as the “drowning victim”) to float just below the surface without sinking. Breathing was made possible by the metal tubes protruding above the water. That, in essence, was all there was to the test, the scientific name for which was the Sensory Deprivation Experiment. Blind and deaf, without any sense of smell, taste, or touch (after a very short while the water ceased to exert any sensation), lying with arms folded on his chest like an Egyptian mummy, the “victim” was soon submerged in a simulated weightless condition. For how long depended on the subject’s endurance.