The technical man, more than any other, has put the shapes and habits, opportunities and neglects, into our time. If a man with such a bent reaches a place where he questions some of his paths, he will usually need more help than he can find within himself to take, maybe blaze, another path. Here, a man like this-Paul Sanger, still young, but old enough to sign for material to make a conscience-stumbles into accidents of aristocratic environment and friendships that will warp him into a situation of impossible love, and pull him into new technical vistas that will qualify, and energize, him for his path changes. These things will also put him in the way of another possibly impossible woman, with a conscience like his own, who refuses the obstacles posed by him in looking at her own future. The problems here-technical, academic, emotional, ethical-are contemporary...and timeless. Before he could call himself a chemical/mechanical engineer, GORDON ZIMA attended Stanford and California Institute of Technology. His engineering career is largely grounded in the defense laboratories of the West Coast of the USA, where he engaged materials problems in nuclear power plants, nuclear devices, and rocket and torpedo propulsion. As an Army Air Force weather officer in the Pacific during World War II, he served in Hawaii and Iwo Jima, and on Okinawa when Japan surrendered. In addition to "Other Whispers," he has written "Nuk-Chuk Tales" for children and young readers, as well as two adult novels: "The Red Garnet Sky," a story of Hannibal Barca of Carthage; and "The Ivan Spruce," a love story of an American engineering entrepreneur who tangles with the Russian Underground after meeting a Russian aristocrat in the Yellowstone. He calls Pasadena, California his hometown and has lived for several years in Santa Fe, New Mexico.