Poor Isaac. As a mathematician - not an outstanding one, but a competent, unextraordinary pencil-pusher - he's constantly having drummed into him that it's the prodigies of his profession, the burning suns of his little universe that advance human knowledge. The rest of us - why, we just try to understand what has been given to us from on high.Now Isaac Swift thinks he's found the solution to "Beauregard's Wild Number Problem," the puzzle that has stumped savants the world over for centuries. And Dimitri, his mentor at the university, once a near-great mathematician himself, thinks Isaac is correct. If so, Isaac will have elevated himself to the ranks of the immortals. But accusations of plagiarism arise - and violence that may not stop at a purely intellectual level looms over the university. Read Less