ed Calvin. _All right, let's._

"Don't," Walt cautioned. "It's just machinery on the other side."

_Why can't our thoughts penetrate it, then?_

_We aren't developed enough_, Walt thought.

"Huh?" Calvin asked. He began pounding the bulkhead with his fist.

"No," one of the other mutants said. "Like this." He concentrated and
tried to put a hand through the bulkhead.

_We aren't developed enough._

Still the mutants continued. Since the aliens had stepped up the power
in the two transmitters (power that closed the final connection in the
mutants' brains and held it closed) the mutants were able to assault any
problem with the full potentialities of the human brain. But even that
was not enough. The aliens had planned carefully in order to keep the
two mutant groups from discovering each other.

* * * * *

Forential came to make a special announcement. He spoke English with an
accent that the mutants (who had learned the language from him) could
not even imitate. As he surveyed them, his eyes shone with pride: they
were a good, sturdy, healthy lot. "Children," he said. "Earth is now in
the middle of a war. There will be little work left for us within
another two months."

Calvin cried and waved his arms wildly and bounced the ball viciously
around the room. Every earthman who killed an earthman was depriving him
personally, of a victim. He wrung his hands.

"There'll be a thousand or so left, Calvin," Forential promised. "You
must practice very diligently to be able to cope with them."

Calvin sniffed and shook his head. "I can kill that many in a minute.
You stop the war, Forential, _please_."

"Think of it this way," Forential said. "The less work there is to do,
the sooner you can return to your own planet."

"There's no earthmen to kill on Lyria," Calvin insisted stubbornly.
"_Please_ stop the war."

"I'll see what I can do." The alien smiled kindly. "You have the proper
spirit. You are all very good children. You hurry, now, and practice all
you can."

I can see Lyria's star now, Walt thought. We'll be home in another year,
then. How welcome that will be....

He had not broadcast the thought. And suddenly, as if on another
channel, another frequency, he felt Calvin in his mind and his mind in
Calvin's--an odd, unexpected blending of thoughts that seemingly had
occurred unconsciously.

_Forential describes it so it is so pretty, our planet_, Calvin was
thinking: _