ble a few days
ago....

With the climax of the experiment now over Lee felt his mental
resistance ebbing fast.

"They're on the move," he thought. "Nothing can stop them now; it's
beyond my control, but they're marching. I'd better get out of here...."

With fevered eyes he glanced around the floor and like a victim of
delirium saw it moving, crawling as with snakes, crawling into their
hole all of them, black snakes, grey snakes, red snakes, endless their
lengthening bodies....

He carefully closed the door of the lab, locked it and then pressed the
button which opened the elevator door. Only as the cage tore down
through the "dura mater", only when he felt safe from the sensory organs
of The Brain, only when he was sure that not even a human eye would see
him in this racing little cage, only then did the dam of willpower
collapse. He put both hands before his eyes in vain attempt to stop the
tears from streaming; those tears of a soldier over the body of his
fallen chum; those tears of a greying scientist who sacrificed the
results of his life's work to some higher cause.

Lee caught the one p.m. Greyhound-Helicopter for Phoenix only a second
before the start. He panted from the run, but in his sunken eyes there
was a light and in his mind a new serenity which comes to men when they
are fortunate enough to meet with some very wonderful woman, when with
admiration and humility they stand confronted with a courage greater
than man's. Gus's wife had been that woman; the way she had taken the
terrible news was the source of Lee's new strength and confidence.

The flying commuter was almost empty.

Noting Lee's astonished glance the stewardess gave a nervous little
laugh:

"People get jumpy traveling," she volunteered.

"That so; why do they?"

"Didn't you hear the news all morning; wait...."

She flicked the radio on. On the television screen appeared an aerial
view of a big city, vaguely familiar looking, yet as foreign as Venice,
and then the voice of the announcer broke through.

"New Orleans: It is now ascertained that the break in the levees was
caused by a huge trench digging machine left unattended overnight at a
lonely spot twenty miles South of Baton Rouge. Levee engineers believe
that its engine was started possibly by saboteurs, approximately at
midnight and that it then proceeded automatically digging itself into
the levee until it was drowned by the incoming river. The initial
eight-foot breac