d
might give him a hint, and had even melted the telephone so that he
couldn't continue listening to other evidence.

It had probably done a thousand other things that he couldn't even
remember, whenever its wild, reasonless fears were aroused and it
decided that he had to be protected!

"You should have killed me," he told them. But he knew that they
couldn't have done it.

"We had to let you sweat it out. You made us promise not to tell you
anything, and we thought you might be right," Ellen told him. "We
thought that it might adjust after awhile. All we did was to try to
pick you up, until we knew it was impossible."

"Until Sis tipped off the Government men," Dan added. Hawkes could
imagine what their reaction had been to having a man with his power
running wild. He was surprised that they had bothered to make even an
attempt to see that he wasn't harmed.

He shrugged helplessly. "And where does it leave us now--beyond this
hole in the ground?"

"The Government's put about fifty specialists on the notes you and
Meinzer left," Dan answered, but there was no assurance in his voice.
"They're trying to find some way to bring the psi factor under the
control of your logical, rational mind."

He got to his knees and began crawling out of the little cave, while
Hawkes tried to help Ellen follow him. Outside, Dan knocked off the
dirt from his clothes and headed for the sedan he'd, somehow gotten
off the roof.

Hawkes followed, for want of anything better to do.

He knew the answers now--and he was worse off than ever. Instead of a
horde of outside aliens, he had one single monster in his own skull,
where he could never fight it, or even hope to escape it.

The power had been meant as a hope for the world. A man who could work
such seeming miracles might have ended the threat of war; he'd have
been the perfect spy, or better at attack than a hundred hydrogen
bombs that had to smash whole cities to remove a few men and weapons.
But now the world was better off without him. So long as he still
lived, there would be nothing but danger from the alien monster in his
head. He had no idea of his limits--but he was sure that it could
trigger the energies of the universe to move the whole world out of
its orbit, if that seemed necessary for his personal survival!

VIII

Hawkes leaned forward cautiously as the gray sedan moved up Tenth
Avenue. His finger found the gun in Dan's coat pocket; and he pulled
it out steal