and all his watching technicians that they
had completely underestimated his alien ability?

What would happen?

Why, Bart Stanton would die, of course, just as hundreds of other human
beings had died in the past ten years. Stanton would become another
statistic. And then Mannheim's Plan Beta would go into effect. The Nipe
would be killed eventually.

But what if he, Stanton, won? Then what?

The people around him were not a part of his world, really. Their
thoughts, their motions, their reactions, were slow and clumsy in
comparison with his own. Once the Nipe had been conquered, what purpose
would there be in the life of Bartholomew Stanton? He was surrounded by
people, but he was not one of them. He was immersed in a society that
was not his own because it was not, could not be, geared to his
abilities and potentials. But there was no other society to turn to,
either.

He was not a man "alone, afraid" in a world he had never made. He was a
man who had been made for a world, a society, that did not exist.

Women? A wife? A family life?

Where? With whom?

He pushed the thoughts from his mind, the questions unanswered and
perhaps unanswerable. In spite of the apparent bleakness of the future,
he had no desire to die, and there was, psychologically, the possibility
that too much brooding of that kind would evoke a subconscious reaction
that could slow him down or cause a wrong decision at a vital moment. A
feeling of futility could operate to bring on his death in spite of his
conscious determination to win the coming battle with the Nipe.

The Nipe was his first duty. When that job was finished, he would
consider the problem of himself. Just because he could not now see the
answer to that problem did not mean that no answer existed.

He suddenly realized that he was hungry. He had been walking through
Memorial Park, past the museum--an old, worn edifice that was still
called the Missouri Pacific Building. There was a small restaurant only
a block away.

He reached into his pocket and took out the few coins that were there.
Not much, but enough to buy a sandwich and a glass of milk. Because of
the trust fund that had been set up when he had started the treatment at
the Neurophysical Institute, he was already well off, but he didn't have
much cash. What good was cash at the Institute, where everything was
provided?

He stopped at a newsvendor, dropped in a coin, and waited for the
reproducing mechanism to