ony for both parties. They could neither project nor receive thoughts.

Ebbing vitality and the increased urgency of the problem drove him to a
desperate resource. A pregnant female came within the extreme range of
his perception. An embryo mind might serve! The mind, as yet unsullied,
sleeping, a blank page untouched by the world, was open to him. If the
appropriate knowledge was seeded in its memory banks it might--it
_must_--remain sane despite the world, and a sane mind would not dispute
what must be done.

He made a quick evaluation of the subject mind and discovered the flaw.
The intelligence potential was too low. The embryo would not be capable
of understanding the planted memories as they came to the conscious
level, nor be capable of acting on them if they were understood. Time
was ebbing fast, and vitality with it. Very well, then, the most
desperate, the most questionable resource of all remained. The unused,
unrecognized prime center, true seat of the intellect, must be activated
the way nature presumably had intended that it should be, had not
something gone wrong in the dawn years of the planet.

There could be no moral objection to this measure if successful, since
it amounted to giving sight to a blind man. The element of grave doubt
lay in the relative chances of success or failure. The strange,
interlocking structure of the unconscious mind of the embryo was not
something that could be unraveled and examined in a hurry. Honesty
compelled him to evaluate himself as young and inexperienced, not
especially noted among his own kind for brilliantly incisive judgment.
It was not the sort of thing that he should even attempt without long
study. It was too risky, too indecisive, too--

Time made the decision. There was no time left. The chill of death told
its own story. In an agony of haste he summoned all that remained of
vitality and fought off Death while he entered the embryo mind.

The fast-shriveling body in the spaceship retained life long enough to
recognize the blunder, but not long enough to correct it. The wrong was
done, and could not be undone.

* * * * *

The memories that mercifully blurred became clear again. He knew that
in due course the mishandled embryo experienced birth, entering the
world normally as a helpless, feebly squirming, pathetically vulnerable
mite, and in no way drew unusual attention to itself. No one knew, or
cared, that intellectual aw