Jim Baen's Universe

Classic

Research Alpha

Written by A. E. van Vogt and James H. Schmitz

Illustrated by David Maier

[I]

Barbara Ellington felt the touch as she straightened up from the water cooler. It was the lightest of touches, but quite startling—momentary, tiny flick of something ice-cold against the muscle of her right arm at the shoulder.

She twisted quickly and rather awkwardly around from the cooler, then stared in confusion at the small well-dressed, bald-headed man who stood a few feet behind her, evidently awaiting his turn for a drink.

"Why, good afternoon, Barbara," he said pleasantly.

Barbara was now feeling embarrassment. "I …" she began incoherently. "I didn't know anyone else was near, Dr. Gloge. I'm finished now!"

She picked up the briefcase she had set against the wall when she stopped for a drink and went on along the bright-lit corridor. She was a tall, lean-bodied girl—perhaps a little too tall but, with her serious face and smooth, brown hair, not unattractive. At the moment, her cheeks burned. She knew she walked with wooden, self-conscious stiffness, wondering if Dr. Gloge was peering after her, puzzled by her odd behavior at the water cooler.

"But something did touch me," she thought.

At the turn of the corridor, she glanced back. Dr. Gloge had had his drink, and was walking off unhurriedly in the opposite direction. Nobody else was in sight.

After she'd turned the corner, Barbara reached up with her left hand the rubbed the area of her upper arm where she had felt that tiny, momentary needle of ice. Had Dr. Gloge been responsible for—well, for whatever it had been? She frowned and shook her head. She'd worked in Gloge's office for two weeks immediately after she'd been employed here. And Dr. Henry Gloge, head of the biology section at Research Alpha, while invariably polite, even courteous, was a cold, quiet, withdrawn character, completely devoted to his work.

He was not at all the kind of man who would consider it humorous to play a prank on a stenographer.

And it hadn't, in fact, been a prank.

From Dr. Henry Gloge's point of view, the encounter with Barbara Ellington in the fifth floor hallway that afternoon had been a very fortunate accident. A few weeks earlier he had selected her to be one of two unwitting subjects for Point Omega Stimulation.

His careful plans had included a visit to her bedroom apartment when she was not there. He had installed equipment that might be of value later in his experiment. And it was not until these preliminaries were accomplished that he had headed for the steno pool, only to find that Barbara had been transferred out of the department.

Gloge dared not risk inquiring about her. For if the experiment had undesirable results, no one must suspect a connection between a lowly typist and himself. And even if it were successful, secrecy might continue to be necessary.

Gloge chafed at the delay. When on the fourth day of his search for her he suddenly recognized her walking along a hallway fifty feet ahead of him, it seemed as if fate was on his side after all.

As the girl paused at a water cooler, he came up behind her. Quickly, he made sure that no one else was in view. Then he drew the needle jet gun and aimed it at her shoulder muscles. The gun carried a gaseous compound of the Omega serum, and the only sign of a discharge, when he fired it, was a thin line of mist from the needle end to her skin.

His task then accomplished, Gloge hastily slipped the instrument into the holster inside his coat and buttoned his coat.

Barbara, still carrying her briefcase, presently came to the offices of John Hammond, special assistant to the president of Research Alpha, which lay on the fifth floor of what was generally considered the most important laboratory complex on Earth. Alex Sloan, the president, was on the floor above.

Barbara paused before the massive black door with Hammond's name on it. She gazed possessively at the words Scientific Liaison and Investigation lettered on the panel. Then she took a small key from her briefcase, slipped it into the door lock and pressed to the right.

The door swung silently back. Barbara stepped through into the outer office, heard the faint click as the door closed behind her.

There was no one in sight. The desk of Helen Wendell, Hammond's secretary, stood across the room with a number of papers on it. The door to the short hall which led to Hammond's private office was open. From it Barbara heard Helen's voice speaking quietly.

Barbara Ellington had been assigned to Hammond—actually, to Helen Wendell—only ten days before. Aside from the salary increase, part of her interest in the position had been the intriguing if somewhat alarming figure of John Hammond himself, and an expectation that she would find herself in the center of the behind-the-scene operations of Scientific Liaison and Investigation. In that, she had so far been disappointed.

Barbara walked over to Helen Wendell's desk, took some papers from her briefcase, and was putting them into a basket when her eye caught the name of Dr. Henry Gloge on a note in the adjoining basket. Entirely on impulse—because she had seen the man only minutes before—she bent over the paper.

The note was attached to a report. It was a reminder to Hammond that he was to see Dr. Gloge today at three-thirty in connection with Gloge's Omega project. Barbara glanced automatically at her watch; it was now five minutes to three.

Unlike most of the material she handled, this item was at least partly understandable. It referred to a biological project, "Point Omega Stimulation." Barbara couldn't remember having heard of such a project while she was working under Dr. Gloge. But that was hardly surprising—the biological section was one of the largest in Research Alpha. From what she was reading, the project had to do with "the acceleration of evolutionary processes" in several species of animals, and the only real information in the report seemed to be that a number of test animals had died and been disposed of.

Was the great John Hammond spending his time on this sort of thing?

Disappointed, Barbara put the report back into the basket and went on to her own office.

As she sat down at her desk, Barbara noticed a stack of papers which hadn't been there when she had left on her errand. Attached to them was a note in Helen's large, clear handwriting. The note said:

Barbara,

This came in unexpectedly and must be typed today. It obviously will require several hours of overtime. If you have made special arrangements for the evening, let me know and I'll have a typist sent up from the pool to do this extra work.

Barbara felt an instant pang of possessive jealousy. This was her job, her office! She definitely did not want some other girl coming in.

Unfortunately, she did have a date. But to keep an intruder from taking her place in John Hammond's office, even if only for a few hours, was the more important matter. That was her instant decision, needing no second thought. But she sat still a moment, biting her lip; for that moment she was a woman considering how to put off a male who had a quick temper and no patience. Then she picked up the telephone and dialed a number.

For some months now, Barbara had settled her hopes for the future on Vince Strather, a technician in the photo lab. When his voice came on the telephone, she told him what had happened, finishing contritely, "I'm afraid I can't get out of it very well, Vince, so soon after starting here."

She could almost feel Vince absorbing the impact of the denial she was communicating; she had discovered quickly in their brief romance that he was trying to move her towards premarital intimacy, a step she was wholly determined not to take.

She was relieved now, when he accepted her explanation. She replaced the receiver, feeling very warm toward him. "I really do love him!" she thought.

It was a few moments later that she suddenly felt dizzy.

The feeling was peculiar, not like her usual headaches. She could feel it build up, a giddy, light swirling which seemed both within and without her, as if she were weightless, about to drift out of the chair, turning slowly over and over.

Almost simultaneously, she became aware of a curious exhilaration, a sense of strength and well-being, quite unlike anything she could remember. The sensations continued for perhaps twenty seconds … then they faded and were gone, almost as abruptly as they had come.

Confused and somewhat shaken, Barbara straightened up in her chair. For a moment she considered taking aspirin. But there seemed no reason for that. She didn't feel ill. It even seemed to her that she felt more awake and alert.

She was about to return to her typing when she became aware of a movement out of the corner of her eye. She looked up and saw that John Hammond had paused in the doorway of her little office.

Barbara froze, as she always did in his presence, then slowly she turned to face him.

Hammond stood there, staring at her thoughtfully. He was a man about six feet tall, with dark brown hair and steel gray eyes. He seemed to be about forty years old and he was built like an athlete. Yet it was not his appearance of physical strength but the fine intelligence of his face and eyes that had always impressed her during the ten days since she had been assigned to his office. She thought now, not for the first time: "This is what really great people are like."

"Are you all right, Barbara?" Hammond asked. "For a moment, I thought you were going to fall out of your chair."

It was highly disturbing to Barbara to realize that her dizzy spell had been observed. "I'm sorry, Mr. Hammond," she murmured shyly. "I must have been daydreaming."

He gazed at her a moment longer, then nodded, turned and walked off.

[II]

On leaving Barbara, Gloge went down several floors and stationed himself behind a pile of shipping crates. These were in a passage across from the locked door of the main photo lab storeroom. On the dot of 3:15, a door farther along the passage opened. A lanky scowling, redheaded young man wearing a stained white smock over his street clothes, pushing a loaded handtruck ahead of him, appeared and turned down the passage towards Gloge and the laboratory storeroom.

It was the end of the lab shift. Gloge had discovered that one of the regular duties of Vincent Strather, Barbara Ellington's boy friend, was to return certain materials to the storeroom at this hour.

Peering through the slats of a crate, Dr. Gloge watched Strather's approach. He was, he realized, much more tense and nervous now than he had been when he had given Barbara the injection. Of himself, Vincent Strather was not the kind of subject Dr. Gloge would have chosen—the young man was too angry, too bitter. But the fact that he was Barbara's friend and that they spent their spare time together, should be useful in the further steps of the experiment—so it seemed to Dr. Gloge.

Sliding his hand under his coat where the jet gun rested, he moved quickly out into the passage and across it toward Vince Strather. . . .

Even as he pressed the trigger, he knew his nervousness had betrayed him.

The needle tip of the gun had been too far away from Strather; a foot; almost two feet too far. At that greater distance the jet stream, emerging from the needle at nearly a thousand miles an hour, had time to spread and slow down. It caught Strather high up on the shoulder blade and tugged at his skin as it entered. For Strather, the sensation must have been that of a sharp impact. He jumped and cried out, then stood shuddering, as if in shock—long enough for Gloge to slip the little gun back into its holster and close up his coat.

But that was all. Vince Strather whirled. His hands caught Gloge by the arms, and his angry face glared down into the Doctor's.

"You damn jerk!" he shouted. "What did you hit me with just now? Who the hell are you, anyway?"

For a moment, Dr. Gloge felt appalled. Then he tried to twist out of Strather's hard grip. "I don't know what you're talking about!" he said breathlessly.

He stopped. He saw that Vince was gazing past his shoulder. The young man's grip relaxed suddenly, and Gloge was able to free himself. He turned and looked behind him. He felt a stunned, incredulous dismay.

John Hammond was coming along the passage, gray eyes fastened questioningly upon them. Gloge could only hope desperately that he had not been in sight when the gun was being fired.

Hammond came up and said in a tone of easy authority: "Dr. Gloge, what's going on here?"

"Doctor!" Vince Strather repeated, in a startled voice.

Gloge put puzzled indignation in his tone: "This young man appears to be under the impression that I struck him just now. Needless to say, I did nothing of the kind and don't understand what gave him such an idea."

He looked frowningly back at Strather. Strather's gaze shifted uncertainly between them. He was obviously abashed by John Hammond's presence and Gloge's title but not yet over his anger.

He said sullenly, "Well, something hit me. At least it felt that way! When I looked around, he was standing there. So I thought he'd done it."

"I was passing you," Dr. Gloge corrected him. "You exclaimed something and I stopped." He shrugged, smiled. "And that's all I did, young man! I certainly had no reason to strike you."

Strather said grudgingly, "I guess I was mistaken."

Dr. Gloge said promptly, "Then let's call it an error and forget it!" He held out his hand.

Strather reached out reluctantly and shook it, then looked at Hammond. When Hammond remained silent, he turned away in obvious relief, took one of the boxes from the truck and disappeared into the storeroom with it.

Hammond said, "I was on my way to your office, Doctor, where I expect to have an interview with you in a few minutes on the Omega project. I presume you were heading in that direction."

"Yes, yes." Gloge fell into step beside the bigger man. He was thinking: "Did he see anything?"

His companion gave no sign.

A few minutes later, as he gazed across the gleaming desk of his private office at John Hammond, Gloge had the uneasy feeling of a criminal confronted by the law. It had always amazed him that this man—Hammond—could make him feel at very least like a small boy.

Yet the discussion that now developed began with a reassuring statement from the bigger man:

"This is a completely informal conversation, Doctor. I am not representing President Sloan at the moment—even less the Board of Regents. That has been deliberately arranged. It will make it possible for both of us to speak quite frankly."

Dr. Gloge said, "Have there been complaints about my work here?"

Hammond nodded. "You can't have remained entirely unaware of it, Doctor. You've been asked to amplify your project reports, make them more detailed and specific, three times within the last two months alone."

Gloge was reluctantly deciding that he would have to tell some of his data.

He said with apparent openness, "My reluctance to communicate has been due to a strictly scientific dilemma. Things were happening in the experiment but their meaning was not clear to me until very recently."

"There is a feeling," said Hammond in his steady voice, "that your project is failing."

Dr. Gloge said sharply, "The accusation is unworthy!"

Hammond looked at him, said, "No accusations have been made—as yet. That's why I'm here today. You have reported no successes within the past six months, you know."

"Mr. Hammond, there have been many failures. Within the limited framework of the present stages of the project experiments, that is exactly what should be expected."

"Limited in what way?"

"Limited to the lower, less complicated forms of animal life."

"That," said Hammond mildly, "is a limitation you yourself have imposed on the project."

Dr. Gloge agreed. "True. The conclusions I've been able to form at such lower levels have been invaluable. And the fact that the results of the experiments have been almost invariably negative, in the sense that as a usual result the subject animals evolved into nonviable forms, is completely unimportant."

"As a usual result," Hammond repeated. "Then not all of them died quickly?"

Gloge bit his lip. That was not an admission he had intended to make at this initial stage in the discussion.

He said, reluctantly, "In a respectable percentage of the cases, the subject animals survived the first injection."

"And the second?"

Gloge hesitated. But there was no turning back. "The survival percentage drops very sharply at that point," he said. "I don't recall the exact figures."

"And the third?"

He was really being forced to make revelations. Dr. Gloge said, "To date, three animals have survived the third injection. All three were of the same species—Cryptobranchus."

"The hellbender," said Hammond. "Well! A large salamander . . . Now, the third injection, according to your theory, should advance an animal along the evolutionary line stimulated in it to a point which might be reached through half a million years of natural evolution. Would you say such a result was achieved in these three cases?"

Dr. Gloge said, "Since Cryptobranchus might be considered with some reason to be a species in which evolutionary development is at a practical standstill, I should say that much more was achieved."

"What were the observable changes?"

Gloge had been bracing himself as he made one admission after another. He was striving to decide exactly when he could start resisting the interrogation.

Now! he thought.

He said aloud, trying to appear frank, "Mr. Hammond, I'm beginning to realize that I was in error in not making more positive reports. I can't believe that you are really interested in these superficial accounts. Why not let me summarize my observations for you?"

Hammond's gray eyes were calm and steady. "Go ahead," he said in an even tone.

Gloge outlined his conclusions, then. The interesting features were two-fold, probably equally important.

One of these was that there remained in all life forms a wide evolutionary choice. For reasons that were not yet clear, the Omega serum stimulated one of these potential developments and no subsequent stimulation could alter the mutational direction. Most of these developments led to extinction.

"The second feature," said Gloge, "is that the chances for success increase as the life form becomes more highly evolved."

Hammond said, interested, "What you're saying is that when you finally start working with the more active mammals and eventually monkeys, you expect more and better results?"

"I have no doubt about it," said Dr. Gloge, firmly.

A secondary aspect—Gloge continued—was that brain areas which controlled the inhibition of simple reflexes often seemed to be the source of new neural growth and of sensory extension. The serum apparently intensified these effort points, increasing their operational flexibility. What went wrong was that all too often such one-sided inhibitory amplification ended in non-survival.

However, in Cryptobranchus, the roof of the mouth developed small functional gills. The hide thickened into segmented, horny armor. Short, grooved fangs were acquired and connected to glands that produced a mild hematoxic venom. The eyes disappeared, but areas in the skin developed sight-level sensitivity to light.

Gloge shrugged, finished: "There were other changes, but these would seem the most dramatic ones."

"They sound sufficiently dramatic," said Hammond. "What happened to the two specimens which were not dissected?"

Dr. Gloge realized that his diversion had not worked. "They were given the fourth injection, of course," he said resignedly.

"The one," Hammond asked, "which was to advance them to a point a million years along the evolutionary line they were following—"

"Or," Dr. Gloge said, "to the peak-point of that evolutionary line. The equating of the four stages of the stimulation process to the passing of specific periods of normal evolutionary development—twenty thousand years, fifty thousand, five hundred thousand, and one million years—is, of course, hypothetical and generalized. My calculations indicate that in many species of which we have knowledge in that area the two points might be approximately the same."

Hammond nodded. "I understand, Doctor. And what happened after your evolved Cryptobranchus received the fourth injection?"

"I cannot give you a precise answer to that, Mr. Hammond. In appearance it was a very rapid breakdown of the entire structure. Within two hours, both specimens literally dissolved," Gloge answered tensely.

"In other words," Hammond said, "Point Omega Stimulation directs Cryptobranchus and, in fact, every species to which it has been applied into one of the many blind alleys of evolution."

Dr. Gloge said curtly, "So far it has done that."

Hammond was silent, then: "One more point," he said. "It's been suggested that you might consider taking on a sufficiently qualified assistant in this work. Research Alpha probably could obtain Sir Hubert Roland for a project of such interest."

Dr. Gloge said coldly, "With all due respect for Sir Hubert Roland's accomplishments, I would regard him as a meddler here! If the attempt is made to force him on me, I shall resist it."

"Well," Hammond said easily, "let's not make any unalterable decisions at the moment. As I mentioned, this has been a completely informal discussion." He glanced at his watch. "I'm afraid we'll have to terminate it now. Would you have time to see me in my office one week from today at ten o'clock, Doctor? I wish to carry this matter a little further, and that will be my first free time."

Dr. Gloge had difficulty restraining his feeling of triumph. Today was Wednesday. He had selected it as his starting time because he had wanted his subjects to be away from their place of work over the weekend.

Between now and Saturday, he could undoubtedly accomplish the second injections on the young couple.

By the following Wednesday, the third, perhaps even the fourth shot would have been administered and all strong reactions either taken care of or the experiment terminated.

To cover up his elation, Gloge said in the tone of one making a concession, "As you wish, Mr. Hammond."

[III]

Dr. Henry Gloge was awake much of the night, vacillating between hopes and fears of what he would find when he went to check on the first results of Point Omega Stimulation in human beings. If they were obviously negative, he would have only one choice.

It could be called murder.

Dr. Gloge approached that subject in a detached, undisturbed frame of mind. He had several times in his work secretly carried on a more advanced experiment while, ostensibly, following the step-by-step scientific method. Thus fortified by special knowledge, he had in the past been able to plan lower-step work with the sometimes intuitive insights gained from his unpublicized private investigation.

The importance of the Omega project to him justified a similar expedient. Objectively considered, in the light of such a goal, the lives of the two young people he had chosen for the experiment were of no value. Their destruction, if it became necessary, would be in the same category as the slaughter of other experimental subjects.

With human beings there was, of course, an element of personal risk involved for himself. It was that realization that troubled him, now that he had made the first injection. Time and again, Dr. Gloge awakened out of a nightmare-riddled half-sleep, to quail anew at the knowledge and to lie sweating with anxiety until he slid back into exhausted slumber.

When four o'clock came, it was almost with relief that he arose, fortified himself with several tablets of a powerful stimulant, made a last check of his preparations, and set out across town toward the house where the Ellington girl had a room. He drove in a black panel truck that he had bought and equipped for his experiment.

He arrived at his destination about a quarter past five. It was a quiet residential street, a tree-lined avenue in one of the older sections of the city, approximately eight miles west of the Research Alpha complex. Two hundred yards from the house, Dr. Gloge pulled the small truck up to the curb on the opposite side of the street and shut off the motor.

For the past week, a miniature audio pickup-recorder, inserted under the bark of a sycamore tree across the street from the house, had been trained on Barbara Ellington's second-floor room, its protruding head cunningly painted to resemble a rusty nail. Dr. Gloge now took the other part of the two-piece instrument from the dashboard compartment of the truck, inserted the plug in his ear, and switched it on.

After perhaps half a minute of twisting the tuning dial back and forth, he felt his face whiten. He had tested the instrument at night on two occasions during the past week. It was quite sensitive enough to pick up the sounds of breathing and even the heartbeat of anyone in the room; and so he knew with absolute certainty that Barbara Ellington's room had no living occupant at this moment.

Quickly, he attached the recording playback mechanism to the little device, turned it back one hour, and put the plug into his ear again.

Almost at once, he relaxed.

Barbara Ellington had been in that room, asleep, an hour ago, breath even and undisturbed heart beat strong and slow. Dr. Gloge had listened to similar recordings of too many experimental animals to have the slightest doubt. This subject had moved up successfully, unharmed, to the first stage of Point Omega Stimulation!

The impact of his triumph after the ghastly fears of the night was very strong. Dr. Gloge needed several minutes to compose himself. Finally, he was able to move the recorder by ten-minute steps to a point where the Ellington girl obviously was awake and moving about the room. He listened with absorbed fascination, feeling almost able to visualize from moment to moment exactly what she was doing. At one point, she stood still for some seconds and then uttered a low, warm laugh which sent thrills of delight through the listening scientist. Perhaps a minute later, he heard a door being closed. After that, there was only the empty, lifeless silence which had startled him so badly.

Barbara Ellington had awakened that Thursday morning with a thought she had never had before. It was: "Life doesn't have to be serious!"

She was contemplating this frivolous notion with the beginning of amazement when a second thought came which she had also never had in her entire previous existence. "What is this mad drive to enslave myself to a man?"

The thought seemed natural and obviously true. It had no general rejection of men in it. She still—it seemed to her—loved Vince . . . but differently.

Thought of Vince brought a smile. She had already noted in one of numerous, quick, darting glances around the room that it was nearly two hours before her usual rising time. The sun was peering through her bedroom window at that almost horizontal angle which, in the past, had seemed to her a horrifying threat that she would be robbed of precious sleep.

Now it struck her: "Why don't I call Vince and we'll go for a drive before I have to go to work?"

She reached for the phone, then considered and drew back. Let the poor man sleep a little longer.

She dressed swiftly, but with more than usual care. When she glanced at the mirror, it occurred to her that she was better looking than she had realized.

. . . Very much better looking! she decided an instant later. Intrigued, for a moment amazed, she went up to the mirror, studied the face in it. Her face, familiar. But also the face of a radiant stranger. Another awareness came and the bright, glowing, blue mirror-eyes holding hers seemed to widen.

"I feel twice as alive as I ever have before!"

Surprise . . . pleasure . . . and suddenly: "Shouldn't I wonder why?"

The mirror-face frowned slightly, then laughed at her.

There had been a change, a wonderful one, and the change was not yet complete. There was a sense of shifting deep inside her, of flows of brightness along the edges of her mind. Curiosity had stirred, but it was light, not urgent or anxious. "When I want to know, I will know!" Barbara told herself . . . and, with that, the trace of curiosity was dismissed.

"And now."

She glanced once more around the little room. For over a year, it had held her, contained her, sheltered her. But she didn't want shelter now. The room couldn't hold her today!

She decided, smiling, "I'll go and wake up Vince."

She rang Vince's doorbell five times before she heard him stirring inside. Then his voice called harshly, thickly, "Who is that?"

Barbara laughed. "It's me!"

"Good God!"

The lock clicked back and the door opened. Vince stood staring at her with bloodshot eyes. He'd pulled a robe on over his pajamas; his bony face was flushed and his red hair tangled.

"What are you doing up at this hour?" he demanded as Barbara stepped past him into the apartment. "It's half-past five!"

"It's a wonderful morning. I couldn't stay in bed. I thought I'd get you to go for a drive with me before I went to work."

Vince pulled the door shut, blinked at her incredulously. "Go for a drive!" he repeated.

Barbara asked, "Aren't you feeling well, Vince? You look almost as if you're running a fever."

Vince shook his head. "I don't feel feverish, but I sure don't feel well either. I don't know what's the matter. Come on and sit down. Want some coffee?"

"Not especially. I'll make some for you, if you like."

"Nah, don't bother. I'm sort of nauseated right now." Vince sat down on the couch of the little living room, fished cigarettes and matches from a pocket of his robe, lit a cigarette and grimaced. "That doesn't taste too good either!" He scowled at Barbara. "Something pretty damn funny happened yesterday! And I'm not sure—"

He hesitated.

"Not sure of what, Vince?"

"That that isn't why I'm feeling this way." Vince paused again, shook his head, muttered, "Sounds crazy, I guess. You know that Dr. Gloge you worked for once?"

It seemed to Barbara as if whole sections of her mind lit up in brilliance at that instant. She heard Vince start to tell his story. But—except for John Hammond's intervention—it was something she already knew.

Part of a much bigger story . . .

She thought: Why, that impudent little man! What a wild, wonderful, terrific thing to do!

Excitement raced through her. The paper she had seen lying on Helen Wendell's desk flashed into her mind, every word sharp and distinct—and not only the words!

Now she understood. What they meant, what they implied, the possibilities concealed behind them—for herself, for Vince.

Another feeling awoke. Sharp wariness.

There was danger somewhere here! John Hammond . . . Helen . . . the hundreds of little impressions she'd received all suddenly flowed together into a picture clear but puzzling—of something supra-normal, she decided, amazed.

Who were they? What were they doing? In a dozen different ways, they didn't really fit in an organization like Research Alpha. But they had virtually complete control.

Not that it mattered immediately. Yet she was certain of one thing. They were opposed to what Dr. Gloge was attempting through Point Omega Stimulation, would stop it if they could.

"But they can't!" she told herself. What Dr. Gloge had begun was right. She could feel the rightness of it like a song of triumph in every aspect of her being. She would have to make sure that it wasn't stopped at this point.

But she would need to be careful—and act quickly! It was incredibly bad luck that John Hammond had arrived almost while Dr. Gloge was giving Vince his first shot.

"Do you think I should report it?" Vince asked.

"You'd look a little foolish if it turned out that you were coming down with the flu, wouldn't you?" Barbara said lightly.

"Yeah." He sounded hesitant.

"What does it feel like, aside from the nausea?"

Vince described his symptoms. Not unlike her own—and she'd had a few bad moments before she went to sleep last night. Vince was going through an initial reaction period more prolonged and somewhat more severe than hers.

She was aware of a fond impulse to reassure him. But she decided it would be unwise to tell him what she knew. Until he came out of his physical distress, such information might disturb him dangerously.

She said urgently, "Look, you don't have to go to work until tonight. So the best thing for you is to get a few more hours of sleep. If you start feeling worse, and would like me to take you to a doctor, give me a call and I'll come and get you. Otherwise, I'll phone at ten."

Vince agreed immediately. "I'm really awfully groggy. That's a big part of it. I'll just stretch out on the couch instead of going back to bed."

When Barbara left a few minutes later, her thoughts quickly turned away from Vince. She began to consider various methods she might use to approach Dr. Gloge this very day.

****

Gloge reached the street where Vincent Strather lived and was looking for a parking place, when suddenly he saw Barbara Ellington emerge from the area of the apartment building and start across the street ahead of him.

The girl was perhaps a hundred yards away. Dr. Gloge braked the panel truck hastily, pulled it in to the curb, rolled up behind another car parked there and stopped. He sat there, breathing hard at the narrow margin by which he had avoided being seen.

Barbara had hesitated, glancing in the direction of the approaching truck, but now she was continuing across the street. Watching her swift, lithe stride, the proudly erect carriage of her body—comparing that picture with the frozen awkwardness he had observed in all her movements the day before—Dr. Gloge felt his last doubts resolve.

It was in the human species that Point Omega Stimulation would achieve its purpose.

His only regret now was that he had not arrived even as much as ten minutes earlier. The girl obviously had come to see Strather, had been with him until now. If he had found them together examination on a comparison basis could have been made of them simultaneously.

The thought did not in the least diminish the tingling excitement that filled him as he watched Barbara's brown car pull out into the street and move away. He waited until her car was out of sight, then drove the truck down to the alley beside the apartment building and turned in to it. His intention was to give Strather a careful physical examination.

A few minutes later, Dr. Gloge watched a pointer in the small instrument he was holding drop to the zero mark on the dial. Pulling off the respirator clamped over his mouth and nose, he stood looking down at the body of Vincent Strather sprawled on the living room couch.

Vincent Strather's appearance was much less satisfactory than he had expected. Of course, the young man's reddened face and bloodshot eyes might be due to the paralyzing gas Dr. Gloge had released into the apartment as he edged open the back door. But there were other signs of disturbance; tension, distended blood vessels, skin discoloration. By comparison with Barbara Ellington's vigor and high spirits, Strather looked drab and unimpressive.

Nevertheless, he had survived the first shot.

Gloge straightened, studied the motionless figure again, then went about the apartment quietly closing the window he had opened exactly one minute after releasing the instantly effective gas. The gas had dissipated now. When its effect on Strather wore off an hour or so from now, there would be nothing to tell the subject that anything had occurred here after Barbara Ellington had left.

Tomorrow he would return and give Strather the second shot.

As he locked the back door behind him and walked over to the panel truck, Dr. Gloge decided that he would have to come back and check both his subjects that night.

He felt extremely confident. It seemed to him that before anyone found out that it had been started, the Point Omega Stimulation experiment on human beings would have run its course.

[IV]

Hammond heard the bell sound as he was shaving in the bathroom of his living quarters which were located behind his office. He paused, then deliberately put down his razor and activated a hidden microphone in the wall.

"Yes, John?" Helen's voice came.

"Who came in?"

"Why—only Barbara." She sounded surprised. "What makes you ask?"

"The life range indicator just now registered an over-six read."

"On Barbara!" Helen sounded incredulous.

"On somebody," said Hammond. "Better have Special Servicing check the indicator out. Nobody else came in?"

"No."

"Well—check it." He broke the connection and finished shaving.

The buzzer sounded in Barbara's office a little later—the signal that she was to report with her notebook to Hammond's office. She went, curious, wondering if he would notice any change in her. Much more important was her own desire to take a closer look at this strange, powerful man who was her boss.

She walked into Hammond's office and was about to sit in the chair he motioned her to, when something in his manner warned her. Barbara made an apologetic gesture.

"Oh, Mr. Hammond—excuse me a moment."

She hurried out of the office and down the hall to the washroom. The moment she was inside, she closed her eyes and mentally re-lived her exact feelings at the instant she had sensed—whatever it was.

Not Hammond at all, she realized. It was the chair that had given forth some kind of energy flow. Eyes still closed, she strove to perceive what within herself had been affected. There seemed to be an exact spot in her brain that responded each time she reviewed the moment she had started to sit down.

She couldn't decide what the response was. But she thought: "I don't have to let it be affected now that I know."

Relieved, she returned to Hammond's office, seated herself in the chair and smiled at Hammond where he sat behind his great, gleaming, mahogany desk.

"I'm sorry," she said. "But I'm ready now."

During the half hour that followed, she took shorthand with a tiny portion of her mind, and with the rest fought off a steady, progressively more aware battle against the energy pressure that flowed up at her in rhythmic waves from the chair.

She had by now decided it was a nerve center that reacted to hypnotic suggestion, and so when Hammond said suddenly, "Close your eyes, Barbara!" she complied at once.

"Raise your right hand!" he commanded.

Up came her right hand, with the pen in it.

He told her to place it back in her lap; and then swiftly put her through several tests—which she recognized as being of a more important kind.

What interested her even more was that she could let the center respond and monitor the parts of the body that he named—without losing control. So that when he commanded her hand to be numb and suddenly reached over and stuck a needle into it, she felt no sensation; and so she did not react.

Hammond seemed satisfied. After normalizing the feeling in her hand, he commanded: "In just a moment, I'm going to tell you to forget the tests we've just been doing, but you will remain completely under my control and answer truthfully any questions I ask you. Understand?"

"Yes, Mr. Hammond."

"Very well, forget everything we've done and said since I first asked you to close your eyes. When the memory has completely faded, open your eyes."

Barbara waited about ten seconds. She was thinking: "What roused his suspicions so quickly? And why would he care?" She suppressed an excited conviction that she was about to discover something of the secret life that went on in this office. She had never heard of a hypnotizing chair.

She opened her eyes.

She swayed—an act—then caught herself. "I beg your pardon, Mr. Hammond."

Hammond's gray eyes regarded her with deceptive friendliness. "You seem to be having problems this morning, Barbara."

"I really feel very well," Barbara protested.

"If there's anything in your life that has changed recently," he said quietly, "I want you to confide in me."

That was the beginning of an intensive questioning into her past history. Barbara answered freely. Apparently Hammond was finally convinced, for he presently politely thanked her for the conversation and sent her off to type the letters he had dictated.

As she sat at her desk a few minutes later, Barbara glanced up through the glass and saw Helen Wendell walking along the hall toward Hammond's office, disappear into it.

Hammond greeted Helen: "All the time I talked to Barbara, the life range indicator showed eight-four, above the hypnotizable range. And she told me nothing."

"How is it registering on me?" Helen asked.

He glanced down at his right to the instrument in an open desk drawer.

"Your usual eleven-three."

"And you?"

"My twelve point seven."

"Perhaps only the middle ranges are out of order," Helen said, and added, "Special Servicing will make their check after day-time office hours. All right?"

Hammond hesitated, then agreed that there seemed to be no reason for breaking the rules of caution by which they operated. During the lunch hour, Barbara experienced a brief return of the dizziness. But she was alert now to the possibilities. Instead of simply letting it happen, she tried to be aware of every nuance of the feeling.

There was a—shifting—taking place inside her.

She sensed a flow of energy particles from various points in her body to other points. A specific spot in her brain seemed to be monitoring the flow.

When the pulsations ceased—as abruptly as they had started—she thought: "That was more change taking place. I grew in some way in that minute."

She sat very still there in the restaurant, striving to evaluate what had changed. But she couldn't decide.

Nonetheless, she was content. Her impulse had been to seek out Dr. Gloge some time during the day in the hope that he would be wanting to give her a second injection. That ended. Obviously, all the changes from the first shot had not yet taken place.

She returned to Scientific Investigation and Liaison.

The bell sound, as Barbara entered, caused Hammond to glance at the indicator. He stared at it for a long moment, then buzzed Helen Wendell.

"Barbara now reads nine point two!" he said softly.

Helen came to the door of his office. "You mean her reading has gone up?" She smiled. "Well, that settles it. It is the instrument."

"What makes you say that?" Hammond seemed strangely unsure.

"In all my experience," Helen said, "I've never seen anyone change for the better. There's the slow drop as they grow older, but—" she stopped.

The strong face was relaxing. Yet after a moment Hammond said, "Still—we never take chances, so I think I'll keep her with me tonight. Do you mind?"

"It's a nuisance," she said, "but all right."

"I'll give her the conditioning that overwhelms twelve point 0 and higher. She'll never know what hit her."

[V]

It was shortly after dark when Dr. Henry Gloge parked his black van near Barbara's home. He promptly tuned in on the audio device attached to the tree and adjusted the volume for pickup.

After thirty seconds of silence, he began to frown. "Not again!" he thought; then, wearily, "Well, maybe she's over at her boy friend's."

He started the motor and presently drew up at the curb opposite Strather's apartment. A quick check established that the lanky redhead was there—but alone.

The young man was awake and in an angry state. As Gloge listened in, Vince savagely picked up the phone and dialed what must have been Barbara's number, for presently he slammed the receiver down and muttered, "Doesn't she know I've got to go to work tonight? Where can that girl be?"

That, in rising alarm, was a question which Gloge asked himself as the evening wore on. He returned to the vicinity of Barbara's boarding house. Until eleven P.M. the phone in her room rang periodically, testifying to Vince's concern.

When it had not rung for an hour, Gloge presumed that Strather had gone off to night duty. It was not a fact that could be left to surmise. He drove back to Vince's apartment. No sounds came from it.

Gloge accordingly returned to the street where Barbara lived.

He was tired now, so he rigged up an alarm system that would buzz him if Barbara entered her room; then, wearily, he crawled onto the cot in the back of the van and quickly fell into a deep sleep.

Earlier, as Barbara sat in her office a few minutes before closing time, she swayed and almost blacked out.

Greatly alarmed, she emerged from her office and reported the feeling to Helen Wendell. She did not question the logic of seeking the help of Hammond's blonde aide.

The secretary was sympathetic, and promptly took her in to John Hammond. By this time Barbara had experienced several more brief blackouts. So she was grateful when Hammond unlocked the door behind his desk, led her through a luxurious living room and into what he called the "spare bedroom."

She undressed, slipped under the sheets and promptly went to sleep. Thus, subtly, she was captured.

During the evening, Hammond and Helen Wendell took turns looking in on her.

At midnight, the Special Servicing expert reported that the life range indicator was working properly and he himself checked the body of the sleeping girl. "I get nine two," he said. "Who is she? New arrival?"

The silence that greeted his remark abruptly startled him. "You mean she's an Earther?"

"At least," said Helen Wendell after the man had departed, "there's been no further change."

Hammond said, "Too bad she's above the hypnotizable stage. Mere conditioning is actually a sorry substitute for what we need here—truth."

"What are you going to do?"

Hammond did not make up his mind about that until after daybreak.

"Since nine two is no real threat to us," he said then, "we merely return to routine and keep aware that maybe somebody is doing something that we don't know about. Perhaps we might even use a little ESP on her occasionally."

"Here—at Alpha?"

Hammond stared thoughtfully at his beautiful aide. Normally, he trusted her reactions in such matters.

She must have sensed what he was thinking, for she said quickly, "The last time we used extended perception, about 1800 Earthers tuned in on us. Of course, they thought of it merely as their imagination, but some of them compared notes. It was talked about for weeks, and some awfully important things were close to being revealed."

"We-l-l-l, okay, let's be aware of her then."

"All right. On that basis I'll wake her up."

As soon as she was in her office, Barbara phoned Vince. There was no answer. Which was not surprising. If he had worked the night shift, he would be dead to the world. She hung up and checked with the photo lab, and was much relieved when the night work list showed that Vince had signed in and out.

As she sat at her desk that morning, Barbara felt extremely grateful to Hammond and his secretary for having been so helpful to her. But she was also slightly guilty. She suspected that she had been affected again by the injection that Gloge had given her.

It was disconcerting to have been so strongly affected. "But I feel all right now!" she thought as she typed away at the pile of work Helen Wendell had put in her basket. Yet her mind was astir with plans. At ten o'clock, Helen sent her out with the usual morning briefcase full of memos and reports.

Elsewhere—

Gloge had awakened shortly after seven. Still no Barbara. Baffled, he shaved with his electric razor, drove to a nearby business thoroughfare and ate breakfast.

He next went back to the street where Strather lived. A quick check established that the man was home. Gloge triggered his second charge of gas—and a few minutes later was in the apartment.

The young man had changed again to his pajamas, and he lay stretched out once more on the settee in his living room. If anything, the angry expression on his face was more pronounced.

Gloge, needle in hand, hesitated. He was not happy with this subject. Yet he realized that there was no turning back at this stage. Without further pause, holding the point almost against Strather's body, he squeezed the trigger.

There was no visible reaction.

As he headed for his office at Research Alpha, Gloge's thought was on the girl. Her absence was unfortunate. He had hoped to inject the serum into his two subjects at approximately the same time. Evidently that was not going to happen.

[VI]

A few minutes after he returned to his office, Dr. Gloge's phone rang. His door was open, and he heard his secretary answer. The woman looked up over the receiver.

"It's for you, Doctor. That girl who worked here for a while—Barbara Ellington."

The shock that went through Gloge must have shown as disapproval, for the woman said hastily, "Shall I tell her you're not in?"

Gloge quivered with uncertainty. "No." He paused; then, "I'll take the call in here."

When he heard the clear, bell-like voice of the girl, Dr. Gloge felt tensely ready for anything.

"What is it, Barbara?" he asked.

"I'm supposed to bring some papers over to you," her voice trilled in its alive, vital way. "I'm to give them to you only, so I wanted to make sure you would be there."

. . . Opportunity!

It seemed to Gloge that he couldn't have asked for a more favorable turn. His other subject would now come to his office where he could fire the second injection into her and deal personally with any reaction.

As it developed, there was no reaction that he could detect. She had turned away after delivering the papers to him, and that was when he fired the needle gun. It was a perfect shot. The girl neither jumped nor swung about; she simply kept going toward the door, opened it, and went through.

Barbara did not return to Hammond's office. She expected a strong physiological disturbance from the second injection, and she wanted to be in the privacy of her own room when it happened. It had cost her an effort not to react in front of Gloge.

So she stayed in her bedroom, waited as long as she thought wise, and then phoned and told Helen Wendell that she was not well.

Helen said sympathetically, "Well, I suppose it was to be expected after the bad night you had."

Barbara answered quickly, "I began to have dizzy spells and nausea. I panicked and rushed home."

"You're home now?"

"Yes."

"I'll tell Mr. Hammond."

Barbara hung up, unhappy with those final words. But there was no way to stop his learning about her condition. She had a feeling she was in danger of losing her job. And it was too soon. Later, after the experiment, it wouldn't matter, she thought uneasily.

Perhaps she had better take the "normal" precautions of an employee. "After all," she thought, "I probably show symptoms." She called her doctor and made an appointment for the following day. Barbara replaced the receiver feeling a strange glee. "I ought to be in foul shape by tomorrow," she thought, "from the second injection."

What Hammond did when he returned to his office late that afternoon was to sit in thought for a while after Helen reported to him Barbara's situation.

Then:

"It doesn't add up, Helen. I should have asked you before. Have you examined her file?"

The blonde young woman smiled gravely. "I can tell you everything that's in it, right from the top of my head. After all, I security-checked her. What do you want to know?"

"You mean there's nothing?"

"Nothing that I could find."

Hammond hesitated no longer. He was accustomed to trusting Helen Wendell. Abruptly he threw up his hands. "All right. She's got the whole weekend to be sick in. Call me when she comes in to work again. Did that report arrive from New Brasilia?"

"It was sent to Manila Center."

"Are you serious? Let me talk to Ramon. There must be a reason!" Quickly he was absorbed in his new tasks.

Barbara slept. When she awakened her clock said twelve after seven.

It was daylight, early morning. She found that out in a sensational fashion. She went outside and looked . . . without moving from the bed!

There she was lying in her bedroom; and there she was out in the street.

Simultaneously.

Involuntarily, she held her breath. Slowly, the outside scene faded, and she was back in the bed, wholly indoors.

With a gasp, she started breathing again.

By cautious experimentation, she discovered that her perception extended about a hundred yards.

And that was all she learned. Something in her brain acted like an invisible eye stalk that could reach through walls and bring back visual images to the light-interpretation centers. The ability remained completely stable.

Presently she became aware that a small black van was parked down the street and that Dr. Gloge was in it. She realized that he had an instrument with an earplug with which he seemed to be listening in on her.

His face was intent, his small eyes narrowed. Something of the determination of this little, bald-headed scientist seeped through to her, and Barbara suddenly felt uneasy. She sensed remorselessness, an impersonal quality that was entirely different from her own light-hearted participation in his experiment.

To Gloge—she realized suddenly—his subjects were like inanimate objects.

In human terms the viciousness of it was infinite.

As she continued to perceive him, Gloge shut off his instruments, started the motor of his car and drove off.

Since Vince was again on the night shift, presumably Gloge was heading home.

She phoned Vince's apartment to make sure; when there was no answer, she called the photo lab.

"No, Strather didn't come in last night," the administrative assistant of that department told her.

Barbara replaced the receiver unhappily, recalling that Vince had not responded well to the first shot. She suspected that the biologist had given him his second shot also, and that he was not responding favorably to it either.

She dressed and drove over to his apartment. As she came near, she could see him inside, so when he showed no sign of replying to her ring, she let herself in with her key—and found him on the living room couch, tossing and turning. He looked feverish. She felt his forehead; it was dry and hot to the touch.

He stirred and opened his eyes, looked up with his sick brown eyes into her bright blue ones. She thought unhappily: "I'm so well and he's so ill. What can be wrong?"

Aloud, anxiously, she said, "You need a doctor, Vince. What's the name of that man who gave you a checkup last year?"

"I'll be all right," he mumbled. He sank back to sleep.

Sitting there on the settee beside him, Barbara felt something in her lungs. Her instant, amazed thought was: "Gas!" But she was too slow.

She must have blacked out instantly—because her next awareness was of lying on the floor, and of Gloge bending over her.

The scientist was calm, efficient, seemed satisfied. Barbara caught his thought: "She'll be all right."

She realized that he was stepping past her to Vince. "Hmmm!" Gloge seemed critical and unhappy. "Still not good. Let's see if tranquilizer will help him."

He made the injection, then straightened, and there was a strange, hard thought in his mind: "By Monday night, it'll be time for the third injection and I'll have to decide what to do."

So clear was the thought that came from him, it was almost as if he spoke aloud. What his thought said was that he intended to kill them both, if either failed to develop as he desired.

Shocked, Barbara held herself very still; and at that moment an entirely different growth process occurred in her.

It began with a veritable flood of suppressed information suddenly rising to the surface of her mind.

. . . About the reality of what people were like . . . the dupes, the malingerers and the weaklings on the one hand, and, on the other, the angry and the distorted, the worldly wise and the cynics. She recognized that there were well-meaning people in the world who were strong, but she was more aware of the destructive at this instant . . . by the million, the swindlers and betrayers—all self-justified, she saw now. But she realized also that they had misread their own bitter experiences. Because they were greedy and lustful and had lost their fear of punishment, earthly or unearthly; because they resented being thwarted in their slightest whim; because—

A forgotten scene flashed into her mind from her own past, of a minor executive in her first job, who had fired her when she refused to come up to his apartment.

All her life, she had been taught and she had tried not to be aware of such things. But now, at some level of neural computation, she permitted all that data to be calculated into the main stream of her awareness.

The process was still going on a few minutes later when Gloge departed as silently as he had come.

After he had left, Barbara tried to get up and was surprised that she could not even open her eyes. The realization that her body was still unconscious presently enthralled her.

What a marvelous ability!

As time passed, it began to be disconcerting. She thought: "I'm really quite helpless." It was early afternoon before she was finally able to move. She got up, subdued and thoughtful, warmed a can of soup for Vince and herself and forced him to drink it from a cup.

Immediately after, he stretched out again on the couch and fell asleep. Barbara left the apartment to keep her appointment with her own doctor.

As she drove, she could feel a stirring inside her. More change? She decided it was. Perhaps there would be many such between now and Monday. Yet her intuition was that she would not be able to dominate this situation with the changes from the first and second shots only.

"Somehow," she thought, "I've got to get that third shot."

[VII]

At noon Monday, after he had dictated some letters to a girl from the steno pool, Hammond came out of his office.

"What's the word from Nine-two?"

Helen looked up with her flashing smile. "Barbara?"

"Yes."

"Her doctor called in this morning at her request. He said he saw her Saturday. She appears to have a mild temperature, is subject to dizzy spells, and a variety of unmentionable ailments like diarrhea. However, there's one unexpected thing, the doctor said—evidently his own comment. Interested?"

"Of course."

"He said that in his opinion Barbara has had a major personality change since he last checked her about a year ago."

Hammond shook his head slowly. "Merely confirms our own observation. Well, keep me in touch."

But about four o'clock, when the long distance screen was finally silent, he buzzed Helen Wendell. "I can't get that girl out of my mind. It's premonition level stuff, so I can't ignore it. Phone Barbara."

She called to him a minute later: "Sorry, there's no answer."

"Bring her file to me," said Hammond. "I've got to assure myself I'm not missing something in this unusual matter."

As he scanned the typed pages a few minutes later, he came presently to the photograph of Vince Strather. He uttered an exclamation.

"What is it?" Helen asked.

He told her what had happened the previous week between Dr. Gloge and Vince Strather.

He finished, "Of course, I didn't connect Barbara with that young man. But this is his picture. Get Gloge's file."

"Apparently the change started when his sister died two months ago," Helen Wendell said presently. "One of those sudden and dangerous shifts in personal motivation." She added ruefully, "I should have watched him on that. The death of a near relative has often proved important."

She was seated in the main room of Hammond's living quarters at Research Alpha. The door to Hammond's private office behind them was closed. Across the room, a large wall safe had been opened, revealing a wide double row of thin, metal-bound files. Two of the files—Henry Gloge's and Barbara Ellington's—lay on the table before Helen. Hammond stood beside her.

He said now, "What about that trip he made back east early in the month?"

"He spent three days in his home town, purportedly to make arrangements to sell his sister's and his property there. They had a house, complete with private laboratory, untenanted, on the grounds of an old farm. The perfect location for unsupervised experimentation. On primates? Not likely. They're not easy to obtain secretly and, except for the smaller gibbons, they should make potentially quick dangerous subjects for Dr. Gloge's project. So it must be humans he planned to work on."

Hammond nodded.

There was an almost sick expression on his face.

The woman looked up at him. "You seem very anxious. Presumably, Barbara and Vince have now had two injections each. That will take them to 50,000 years from now on some level. It doesn't seem desperately serious to me."

The man smiled tautly. "Don't forget that we're dealing with one of the seed races."

"Yes—but only 50,000 years so far."

He stared at her sympathetically. "You and I," he said, "are still far down on the ladder. So it's hard for us to conceive of the evolutionary potential of the Genus homo galacticus."

She laughed. "I'm content with my lowly lot—"

"Good conditioning," he murmured.

"—but I'm willing to accept your analysis. What do you intent to do with Gloge?"

Hammond straightened decisively. "This experiment on humans has to be stopped at once. Call Ames and have him put special security men at every exit. For the next hour, don't let Gloge out of this building. And if Vince or Barbara try to enter the complex, tell him to hold them. When you've done that, start canceling my appointments for the rest of the day and evening."

He disappeared into his bedroom, came out presently dressed for the street.

Helen Wendell greeted him with: "I called Ames and he says 'Check!' But I also phoned Gloge's office. He left about an hour ago, his secretary says."

Hammond said quickly, "Sound a standby alert. Tell Ames to throw a guard around the homes of both of those young people!"

"You're going where?"

"First Barbara, then Vince. I only hope I'm in time."

A look must have come into Helen's face, because he smiled tensely and said, "Your expression says I'm getting too involved."

The beautiful blonde woman smiled with understanding, said, "Every day on this planet thousands of people are murdered, hundreds of thousands are robbed and countless minor acts of violence occur. People are struck, choked, yelled at, degraded, cheated—I could go on. If we ever opened ourselves to that, we'd shrivel away."

"I kind of like Barbara," Hammond confessed.

Helen was calm. "So do I. What do you think is happening?"

"As I see it, Gloge gave them the first injection last Wednesday and the second on Friday. That means the third one should be given today. That I've