"Father," said Pola, "don't! There's no use-"

But Arvardan's interruption was peremptory. "Wait, now. Let me think. I'm the one who can settle this. Who better? Let me ask him a few questions…Look, Schwartz."

Schwartz looked up again.

"Yours was the only world in the Galaxy?"

Schwartz nodded, then said dully, "Yes."

"But you only thought that. I mean you didn't have space travel, so you couldn't check up. There might have been many other inhabited worlds."

"I have no way of telling that."

"Yes, of course. A pity. What about atomic power?"

"We had an atomic bomb. Uranium-and plutonium-I guess that's what made this world radioactive. There must have been another war after all-after I left…Atomic bombs." Somehow Schwartz was back in Chicago, back in his old world, before the bombs. And he wits sorry. Not for himself, but for that beautiful world…

But Arvardan was muttering to himself. Then, " All right. You had a language, of course."

"Earth? Lots of them."

"How about you?"

"English-after I was a grown man."

"Well, say something in it."

For two months or more Schwartz had said nothing in English. But now, with lovingness, he said slowly, "I want to go home and be with my own people."

Arvardan spoke to Shekt. "18 that the language he used when he was Synapsified, Shekt?"

"I can't tell," said Shekt, in mystification. "Queer sounds then and queer sounds now. How can I relate them?"

"Well, never mind…What's your word for 'mother' in your language, Schwartz?"

Schwartz told him.

"Uh-huh. How about 'father'… 'brother'…'one'-the numeral, that is…'two'…'three'…'house'…'man'…'wife'…"

This went on and on, and when Arvardan paused for breath his expression was one of awed bewilderment.

"Shekt," he said, "either this man is genuine or I'm the victim of as wild a nightmare as can be conceived. He's speaking a language practically equivalent to the inscriptions found in the fifty-thousand-year-old strata on Sirius, Arcturus, Alpha Centauri, and twenty others. He speaks it. The language has only been deciphered in the last generation, and there aren't a dozen men in the Galaxy besides myself who can understand it."

"Are you sure of this?"

"Am I sure? Of course I'm sure. I'm an archaeologist. It's my business to know."

For an instant Schwartz felt his armor of aloofness cracking. For the first time he felt himself regaining the individuality he had lost. The secret was out; he was a man from the past, and they accepted it. It proved him sane, stilled forever that haunting doubt, and he was grateful. And yet he held aloof.

"I've got to have him." It was Arvardan again, burning in the holy flame of his profession. "Shekt, you have no idea what this means to archaeology. Shekt-it's a man from the past. Oh, Great Space!…Listen, we can make a deal. This is the proof Earth is looking for. They can have him. They can-"

Schwartz interrupted sardonically. "I know what you're thinking. You think that Earth will prove itself to be the source of civilization through me and that they will be grateful for it. I tell you, no! I've thought of it and I would have bartered for my own life. But they won't believe me-or you."

"There's absolute proof."

"They won't listen. Do you know why? Because they have certain fixed notions about the past. Any change would be blasphemy in their eyes, even if it were the truth. They don't want the truth; they want their traditions."

"Bel," said Pola, "I think he's right."

Arvardan ground his teeth. "We could try."

"We would fail," insisted Schwartz.

"How can you know?"

"I know!" And the words fell with such oracular insistence that Arvardan was silent before them.

It was Shekt who was looking at him now with a strange light in his tired eyes.

He asked softly, "Have you felt any bad effects as a result of the Synapsifier?"

Schwartz didn't know the word but caught the meaning. They had operated, and on his mind. How much he was learning!

He said, "No bad effects."

"But I see you learned our language rapidly. You speak it very well. In fact, you might be a native. Doesn't it surprise you?"

"I always had a very good memory," was the cold response.

"And so you feel no different now than before you were treated?"

"That's right."

Dr. Shekt's eyes were hard now, and he said, "Why do you bother? You know that I'm certain you know what I'm thinking."

Schwartz laughed shortly. "That I can read minds? Well. what of it?"

But Shekt had dropped him. He had turned his white, helpless face to Arvardan. "He can sense minds, Arvardan. How much I could do with him. And to be here-to be helpless…"

"What-what-what-" Arvardan popped wildly.

And even Pola's face somehow gained interest. "Can you really?" she asked Schwartz.

He nodded at her. She had taken care of him. and now they would kill her. Yet she was a traitor.

Shekt was saying, " Arvardan, you remember the bacteriologist I told you about, the one who died as a result of the effects of the Synapsifier? One of the first symptoms of mental breakdown was his claim that he could read minds. And he could. I found that out before he died, and it's been my secret. I've told no one-but it's possible, Arvardan, it's possible. You see, with the lowering of brain-cell resistance, the brain may be able to pick up the magnetic fields induced by the microcurrents of other's thoughts and reconvert it into similar vibrations in itself. It's the same principle as that of any ordinary recorder. It would be telepathy in every sense of the word-"

Schwartz maintained a stubborn and hostile silence as Arvardan turned slowly in his direction. "If this is so, Shekt, we might be able to use him." The archaeologist's mind was spinning wildly, working out impossibilities. "There may be a way out now. There must be a way out. For us and the Galaxy."

But Schwartz was cold to the tumult in the Mind Touch he sensed so clearly. He said, "You mean by my reading their minds? How would that help? Of course I can do more than read minds. How's that, for instance?"

It was a light push, but Arvardan yelped at the sudden pain of it..

"I did that," said Schwartz. "Want more?"

Arvardan gasped, "You can do that to the guards? To the Secretary? Why did you let them bring you here? Great Galaxy, Shekt, there'll be no trouble. Now, listen, Schwartz-"

"No," said Schwartz, "you listen. Why do I want to get out? Where will I be? Still on this dead world. I want to go home, and I can't go home. I want my people and my world, and I can't have them. And I want to die."

"But it's a question of all the Galaxy, Schwartz. You can't think of yourself."

"Can't I? Why not? Must I worry about your Galaxy now? I hope your Galaxy rots and dies. I know what Earth is planning to do, and I am glad. The young lady said before she had chosen her side. Well, I've chosen my side, and my side is Earth."

"What?"

"Why not? I'm an Earthman!"