"I think so too," said Alan. Brave grinned. His therapy had overcome the former hypnotist's commands. Alan went on. "The big question was, why have they suddenly appeared among us, why now? I think we have that answered. It isn't sudden; it may have been happening for generations. Slip-ups may have occurred as far back as history goes. One mistake might go unremarked; two might make a man wonder: then he'd investigate, and be either eliminated (they shot at me, you remember!) or hypnotized and taken under the control of the mutants." "Bright lad! Your own experience bears that out." "So the newest big question would be: how do we fight them? Perhaps we're the first to recognize them and retain our own wills. We can't let that circumstance go to waste, Brave. We've got to strike at them for our race's sake." He scowled. "But that leads to this: _do_ we strike at them?" "What do you mean, Alan?" "I mean ... well, Brave, would we be in the right to take law into our own hands and start a murder campaign, say, against them? Suppose we were fighting good, instead of evil?" Brave looked blank. "How do we know they're wrong?" Alan continued. "How do we know they're against us? Perhaps they are the true race of the future, and every man of intelligence should be on their side. No, this isn't an hypnotically planted theory: it's something I brooded on last night before I went to sleep. Where do our loyalties stand? If Homo superior is intelligent and self-centered, callous toward us, then obviously we fight him fang and claw. But if he is intelligent and benevolent, as you'd expect from a higher type of being, then we should ally ourselves with him." "He shot at you. Is that benevolence?" "I know. We might be wrong. It may have been a simple maniac who did it. Again, I think the coincidence would be too great; well, perhaps Homo superior had a good reason for it. We can't judge too deeply on insufficient evidence." * * * * * Brave said, "I see what you mean, Alan, and in abstract theory I agree with it. If the mutants are a good breed, a real improvement on our own kind, then we owe them the allegiance of intelligent underlings. But concrete evidence says they're not good. They shoot at you; they employ the most malefic and vicious kind of hypnotism on you, where a simple conditioning to the fact of their goodness would have brought you around to their side just as easily--and with twice the value. They aren't good. They are villainous." He grimaced. "I can see you hate the idea. Why? What's on your mind that I don't know about?" Alan turned a haunted face to him. "Brave," he said, "Brave, Win's one of them." The Indian said, "No. You're wrong. Not Win." "That's what I repeated a couple of hundred times last night. Not Win, not Win. But I mashed out a cigarette on her arm--accidentally, of course--and she didn't feel it. It left a hell of a burn. But she never felt it. She can't feel pain. _She's mutant._"