"Because you're a mutant, and we know you can't. Why can't you, I wonder," muttered Brave in a conversational tone, fitting the splinters under the nails again. "Pain is a necessity of life as we know it. It warns you of danger. A man could be sliced off up to the waist without noticing it, except for pain. Why would the next higher animal to man in the scale of evolution have lost the sensation of pain? It doesn't make sense." "That's the first thing you've said that I agree with or understand. It doesn't make sense. You're all nuts." "Come off it," said Alan. "You have given yourself away too often. Don't go back to the old innocent routine." Rob Pope said, "Suppose they can regenerate lost appendages? It isn't as mad as it sounds. Suppose that welder slipped away and grew himself a new hand? In the case of such a beast, what good would pain be to him? It'd be no more than a nuisance. The lack of pain then becomes an intelligent development--but only then." "What devils they must be," said Don, staring at Grady. "Right out of the swamps of Hell." Brave said to the pilot, "Now I'm going to ask you a question. If you give me a fair answer I'll take out one of these sticks. If you don't, I'll drive it into you--under the nail it hurts about as bad as anything can--and light it. It's an old trick and it works wonders as a tongue-loosener. Here's the question: are you a mutant of our race, a superman?" Grady looked at him for a moment and then he laughed. He was still laughing when Brave hit the stiff wood with a hammer and sank it beneath the nail. Then he screamed. "You do that real well. It sounds as if that hurt you. Keep it up if you like; it won't bother me. I'm an Indian, Mr. Grady. I'm as sensitive and humane as the next guy until I'm up against somebody who fights unfairly, who's mean and cruel and treacherous; then I turn cold and I say to myself, how shall I fight this brute? and if torture is the best answer, I use it without any qualms. That's sense, it seems to me. Well, I hate your uncanny guts, Mr. Grady, and all your crew: and there isn't any way to fight you that I can see, so I'll torture you. And even if I'm nine-tenths certain that you aren't feeling it, still it eases me a little to hear you whoop and yell. And there's that tenth of my brain that says maybe you are feeling it. I hope you are. I really hope you are." * * * * * He lit the wood: it was synthetic, a very light, hard compound of fibers that burnt with a quick flame, as hot as the heart of a coal. It reached the nail and curled it back in two shavings of black char: and Grady almost shattered his throat with his roaring. "Brave," said Alan, "stop it! He does feel it!" "You raving maniacs, certainly I feel it!" Grady cried. "Where'd you get the idea I couldn't? You're all mad!"