"The effect of the rays on the muscles is unique. They become almost rubbery, not loose, you understand, but capable of stretching and flexing in directions that look uncanny to a non-initiate. That's how poor Grady escaped being sliced down the middle when he rammed up his ship. He drew all his muscles to the sides and flattened out like a plaster on the chair. You couldn't do that; your skeletons are thicker and more immovable than ours. I'd show you how I can ooze out sideways and make my ribs about as level as a picket fence--but I'm afraid you wouldn't like the sight. It must be pretty gruesome to an Earthman." "Were the rays in the TV lights?" asked Bill Thihling. "That's right. I've caught plenty of fish that way, including President Blose of the U.S. of A. and nine-tenths of his cabinet. A lot of your scientists have become unwitting puppets through being seen on _Worlds of Portent_. Alan got two treatments there and one on Project Star. Win got her first in the gym of the colony and two more in that shed." He smiled guilelessly. "You were right about her, of course, in a way I mean; for she can't feel pain. I caught her mind just before I pinched her--and very pleasant it was, too, my dear, even if I meant it impersonally--and told her to simulate pain. She was under my control every second of that time. When she left, I pretended to go to sleep, and called her back. I had a feeling I'd need her around. Glad I did. She and Alan are all the fighting forces I have at the moment." * * * * * Alan brushed over much of what he wanted to know, to ask, "Can you feel pain, Mac?" "Yes, I can. A man can't give up pain. It's too valuable. We put an added ingredient into the rays we used on you people of Terra, to eliminate pain." "Why?" "I'll get to that. The welder, of course, was a man who had been treated. One of our boys got rid of him in a vat of molten metal. Couldn't have an unfinished experiment walking around loose. He slipped up when he failed to simulate pain. Sometimes we get 'em like that, too dumb to do the right things even under complete hypnosis. Win was a different case. She didn't know she'd been burnt by that cigarette. If she'd seen it, she'd have yipped. She was conditioned to do it, even to think she felt pain. If you'd known you'd been grazed by that fireball, Alan, you'd not only have roared, you'd have _thought_ you felt it." "Why don't I think so now?" "It's too late for verisimilitude. Your subconscious knows that. It shrugs its teensy-weensy shoulders and forgets it." "Who shot at Alan after the welder incident?" asked Brave. His face was cold and malignant. "One of Getty's men." "Doc Pomposity?"