Thirty seconds before the program time he sat down at the round table opposite McEldownie, and Brave took up a forbidding posture behind his chair. His host began to speak, and suddenly Alan realized why the tall blond irrepressible fellow had been trusted with a program of such gravity as _Worlds of Portent_. As the cameras rolled and the brilliant lights came on, the jester's motley dropped away from him and was replaced by a cloak of earnest sobriety. His fantastic appearance heightened the seriousness; it was as shocking and thought-producing as if a scarecrow had begun to talk Schopenhauer. He knew precisely how much to say; when to sit back and let Alan do a monologue, and when to interrupt with a pertinent question. He was a genius at his work. And then, perhaps four or five minutes after the telecast had begun, Alan became aware of two things, each quite extraordinary. First, Brave had disappeared. Alan glanced back over his shoulder and found the Indian had vanished. The lights were so bright that his vision did not extend to the walls of the studio, so he presumed that his friend was still there somewhere; but he had left the range of the cameras. And secondly, something was happening to Alan's mind. He tried to analyze the trouble, but he could not do it. He could only touch a few salient points of it; the fact that although he was talking very learnedly, and with (so far as he could tell) lucidity and vigor, _he_ was not controlling his tongue in the least. It was almost like being drunk; there seemed to be a small entity perched on the root of his tongue who was pulling the strings of speech. But whereas the drunken entity was malicious and got him into all sorts of rows and riots, this particular sprite was doing what seemed a fine job for him. He knew quite well that he himself was not forming or directing the words he spoke. It was unpleasant, to say the least. And there was something else. His mind, freed of necessity to concentrate on the program, was somewhere off in space, listening intently ... listening to a voice from without and within, a voice that inhabited the cold wastes of time and infinity as well as the bone-bounded sphere of his brain. _Listen to me, Alan Rackham_, said the voice. Wordlessly, yet with words, from the farthest stretches of the galaxies and still existing in the core of his own intellect, cold as hoarfrost, hot as berserker's rage, gentle and persuasive as a doting mother, the voice said to him, _Listen to me_. * * * * *