"My dear woman, don't you realize this is a serious situation? The city's people will starve in time. No one can even bring food in because the trucks make too much noise! As an alternative, we could evacuate, but is your pet more valuable than the life of a great city?" "N-no...." "Then, please! Listen to reason!" "Kill it," Judd said. "Go ahead." Dr. Jamison withdrew from his pocket a small blasting pistol used by the Department of Domestic Animals for elimination of injured creatures. He advanced on Black Eyes, who sat on its haunches in the center of the room, surveying the scientist. Dr. Jamison put his blaster away. "I can't," he said. "I don't want to." Judd smiled. "I know it. No one--no _thing_--can kill Black Eyes. You said so yourself. It was a waste of time to try it. In that case--" "In that case," Dr. Jamison finished for him, "we're helpless. There isn't a man--or an animal--on Earth that will destroy this thing. Wait a minute--does it sleep, Mr. Whitney?" "I don't think so. At least, I never saw it sleep. And your team of scientists, did they report anything?" "No. As far as they could see, the creature never slept. We can't catch it unawares." "Could you anesthetize it?" "How? It can sense danger, and long before you could do that, it would stop you. It's only made one mistake, Mr. Whitney: it believes the noises of the city represent a danger. And that's only a negative mistake. Noise won't hurt Black Eyes, of course. It simply makes the animal unnecessarily cautious. But we cannot anesthetize it any more than we can kill it." "I could take it back to Venus." "Could you? Could you? I hadn't thought of that." Judd shook his head. "I can't." "What do you mean you can't?" "It won't let me. Somehow it can sense our thoughts when we think something it doesn't want. I can't take it to Venus! No man could, because it doesn't want to go." "My dear Mr. Whitney--do you mean to say you believe it can _think_?" "Uh-uh. Didn't say that. It can sense our thoughts, and that's something else again." Dr. Jamison threw his hands up over his head in a dramatic gesture. "It's hopeless," he said. * * * * * Things grew worse. New York crawled along to a standstill. People began to move from the city. In trickles, at first, but the trickles became torrents, as New York's ten million people began to depart for saner places. It might take months--it might even take years, but the exodus had begun. Nothing could stop it. Because of a harmless little beast with the eyes of a tarsier, the life of a great city was coming to an end. Word spread. Scientists all over the world studied reports on Black Eyes. No one had any ideas. Everyone was stumped. Black Eyes had no particular desire to go outside. Black Eyes merely remained in the Whitney house, contemplating nothing in particular, and stopping everything.