And yet _an animal instinctively seeks its own protection_. With trembling fingers Lessing reached out and opened the baffle-snap on the monitor. "Take it off, Tommy," he whispered. The boy blinked in amazement, and pulled the grey helmet from his head. Lessing felt the familiar prickly feeling run down his scalp as the boy stared at him. He could feel deep in his own mind the cold chill of terror radiating from the boy. Then, suddenly, it began to fade. A sense of warmth--peace and security and comfort--swept in as the fear faded from the boy's face. The fire engine clattered to the floor. * * * * * They analyzed the tapes later, punching the data cards with greatest care, filing them through the machines for the basic processing and classification that all their data underwent. It was late that night when they had the report back in their hands. Dorffman stared at it angrily. "It's obviously wrong," he grated. "It doesn't fit. Dave, it doesn't agree with _anything_ we've observed before. There must be an error." "Of course," said Lessing. "According to the theory. The theory says that adult psi-contact is deadly to the growing child. It smothers their potential through repeated contact until it dries up completely. We've proved that, haven't we? Time after time. Everything goes according to the theory--except Tommy. But Tommy's psi-potential was drying up there on the Farm, until the distortion was threatening the balance of his mind. Then he made an adult contact, and we saw how he bloomed." Lessing sank down to his desk wearily. "What are we going to do, Jack? Formulate a separate theory for Tommy?" "Of course not," said Dorffman. "The instruments were wrong. Somehow we misread the data--" "Didn't you see his _face_?" Lessing burst out. "Didn't you see how he _acted_? What do you want with an instrument reading?" He shook his head. "It's no good, Jack. Something different happened here, something we'd never counted on. It's something the theory just doesn't allow for." They sat silently for a while. Then Dorffman said: "What are you going to do?" "I don't know," said Lessing. "Maybe when we fell into this bramble bush we blinded ourselves with the urge to classify--to line everything up in neat rows like pins in a paper. Maybe we were so blind we missed the path altogether." "But the book is due! The Conference speech--"