With infinite caution, Venard disclosed the memory-crystal, taking it with a kind of dignified stealth from beneath the rags that had once been a shirt. Dreamily he studied the small, delicate translucence of the sphere. He had managed to retain that from the pawing Marties' greedy scanners. Looking back into Venard's eyes from the shifting beauty of the sphere, the three-dimensional, almost frighteningly life-like figure of Vale who had once loved Venard, preened and sighed provocatively. The figure moved, danced in lithe grace through shifting clouds. A strange, heart-aching vision of reality and dream. Louie Larson's beady black eyes bulged, sweat popped out of his pallid skin and trickled down through the bristles of his dirt-caked beard. "You--you're gonna use _that_?" "Suicide, that's better than the experimental ward, isn't it? Kewpie Doll, sometimes you leave the experimental wards alive, but no one would ever guess you had once been human. They work on the genes, son. And they're devilishly clever." He gripped the memory-crystal. "This is a quick and easy way. There's enough of that amazing explosive developed by the Venusian Sea People in this crystal to blow everything for fifty yards around us to hell. Oh, I'll use it, Kewpie Doll." "Sure, I'd prefer it to the wards," moaned Larson softly, "but this--this suicide, it's so final." "There's something pretty nice about finality, Kewpie Doll. If you can really find it." They waited. Larson picked at his beard, lips twitching. Venard looked dreamily into the cloudy depths of the memory-crystal. Next to them in a stinking cell, a man began to cry, a series of burbling choking cries of fear and hopeless hate. From somewhere far down the corridor, a woman was singing an ancient hymn. Venard was extremely fortunate to have retained the memory-crystal. A few prisoners had been able to do likewise. Because of the unique physiogenic quality of the little spheres, ordinary scanners failed to detect their presence. They were small and could be concealed under one's clothing, and passed from one prisoner to another to escape discovery. Others had used their suicidal capacity for a final escape from unspeakable pain and horror. Because of the difficulty in finding them, the memory-spheres constituted a constant threat to the Martian guards. Many a Martie had developed violent neurosis from knowing that the prisoners they guarded might be hiding a memory-crystal, and might also at any moment, merely by pressing a small release within the spheres, set off the mutually antagonistic elements and blow up guards, prisoners and things surrounding them to bloody ruin.