The research program? But that was crippled by the Committee's adverse decision, and by Thorn's absence. He couldn't do much there. Besides he had the feeling that any research program was becoming too slow and remote a measure for dealing with the present situation. The Committee itself? But what single, definite thing could he tell them that he had not told them last night? His own mind, then? How about that as an avenue of attack? Stronger than ever before, the conviction came that there were dark avenues leading down from his consciousness--one of them to a frighteningly devilish, chaos-loving version of himself--and that if he concentrated his mind in a certain peculiar way he might be able to slip down one of them. There was a devil-may-care lure to those dark avenues--the promise of a world better suiting the darker, Dawn phases of his personality. And, if Thorn _had_ been displaced, that would be the only way of getting to him. But that wasn't grappling with the problem. That was letting go, plunging with indefensible recklessness into the unknown--a crazy last resort. To grapple with a problem, you had to have firm footing--and grab. The tattoo ended with a sudden slam of heels. Was this room getting on his nerves? This silent room, with its feel of tangible linkages with future and past, its sense of standing on the edge of a timeless, unchanging center of things, in which action had no place--sapping his will power, rendering him incapable of making a decision, now that there was no longer a seer to interpret for him. The problem was in one sense so clear-cut. Earth threatened by invasion from across a new kind of frontier. But to get a grip on that problem. * * * * * He leaned across the desk and flipped the televisor, riffling through various local scenes in the Blue Lorraine. The Great Rotunda, with its aerial promenade, where a slow subtronic current carried chatting, smiling throngs in an upward spiral past displays of arts and wares. The Floral Rotunda, where pedestrians strolled along gently rolling paths under arches of exotic greenery. The other formal social centers. The endless corridors of individual enterprises, where one might come upon anything from a puppet-carver's to a specialized subtronic lab, a mood-creator's to a cat-fancier's. The busy schools. The production areas, where keen-eyed machine tenders governed and artistically varied the flow of processing. The maintenance and replacement centers. The vast kitchens, where subtle cooks ruled to a hairbreadth the mixing of foodstuffs and their exposure to heat and moisture and other influences. The entertainment and games centers, where swirling gaiety and high-pitched excitement were the rule. Everywhere happiness--or, rather, creative freedom. A great rich surging world, unaware, save for nightmare glimpses, of the abyss-edge on which it danced. Maddeningly unaware.