He said something. Anything. Keep her talking, listening. Give Drakeson a chance to employ the rhodium tracker, and spot her location. A kind of panic got loose in Greg's brain. "Pat, don't you have any insight at all? Can't you see that this is advanced psychosis, that--" She interrupted. "I've tried to explain to you before, Greg. But you've always preferred anesthesia. You loathe reality. But I'm part of reality." Yes. He had dreams. The anesthetic cubicles, Stage Five where a man was master of thalamic introjection, dream imagery. A stage where any part of reality was supposed to have faded into utter inconsequence. But Pat Nichols had always been a part of his conditioned personality pattern. By taking her out of it, fate had struck him with an unbalance in psyche that disturbed the sole objective of life--to dream. "But that's a suicide trip, Pat, and you'll never have a chance to be cured of your schizophrenia, even if you do get to Venus--" Her interruption had weariness in it. "Goodby, Greg. I'm sorry for you. That silly status quo, and futile dreaming. It will never let you realize what a fine man you are. You'll decay and die in some futile image. So goodby, Greg. And good dreaming." She was gone from the screen. Maybe from earth, unless he got out there and stopped her before that suicide ship rocketed out from its hidden subterranean blast tube. * * * * * Greg Hurried. He didn't realize he could function so rapidly in the world of physical reality. In seconds he had zipped thin resilient aerosilk about his body, and was running across the wide plastic mesh roof toward the heliocruiser in which Drakeson was waiting. Greg felt the physical power flow as he ran. It sickened him. The conditioners kept the body in good shape, but only to allow the cortical-thalamic imagery faculties to function better. Actual physical business like this was revolting to any Cowl citizen. Any sort of physical and materialistic activity, divorced from anesthesia, might be a sign of encroaching psychosis. That was the fear. That fear of psychosis that might lead to violence. To change. The Cowls over the Cities protected them from any physical interference with an absolutely stabile, unchanging and static culture. But the Cowls hadn't been able to protect the Citizenry from insanity. During the past year, psychosis had been striking increasingly, without warning, indiscriminately. Greg dropped down beside the thin ascetic figure at the controls. He grabbed Drakeson's arm. "Did you pick it up, Drake?" "Uh-huh," Drakeson drawled. His mouth was cynical, his gray eyes somber. "Traced it down to a ten meter radius, but it's underground. About five miles out of Old Washington, just inside the big radioactivated forest east of the Ruins. About half an hour's flight as the crow might fly. If there was a crow left." "Then let's go. Lift this gadget out of here!"