It was strange, hearing him say these things with hatred in his voice. Yet, I knew he hated this menace.... "Durach and the other freaks have feelings of inferiority. They want to compensate, they have developed paranoid delusions. They were persecuted on Earth, naturally as freaks. Regarded as insane, imprisoned, mistreated. They have strong revenge motives; they want to destroy Earth. "Also, Durach has a theory that Third-Stage Earth is holding back the development of Mohln. He thinks that if Earth's plane was destroyed, Mohln could expand into complete Fourth Stage reality. "Durach made a Merging machine to open a channel between the two coexisting planes. What it really does is regress consciousness molecules to lower and lower stages of development until it becomes again bounded by Third-Stage blindness. Durach made the Merger to help him and his freaks destroy Earth's plane. What they don't realize is that the two planes are the same, part of the same reality field, except that one is the result of more complex powers of awareness." I thought about what Carleth had been telling me. It all started to fit together. I told him what had happened on Earth--about Durach getting control of the minds of the ten Chiefs who ran the Uranium Piles. Carleth nodded. "You ran Durach back here into Fourth Stage reality. Since then he's been using various kinds of gadgets to destroy us, one by one. A kind of electron force feeler, you might call it. We've caught flashes of his purpose, though they keep their diseased minds locked up pretty well. It's almost impossible, and sometimes destructive, to try to contact them mentally. "He intends to return to Earth through the Merger. This time he'll take the secret of the electronic feeler with him. He'll be able to kill Mal and Glora with it. He'll be more powerful there than they are, because in returning to Third-Stage reality, they've sacrificed most of their Fourth Plane capacities. "In other words, the next time Durach goes through the barrier, he'll achieve his purpose. He'll have killed all of us by the electronic feeler. It disassociates electron structure of the nervous system so that it can't reform." "And I'm the only one who can stop him," I whispered. Carleth said that was right. I said, "Why doesn't Durach use the Merger then, right now, and go back and get the job done?" He explained that to me also. "As soon as he came back this time, we knew what he had tried to do, what he was planning. We got conscious control of the Merger machinery, or part of it anyway. We've maintained that control because we have greater numbers, and the combined mind-energy has been too much for Durach. That is why he's been killing us one by one. Our power over the Merger has been going down. The danger point is reached now." "And what about Mal and Glora?"