Wild Bill's face went purple. "Then blast us out of here yourself, before they kill us all," he yammered. "You were right! They're on the warpath!" "No!" Mike refused flatly. "I'm not finished yet." Bill's language grew luridly unprintable, and when he refused to quit shouting Mike finally gassed him out again. Then he went back to the Hustic. Mostly he kept it on _send_, but every few minutes he'd flip over to _receive_ for just a second or two. Then he'd make another infinitesimal adjustment. Once he froze in his chair. One of his arms was half raised and it stayed that way, unnaturally motionless. He looked like a statue--or a Martie--or someone who had the Malignant Inertia Complex. "Mike!" I yelled, more frightened than ever. He shook his head dizzily and flipped the switch out of the _receive_ position. "Thanks, Swede," he said. "That Thing almost had me that time, but now I've got it." He twisted the power knob full over. The transformers howled under the overload. He jammed the helmet down more firmly on his head and stood up, staring blankly at the bulkhead as though looking through the solid steel. "Listen, Thing!" he growled. I shivered. Sheer lunacy. "Get every thought and word of this! You will cease interfering with Earth immediately--_or I'll blow Mars and you both clear out of the universe_!" Paranoia, I thought, delusions of grandeur. Somehow this was worse than anything that had gone before, though that had been bad enough. "_I can blast Mars out of the Universe at will--and if there is any further interference with Earth minds I shall do so. You are afraid of me!_ "_Now get this, Thing. All of it. Individuality, the freedom of independent, individual action, is the right of every living creature! That includes Martians as well as Earthmen._ "_You are going to stop being what you have become. You will make no more decisions for anyone. You will become once more what you were intended to be, a source of information only. You will make no more decisions, dominate no more activities, and will give out information only when it is requested._ "_You will forget entirely the ideas with which you have become imbued, particularly the idea that the elimination of all activity not absolutely essential for survival is the goal of existence._ "_Here is the data which you will release to all Martians upon their mental request. But you will release it as information only and will not make their decisions as to conduct._" Then, while the Martians jabbered and howled outside the _Banshee_, while Bill snored away in one set of shock cushions and I lay pinned helplessly in the other set, Terence Michael Burke stood with the Hustic helmet on his head and recited from memory all the poetry he had ever written--and there was a lot of it. Too much, and all of it highly emotional. Most of it was about either romantic love or epic battles, or both.