And because the Thing was aware of every sensation of a whole planetful of creatures it grew very tired of processing irrelevant information and began to propagate the idea that any thought or action not absolutely essential for survival was wrong and should be suppressed, and that emotions--which interfered with transmission of factual data--were unthinkably degenerate, to be shunned at all costs. After a few more generations the creatures did not even realize they were being controlled by the Thing, had even forgotten its existence and believed its thoughts and decisions were their own. That was the story. Then he got to fooling with the burned-out ruins of the Hustic and made a sheaf of graphs, all in five and six colors. They were too complex for Bill or me. A few days out from Earth, a worried Bill got me up in the middle of my off-shift and motioned to the forward view-plate. There, coming toward us from the inviting blue-green ball of Earth, were thirty closely grouped orange specks. Spaceship driver flares. Mike took a look too, then held both hands to his forehead with index fingers protruding and wiggled them at us. When I got the idea I wasn't happy about it. The wiggling fingers meant antennae. Martians. Bill and I gnawed our fingernails. The poor _Banshee_ could neither run nor fight. But the Martian ships went right on by without even trying to contact us on the Luminophone. Mike just grinned through it all. * * * * * We landed rough, on account of the burned-out driver, but when things stopped bouncing we were all in condition to limp away. Mike saw the car pull up outside and had the hatch open before we could stop him. Polly met him with open arms and a kiss that would have been censored on any telaudio show. She wasn't the pale, subdued, inertia-ridden girl of a few months before. Not at all. The Professor was dancing up and down with excitement behind her, trying to shake one of Mike's hands. "You did it, darling!" Polly released her lips long enough to say. "They're gone, every one of them! And so is the Complex." "Huh?" Bill and I stared. Then Bill grabbed his brother. "You mean Mike isn't--?" he began. "Of course not," the Professor snapped. "He never was." Then he turned to Mike. "What capacitance were you using when you picked up the Thing's radiations?" he demanded. "What power factor? What wave form? Sine wave or flat top or sawtooth? Did you have the transportation grid shielded or were you getting a reinduction feedback?" "Father!" Polly said sternly. "Later!" Mike reached in his pocket and handed his fancy graphs to the Professor, who seemed to understand them at a glance. "Oh," he said. "There's just enough similarity of wave form here so the telepathic inertia influences directed at the Cultural Emissaries would heterodyne in their receiving organs and be re-emitted exactly on a generalized human brain-wave pattern.