A duplication of a man is only a duplicate, not the original, unless the _elan vital_, the spirit, the soul, is transmitted, for it cannot be duplicated. A duplicated man is a perfect robot, capable of memory and learning, and developing into a human being in time. But it is not a human being immediately, and it can _never_ become the original of the duplicate. Every human viewpoint is unique and irreplaceable. Duplication of matter was uneconomical. The power outlay was too great, the equipment too costly to build and operate. So transportation by transmission was investigated. Again, it was too expensive except for very great distances, trips of light-years to worlds established over the generations by the spaceships which had reached virtual light-speed and could not go beyond it. * * * * * Personalities of transmittees got lost among the stars. Transmitted poets arrived with a dim itch for a brutal fight, due to some residue of glandular acid from a parting insult affecting their birth trauma on the new world. Great conductors solidified, hating music. Competent engineers were imported with an infantile urge toward lyric verse. And the Companions came into being as a profession. Men with will power, psionic abilities, strength of character. You could call it what you liked, depending on your profession, your politics, your religion. At any rate, men (and women) who could hold human personalities together on the long, instantaneous voyage through null space. But still some personalities drifted away. Or, some darkly superstitious people suggested, were they sucked away? They were. Personalities in transmission were being captured by an intelligent entity, unimaginably vast in size, which some believed used the movements of galaxies as the synapse responses of its brain. It was a vast entity, but not a very intelligent one, due to the square of signal decay and noise over light-years. Moreover, it was psychopathic. From contact with human minds, it had decided it was, or would become (it was obviously confused on the point) the god of the humans. It proposed to do this by eventually incorporating all intelligence into itself. But, seemingly, only intelligences in transmission were soft enough for the Mindsnake to get a hold on. The Companions were harder-shelled. But the Mindsnake grew stronger. And Companions began traveling with other Companions, as teams, to resist the Mindsnake. And there came a class of Companions who did not need the help of any other man or woman, but only a touchstone of reality, something familiar of Earth--the mind of a dog or a cat or some other animal. Familiars. So was born the Corps of Witches. And here, Hammen wondered, was this where the Witches came to an end?