Lynne listened in a sort of stupor. When she felt telepathic messages impinging upon her mind she forced them out. She only half-heard Janet's smooth assemblage of facts. Ray's coordination and selection of those most relevant. And then she thought quickly, _Climate change to 42 per-cent lower humidity, expense contained by use in schools only and segregation of children during crucial months._ Again the flashes from the indicator--again the zero. Janet regarded Lynne with odd speculation in her hazel eyes, Ray looked a little frightened. Lynne said, "I don't know what's going on but my head is killing me. I'm going home and rest." "What about our date tonight?" Ray asked quickly--too quickly. She studied him a long moment. She _did_ love him, she _did_ want to marry him, she _did_ want to bear his children--or did she? She was going to have to face the problem squarely and do it soon. She said, "I guess you'd better give me a rain-check, honey." She walked out the door with a vivid picture of what Janet was thinking. Janet was going to do her damnedest to take Ray away from her that night by the oldest and still the most effective weapon a woman could use. And if Lynne tried to make trouble about it she intended to make trouble for Lynne. As for Ray--he didn't seem to have any thoughts at all. He was a sort of Thurber male, cowering in his corner while the dominant females fought over him. The only hitch, Lynne decided, was that there wasn't going to be any fight. Janet could have him ... in spades! * * * * * She took the moving sidewalk back to Mother Weedon's. For almost a year the trim white dome with its curved polarized picture windows and pink Martian vines had represented home and shelter and a prized individuality after the group-existence of school dormitories. Now it looked like half an egg of some menacing unearthly bird, half an egg into which she must crawl and hide, unsure of how long it would afford her shelter. Even Mother Weedon, a shrewd and kindly widow of sixty whose strength and good-humor made her the ideal team-matron, looked alien and oddly menacing. She caught the older woman's thoughts as she entered the house. _What's happened to Lynne? Always thought that girl was too bottled up. She should have married Ray six months ago. He's not the sort of male even a girl as pretty as Lynne can keep on a string indefinitely--not with a harpy like Janet in the picture...._ Mechanically Lynne ran her fingers down the magnezipper of her blue plastifleece jacket, deposited it carefully against the magnetic hook on the wall of the entry. She felt a renewed weakness, a sickness that made her head throb more severely than ever. All the way back from the brain-station she had been seeking reassurance in the probability that her sudden telepathic ability was caused by some stimulation of the machine, would vanish when she broke contact with it.