"Listen to me," MacMartree commanded fiercely. "Get hold of yourself and listen! This thing in your arm, it's a _hurt_. Your brain should be blocking it from your consciousness, but somehow it isn't. Do you understand me?" "Hurt," Abner echoed. Then he began to croon it, as though there was something soothing in the sound of it: "Hurt, hurt, hurt in my arm...." He made a twisted little hymn of it, singing it over and over again. "That's right," MacMartree was saying, "Your brain isn't killing the hurt, as it should. You must _think_, Abner, think of your arm, whole and well, and with no hurt in it. _Think!_" But Abner only repeated that ancient, awful word: "Hurt in my arm ... hurt, _hurt_...." MacMartree shrugged, and looked up at Cole, who was still standing helplessly by. "Fetch the serum," MacMartree said. "I'll try setting the bone...." He grasped the twisted arm as he spoke, and one, tearing, final scream broke out of Abner's throat. Before MacMartree could react, Abner went rigid in every limb, then as suddenly relaxed and was still. "He's dead," Cole choked. "Abner is dead!" MacMartree felt for the heartbeat, shook his head. "Only unconscious. The hurt did that, I suppose." He sat back on his haunches, thoroughly baffled. Cole sat, too, and a few yards away, where they had left him, Phillips stirred. He rolled over on his side and propped himself shakily on one elbow, roused by that last, ringing shriek of Abner's. "It isn't right," MacMartree said, to neither of them. "The hurt, that went with sickness--a thousand years ago." He looked up at them. "I read about these things, you see," he told them. "There was hurt, and there was sickness. When they knew enough about the human brain, scientists simply bred into the part of our minds that makes us aware of hurt the power to shut it off, automatically, before we're even conscious it exists. And as for sickness...." He looked at Phillips, shaking his head. "They got rid of that, too, and now...." Neither of the younger men said anything for a time. They waited, desperately relying on the older man to help them, to bring them through this, whatever it was, into familiar ground again. At length, Cole spoke. "Mac," he began softly. MacMartree looked at him, waiting. "Mac, I ... I feel something ... I don't know ... perhaps it's sickness ... or hurt ... I've never known those things...." He held forth his hands, and they were twitching and trembling. MacMartree's teeth ground together. "Another obsolescent word I'll have to teach you," he said to them. "It is _fear_." He went to work on Abner's broken arm, setting it and injecting the serum that would cause the fracture to knit in a matter of minutes. And as he worked, he tried to drive the nagging thought from his mind ... sickness for Phillips, hurt for Abner, fear for Cole ... _what for MacMartree?_ He was the oldest. He was leader of the patrol. Perhaps a little of _all_ these horrors?