They snapped radio sets. "Well?" grinned Cliff saucily. "Wise, aren't you?" grunted Downing. "Try it again," advised Cliff. "I'm still spaceworthy." "I'm buckled, but still capable," snorted Downing. "I'll be around--" The ringing of the emergency alarm interrupted them. Thompson's voice came through. "Stop--at once!" "Why?" asked Lane insolently. "Don't even answer," scorned Downing. "Stop, you fools. Stop--or Patricia Kennebec may die!" Downing and Lane came around in tight arcs. As one they met on adjoining courses and raced like madmen for Thompson's command. They magnetted their ships beside the spacelock, breached it with the outside controls, and entered. They sent the door to Thompson's cabin slamming back against the wall and strode in. "What's all this about Pat Kennebec?" Thompson smiled. "It was about the only way I could stop that foolishness." "Look, Billy, you've been interfering--" "Don't be an idiot, Lane. Frankly I'm sick and tired of that schoolboy bickering of yours. As far as I'm concerned you can both go out and kill one another. But this is bigger than I am and it should be bigger than you are. Your job isn't through. We thought it was, but it is not. You, in fact, are just beginning." "Quit talking in riddles and tell us what goes on." "That machine restricted mental energy. It has been restricting mental ability for this entire sector of the Galaxy for twenty thousand years. It has been destroyed. But until the minds of Solarians are excited by a shock wave of mental energy, they will not have the use of their intellects fully and freely. You two are mental and psychological opposites, and the shock excitation of your minds in mental contact will excite the minds of all men." He turned to Toralen Ki and said: "I'm puzzled. There was sufficient mental conflict between you and the Loard-vogh to give me my release. Why hasn't it taken care of these two wildmen?" "You mean the re-radiation from your mind operating on theirs as their radiation will free the minds of the rest?" "Right. Why?" "Lack of sympathetic tuning," explained Toralen Ki. "Your mind is unlike mine, and unlike the Loard-vogh known as Kregar, the one we fought and killed. Yet since you were at the focal point of the mental strife, your mind, untuned as it was, was excited by sheer brute force, so to speak. Selectivity could not keep out such sheer power. But selectivity would and did prevent re-radiation of the mental energy. You, therefore, have been freed, but no one else." "Too bad," said Thompson critically. "It might have shoved some sense into their thick skulls." "Hey!" exploded Lane. "He's talking to the Little Guy." "How come, Billy?" "You mean talking to him? Well, I was given mental release by a bit of a battle between Toralen Ki, here, and one of the Loard-vogh who was trying to control my mind." "Give us more. You sound like a synopsis." Thompson explained. "Well, but how can you speak with him?"