If it was Jones of common human clay or Smith, an android, could it make any difference? Yet it was an old thing--a reasonable man's anguish against wrong. Still, was it hard to see a sequel, when something snapped in the brain? A kind of explosion. Then, before horror and rage, immortality or death could become equally meaningless. Good sense and kindness, once clung to desperately, could then become zero, and Earth, sky and humanity empty phantoms. Then could you picture the wronged one awaiting someone of the other kind? Could you picture him aiming his own weapon at another car and holding its trigger down until his own curses were lost in the roar of incandescence? Ed Dukas rode on through the dusk in Loman's car, still clinging to the fabric at the shoulder of his inert friend, Les Payten. The sky still flickered--warning barrages, not yet aimed to kill. An aircraft swooped, its weapons shredding a high-flying horror that was not of metal. Some had been destroyed, but others always came--though they never had been truly numerous. A few other cars sped along the road--persons fleeing the dangerous congestion of the City. Ed wondered if the steady _ping ping ping_ in his quartz-chip radio was the ultra-sonic evidence of a spy beam in action, perhaps meant to trace Loman's course? At last the forces of law might do that to their own, if some of them disagreed with Loman's zeal or suspected that it had become too extreme. Chief Bronson, for one, had seemed a likable man. Besides, even after a mind probe, many would mistrust an android. Ed reasoned that this must be a flight to a hide-out, which he had to see. The car careened for a mile along a narrow side road, where, behind high banks, the pinging stopped. Had Loman counted on their shielding effect? Deeper in the woods, a block of undergrowth folded upward on a hinge, and the car rolled inside. Then the great trap door closed behind it. Ed was not surprised even by so elaborate a retreat as this. Now, with his neutronic aura cut off, Loman bore Les through a low doorway, into a great, low chamber fused out of bedrock. Could Loman and Mitchell Prell be as alike as this in their choice of secret places? Queer--and yet not so queer. Both were scientists. Prell had invaded the field of biology and Loman, in his original incarnation as Ronald Payten, had been a biologist from the start. Ed might have attacked, now that Loman's aura was inactive. But it could be restored in an instant. Better to wait. A clearer chance might well come. His enemy might even be trying to lure any small, unseen intruder close to the coils of the aura. Besides, in the soft artificial light, answers lay--answers that Ed had only dimly suspected, in spite of Loman's background. Since he had learned who Loman was, there hadn't been time enough for him to understand. But now the solution to a dreadful mystery came easily, because Ed could intrude here unseen.