We tried withholding fuel, but that was no good. There was enough plutonium already in the pile to take us across the system. Certainly enough to take us where she wanted to go. We didn't want to guess about that! Holcomb and I tried slipping the cadmium emergency dampers into the pile. The first one slipped in easily. But the moment the drop in activity registered, the second rod fused in the slip shaft. It was the same with all the rest. We could not insert them. Clem would not be anesthetized. She was protecting herself ... calmly, almost reproachfully. I really believe she was learning about men and their will to command even things they can never really understand. * * * * * That's the way it went. If the crossing of the Belt had been nightmarish, the next weeks were insane. Our every attempt to re-establish control was thwarted easily by the mind in the pile. Mars fell astern and Clem swung inward toward the Sun. For a while Terra blazed green and bright off our starboard bow, almost at eastern quadrature. Then she, too, began to fade behind us as the possessed ship drove ever Sunward. I think we were all a little mad during those terrible days. We lived with the knowledge that we were helplessly at the mercy of the ship. Gradually we admitted to ourselves where she was taking us. We realized where "home" was.... We took to sitting dully in the Control room, still clad in suits that we were too lethargic to remove, and staring at the silvery disc of Venus that daily grew larger in the forward screens. We were sitting so when the tension broke Holcomb. One minute he was as morosely silent as the rest of us, and the next he had seized a spanner and burst screaming out of the room. His voice was like nothing human. "I won't let her do it!" he was shrieking. "I won't let her take me!" Automatically, the rest of us got to our feet and started after him. It was as though none of us really cared, but we felt that we should do something. Just what, no one seemed to have figured out. We clumped heavily down the companion ways after him toward the open hatch that led to the tube-shaft. In our helmet radios his voice was a continuous tinny and distorted harangue. "The Sun! The Sun! She's going to it. It called her and she's going to it! But she won't take me!" and then laughing wildly, the gibbering mirth of a madman. His laughter woke me. "Holcomb!" I yelled, "Come back!" Jammed in the narrow corridor, we struggled after him. "She won't take me! I won't let her take me!" Holcomb was screaming. "I'll kill her! I'll tear the rotten life out of her! Kill! Kill her!"