Martel noticed that he alone relaxed. The others could not know the meaning of relaxation with the minds blocked off up there in their skulls, connected only with the eyes, and the rest of the body connected with the mind only by controlling non-sensory nerves and the instrument boxes on their chests. Martel realized that, cranched as he was, he expected to hear Vomact's voice: the Senior had been talking for some time. No sound escaped his lips. (Vomact never bothered with sound.) "...and when the first men to go Up and Out went to the Moon, what did they find?" "Nothing," responded the silent chorus of lips. "Therefore they went further, to Mars and to Venus. The ships went out year by year, but they did not come back until the Year One of Space. Then did a ship come back with the First Effect. Scanners, I ask you, what is the First Effect?" "No one knows. No one knows." "No one will ever know. Too many are the variables. By what do we know the First Effect?" "By the Great Pain of Space," came the chorus. "And by what further sign?" "By the need, oh the need for death." Vomact again: "And who stopped the need for death?" "Henry Haberman conquered the first effect, in the Year 3 of Space." "And, Scanners, I ask you, what did he do?" "He made the habermans." "How, O Scanners, are habermans made?" "They are made with the cuts. The brain is cut from the heart, the lungs. The brain is cut from the ears, the nose. The brain is cut from the mouth, the belly. The brain is cut from desire, and pain. The brain is cut from the world. Save for the eyes. Save for the control of the living flesh." "And how, O Scanners, is flesh controlled?" "By the boxes set in the flesh, the controls set in the chest, the signs made to rule the living body, the signs by which the body lives." "How does a haberman live and live?" "The haberman lives by control of the boxes." "Whence come the habermans?" Martel felt in the coming response a great roar of broken voices echoing through the room as the Scanners, habermans themselves, put sound behind their mouthings: "Habermans are the scum of Mankind. Habermans are the weak, the cruel, the credulous, and the unfit. Habermans are the sentenced-to-more-than-death. Habermans live in the mind alone. They are killed for Space but they live for Space. They master the ships that connect the earths. They live in the Great Pain while ordinary men sleep in the cold cold sleep of the transit." "Brothers and Scanners, I ask you now: are we habermans or are we not?" "We are habermans in the flesh. We are cut apart, brain and flesh. We are ready to go to the Up and Out. All of us have gone through the Haberman Device." "We are habermans then?" Vomact's eyes flashed and glittered as he asked the ritual question.