The Monster was immune to radiation, and bacteriological horrors. It swam in death as unconcerned as a lovely lady wallowed in a pink bubble-bath. Lewis sat in the twilight of the Pit making the monster move about in its futile rounds. Lewis loved the Monster and felt the wasteful tragedy of its magnificent potential. A wonder of the world, a reaffirmation of man's imagination and his powers of reason, the Monster was built for what might seem horribly destructive ends, but its potential was for limitless achievement of the best and most far-reaching in man. Yet here it was, doing nothing at all. Standing in a sea of radioactive poison, a gigantic symbol of man's stupidity to man. Could a man know the truth and continue to deny it, and still remain sane? You could go on living that way. You could take happy pills, sleeping pills, dream-pills and stay lushed-up on government liquor. But sooner or later you would have to face the horrible empty waste. After that loomed the face of madness. And yet, Lewis thought, how do I know that I know the truth? I'm cut off. No info, no communication. For all I know we're the only people left in the world. An oasis of secrecy surrounded by desert. Lewis walked back up to the first floor, and out into the night, heading for Betty Seton's apartment. Maybe she was sober enough now to talk this thing over. The hell with security regulations. Just the same, he walked along in the shadow next to the building to avoid any eye-witness of his proposed rendezvous. Science, he thought, was really another name for freedom. It couldn't function without freedom of thought, freedom of inquiry. You couldn't mix it up with security and cut off communication, because communication is the essence of science. An idea is universal, and how can you go on thinking when you're no longer a part of the world? Whatever the decision arrived at in Lewis' own heart might otherwise have been, he was never to know. His decision was made for him by an hysterical laugh, the sound of scuffling on boards, and another laugh. He came around the corner of the barracks and saw the Guard manhandling Betty Seton down the steps of her apartment building. * * * * * The guard was big, built like a wedge, with a flat bulldog face bunched up under his white helmet. The Guard's brain had been carefully honed down to an efficient, completely unintelligent but precise fighting machine level. He neither knew nor cared why he did anything. But he was handicapped by having Betty Seton in one hand. He was whirling, raising his stungun with the other hand, when Lewis hit him. Lewis drove in with his weight behind first a solid long blow that broke a rigid wall of muscle in the Guard's belly, turned it to soft clay. Betty fell free and lay laughing on the gravel. Her face was a white smear in the starlight.