"I can take you now. It is not far, and the Masters are waiting. I have warned you. If, after that warning, you still ask to stay, they will grant your wish. It needed only your free choice. I am glad you have chosen, but shock treatment is a dangerous chance. Are you sure you love me--enough?" "Songeen!" his mind pleaded. "Wait!" She heard his wordless cry, and waited, opening the glowing, pure citadel of her thoughts to him. She gave no answer in words or glowing thought symbols. She waited. "No, I haven't changed my mind. I want to stay. Maybe I can learn to like your world. I want the decontamination--the shock treatment. I'm scared, but I want it, no matter how it hurts. I want to stay here--but not if you're not here. I want to be with you--Hell, Venus, or even Callisto--I want to go with you. I love you. If my love is part of my madness, don't cure me. I haven't asked you, but I'd like to know. Do you love me?" Songeen was silent. In the glittering forest of crystalline tree forms, jeweled birds sang wild riots of bubbling, bursting notes. Darkness gathered swiftly in the dense air. "Didn't you know?" Songeen chimed, matching the bird-notes. "Our names are already enrolled in the Great Book. It was custom here, our mating rite. It was the only way I could bring you. I did not tell you, because--" She stopped, then continued. "Because I had to be sure of you. Because I wanted you to have free choice. Now you must share all my tasks, my responsibilities. Before, the task was mine alone. Now we must share it. You and I are selected--" "Selected for what?" Newlin broke in. He could not see her for thick darkness. But he sensed eery tension of movement, and emotion flowed to him from her mind. "For the great task, the last and greatest of all. We must go back together. To Hell. To the system you sprang from. It is for us to release to them the ultimate weapon. The deadline is close, as I told you. Other races grow desperate, now that your system's isolation is breaking down. Pressure for interstellar expansion is extreme on all of Sol's planets. The technicians work full time at the problems, and they will solve it, soon. We have until then, to kill or cure the patient. "Other powers and weapons have been released to them in the hope that mounting responsibility would bring sanity. Atomic power was turned into dangerous toys, implements of murder. We gave them knowledge of atomic fission and fusion, and they use the knowledge to butcher and destroy each other. We tried all the minor shock treatments. They have failed. The time has come for the final treatment. The major shock. We--you and I--must give them the ultimate weapon." * * * * * Newlin knew his humanity. He protested. "But why? If they have misused everything else. Why give them something still more hideous? Why give them means for further destruction?" Her answer pulsed through darkness which glittered like black crystal.