Deliberately, Lynne lowered the level of her probe, shutting out the aboriginal brain completely. Somewhere, underneath, lay the stupid, foolish, instinct-ridden cattle brain. Never before had Lynne--or anyone else to her knowledge--sought telepathic contact with an animal mind. Yet alien brains of all levels had been contacted during the long-range experiments at Nampura Depot. It could be done. It had to be done. She was dealing with the leader. If she could force his bovine body to revolt, to stampede wildly, other bovine bodies would follow--for such unreasoning obedience was deeply instinctive in all cattle. Suddenly she caught it--faint, inchoate as the mind of the unborn child within her--a fear buried deep beneath the alien mentality. But she caught it, and held it, probing it relentlessly. She felt it catch explosively. She saw the great beast halt and tremble, helpless in the grip of three minds, just as Joanna cracked the whip with aggressive violence. There was a frantic shaking of a shaggy head, a momentary quivering. Then the leader turned and began to trot in front of his followers--began to trot, to lope, to canter, finally to cut around the body of them at a full, heavy gallop. There was a confused chorus of other cattle sounds. Then, punctuated by the lashings of the bullwhip, the entire herd was galloping away in helpless stampede toward the distant rim of the ever-widening Patagonia pasturage. Joanna coiled her whip, and stared after the galloping herd. “Spooky _marlets_,” she muttered. “I hardly cracked the whip at them, and they take off like a bunch of locos.” Lynne, who was still trembling violently, looked at the girl in amazement. “You don’t sound very happy about they’re not trampling us into the ground,” she said. “That’s not the point,” Joanna replied. “I just don’t like having them stampede. They’ll run off fifty pounds a head before they’re through. It means fattening them up all over again, and a serious delay in our schedule.” There, thought Lynne, spoke the dedicated animal husbandry woman. She followed slowly while Joanna walked to the base of a vidar-tower, plucked a communicator from a plastobox, and called Woomera to send out a pickup for them. Both girls waited by the tower, smoking cigarettes, until the low-built airsled arrived. Less than two hours later, Marstime, Lynne and Joanna were in conference with Martin Juarez and Nicholas Radchev, Planetary Agricultural Director, who had hopped a rocket from New Samarkand to confer on the emergency. A huge, swarthy man with tousled white hair, he shook his head slowly at the conclusion of Lynne’s report. “An unfortunate mess, Mrs. Marcein,” he said. “What do you suggest we do about it?” He spoke with respect, for he had not forgotten that it was Lynne and her husband who had made Patagonia Station possible through their harnessing of the hitherto deadly and uncontrollable E-power.