He had been born in fear and lived in fear and his body was full of it, quivering to the lover's touch of fear. Falling, darkness, the fear of dying, the unknown, the unimaginable always lurking just out of the corner of his eye. He wanted to scream and the fear choked it off. His hands were at his sides, limply useless, dangling at the seat. He had to hang on to something. His hand found a projection at the side of the seat. He clutched it desperately. He knew he would fall, down, spiraling, weightless, off the cliff as in a dream, off the ladder, the tree, he was a child and his toes were tingling as he stood too near the edge of the cliff, knowing he might fall. He clutched tightly, putting every ounce of his strength into holding on to the lever, the single solid reality in a world of shifting unreality. He was going to fall he was falling I love you I hate you I had a true wife ... * * * * * There was softness beneath his back, and he moved his hands, feeling the crispness of sheets. There was a low murmur of voices. He raised his hands to his eyes and the voices stopped. There were heavy bandages on his eyes. "Colonel?" came a questing voice, and Johnny realized it was Doctor Lambert. "Awake?" "I can't see. Why can't I see?" "You'll be all right. It's all right." "What happened?" "How much do you remember?" asked the voice. "The blast-off?" "Yes--yes, I remember that." "The orbit? The landing?" "No," he said. "Not that." "You did it," said the voice. "You made it." _This is my day. Once around lightly._ "Johnny," said the voice. "I don't know just how to say this. We know what was wrong with Ship I, and why it killed Mitch. We know--hell, we don't even begin to realize what we have at our fingertips now. It's so big it's impossible to evaluate." "What? I don't--" "Sound, Johnny, sound. Or rather, vibration. It's something we're just beginning to learn about. We know a few things; we know you can boil water with sound if the frequency is high enough. And you can drill metal with it--and it does things to the human body. "There are frequencies of sound which can act directly on human nerves, directly on the human brain. It means that if we know the right frequency, we'll be able to produce any state we want in a man, any emotion. Fear, anguish, anything. "When the steering rockets were cut in, the Ship began to vibrate. It generated frequencies so high that ordinary human senses couldn't detect them. And when your nerves were exposed to those vibrations, it produced fear. Pure and absolute fear. Motor control went, rational processes went, all the nervous functions of the body went out of control. Your body became a giant tuning fork, and the frequency to which it vibrated was fear. "I can't remember--" "Sanity went, too, Johnny," said the man softly. "You could not stand that fear and remain sane, so something cut off. That was what happened to Mitch." "How did I get back?"