"There's something wrong," he said. The others agreed and, agreeing, could add nothing of explanation to the wrongness. Time passed while they sat, seeing within themselves for the answer--and if not for answer, at least for identification--but nothing came and nothing changed except that with time the steady pressure of the Feeling grew stronger. Vaughn, again, was first to react to the pressure. "We've got to do something." He twisted out of his seat and wavered in the small pseudogravity of the ship's continuing acceleration. "I've never in my life felt so desolate, so--" He stopped. "There aren't any words," he said helplessly. Less articulate than Vaughn and knowing it, the others did not try to help find the words. Only Ragan, professional soldier without family or close tie anywhere in the world, had a suggestion. "The ship's power plant is partly psionic," Ragan said. "I don't understand the principle, but it's been drilled into us that no other system can give a one-directional thrust without reaction. The psi-drive is tied into our minds in the same way it's tied into the atomic and electronic components. It's part of us and we're part of it." Even Maxon, crew authority on the combination drive, missed his meaning at first. "If our atomic shielding fails," Ragan explained, "we're irradiated. If our psionics bank fails, we may feel anything. Maybe the trouble is there." Privately they disagreed, certain that nothing so disquieting as the Feeling that weighted them down could be induced even by so cryptic a marriage of dissimilar principles as made up the ship's power plant. Still it was a possible avenue of relief. "It's worth trying," Maxon said, and they checked. And checked, and checked. * * * * * "We worked for hours," Walraven said, "but nothing came of it. None of us, even Maxon, knew enough about the psi-drive to be sure, but we ended up certain that the trouble wasn't there. It was in us." The drug was wearing thin, leaving him pale and shaken. His face had a glisten of sweat under the lowered lights. The lead psych man chose a hypodermic needle, looked to Erwin and Costain for authority, and administered a second injection. "You gave up searching," he said. "What then, Lieutenant?" "We waited," Walraven said. He relaxed, his face smoothing to impersonal detachment as his mind slipped back to the ship and its crew. Watching, Costain felt a sudden deep unease as if the man's mind had really winged back through time and space and carried a part of his own with it. "There was only one more possible check," Walraven said. "We had to wait two days for that." The check was Maxon's idea, simple of execution and unarguable of result. At halfway point acceleration must cease, the ship rotate on its gyros and deceleration set in. There would be a period of waiting when the power plant must be shut off completely. If the Feeling stemmed from the psi-drive, it would lift then.