"That's better." I released his shoulder; gestured him out of the grav-car. "Let's go inside where we can talk." The office we ended up in--Gaylord's own, I gathered--had two doors, a desk big enough to skate on, three chairs, psychostructor and reel-case, and a custom voco equipped with scanner and scriber. As a matter of policy, of maintaining control on all levels, I left my host standing while I took the chair behind the desk. For an instant his jaw tightened angrily. Then, dodging my eyes and turning quickly, he said, "I'll get the file-reels." I stopped him midway to the door: "What file-reels, Gaylord?" "Why, the ones on the thrill-mills, of course." Perplexity at the question drew his brows together as he said it. "Why?" "Why--?" Openly startled now, he groped. "Well, it's just--I mean, I thought--" * * * * * I said, "Let me tell you the story, Gaylord. Then you decide if we need the reels. "Forty-three Rizal days ago, a man named Frederick Zubin got a voco call. It was from a woman--a beautiful woman he'd never seen before. She congratulated him on it being his sixty-first birthday, and said an anonymous well-wisher wanted to send him a little present. "A messenger popped in almost before the woman hung up. He gave Zubin a package about the size of a pound box of candy. Unwrapped, it turned out to be a metal case with a nameplate stamped 'Apex Perceptual Intensifier'. Another plate, on the back, said it was 'Model DXG'! Those were the only marks on it anywhere, inside or out. There weren't any instructions as to what it was supposed to do or how to use it. "Zubin was curious, in his dull, lethargic, conditioned way. He fiddled with the switches and dials. "Eventually the thing came on, of course. It practically sent him through the roof. Colors, sounds, smells, tastes, feelings--all his senses were sharpened so far beyond anything he'd ever known before that he thought at first he was going crazy. "If Zubin had had his way, then, we'd probably never have known about his little present. But his wife, in the next room, caught the fringe effect. It wasn't strong enough to hook her, the way it had Zubin himself, but it did scare her half to death. She decided anything that potent must be immoral, or illegal, or both, so she called your office in a hurry. "Your psych boys ran poor Zubin through all the tests, from A to Izzard. They couldn't find anything wrong with him, or any harm done, except for one key point: His conditioning had been shattered. From a dreary, phlegmatic lump of protoplasmic tranquility, he'd been transformed into a human being--the kind of eager, intense, raw-nerved, inconsistent, emotional human being we used to have back two hundred years ago, before the laws that made conditioning compulsory. "That scared everybody. As unit controller for Rizal Security, you ordered a full-scale check.