Suddenly all the hate and guilt he had ever known exploded into his awareness. The face before him was a meaningless blur, but he did not need to know the enemy to loathe him. His carbine was in his hands, the safety off, the barrel lowered, the trigger squeezed--but the rifle failed to fire. The cry of the enemy was a wordless oath of anger, the bayonet a glinting sliver of death, the pain in his side the ultimate peak of agony. But as he fell back onto the rocks, he sensed something beyond rage in the bright young eyes of his destroyer. He sensed hope--the possibility of peace and even of happiness--for those anger-maddened eyes had been his own. * * * * * He woke upon a bed in a small white-walled room. It was too soon yet to try to think things over. So he consciously relaxed and contemplated such immediate and basic pleasures as breathing and observing the distant sun-gilt eucalyptus through the single broad window. For the present, the experience of life itself was sufficient. When at last an attendant entered, followed by a nurse, Tom felt like talking. He was frustrated in this by a thermometer, which the woman allowed to remain in his mouth throughout the entire check-up. When she had finally concluded her routine, Tom said: "I'm feeling pretty good, doctor. Is it all right if I leave?" "I'm just a mere psychotechnician," the man smiled. "You'll have to check with Miss Laughton." "Fit as a fiddle," the nurse responded, gathering up her equipment. "My bayonet wound okay?" Tom asked anxiously, and was immediately startled to find he could refer to the incident with amusement. "It is if you can talk about it," she replied with a flicker of sympathy on her dry expressionless face. "So it was a bayonet," the man commented after the nurse had left. "That's quite rare, you know. Usually it's a bullet or a shell fragment." "Don't you decide--I mean, don't you set it all up beforehand?" "Oh, no. Electrohypnosis merely instigates certain motivational and situational patterns. The instrumentation and environment is entirely the product of your own personality. The more feasible, consistent and coherent the subjective aspects, the more adaptable, rational and stable must be the subject." "What about the bayonet?" "You chose that, I would suppose, because you not only weren't afraid of meeting the enemy, but actually wanted to. We'll go into that later. Now I want you to relate everything you can remember." Tom waited while the other set up a recorder. It took less than twenty minutes to narrate every detail he could recall. "Well that'll be enough for today. We do want you to report back in a week or so, just to find out how this affects your normal activities. The receptionist will make an appointment for you. Your clothes are in the closet."