Yet he did know from experience that the best way to lay a cornerstone upon which to build a plan was to wait, to study and then, when the final returns were in, to decide. Kingallis had confirmed Carroll's suspicion that an Extrasolar agency was doing its utmost to prevent the spread of knowledge about the Lawson Radiation. Kingallis had not mentioned why. The facts that Carroll had were sketchy. He knew only what he had already suspected. He had been kidnaped. He knew why. The latter reason was both logical and also a perfect answer to a paranoid question. He shied away from it, and recognized his own unwillingness to face the fact. That in itself bothered Carroll because he disliked to think himself insane, even though he often questioned his sanity. Carroll found that none of this was reassuring. There was no equitable yardstick that the mind could apply to itself. It is often said that the insane cannot question their own sanity--that to question your own sanity is a sign of stability. Yet it may be quite true that a clever paranoid might question his own sanity regularly as a means of proving to himself that he is sane. Carroll played with this mad spiral often and found it a vicious circle. So in between his sessions of study, James Forrest Carroll tried to delve into his own mind. He had come to only one conclusion: That so long as Kingallis was studying him, he was able also to study Kingallis. The problem of why bothered Carroll. Mankind has never ceased to study anything that might prove dangerous. Almost any discovery made is dangerous in some manner. It is just that mankind has learned to handle its discoveries with care as they became useful. Or else-- He tried broaching the why to Kingallis and was brushed off openly with, "It is of no consequence." Carroll considered two possible answers. One, of course, was that Kingallis and his people were suppressing all study to prevent the Terrans from learning about interstellar travel for purely personal reasons. You do not give away your military secrets to a people you hope to destroy. The other reason was the complete opposite--the other race, knowing the dangers of research, were trying to keep Terra from becoming involved until Terra grew up. Handing the secrets of nuclear fission to a race not yet ready for it was one example, though a bad one, for it takes considerable technical excellence to handle it. A simpler case is plain black gunpowder--sulfur, charcoal and potassium nitrate. Boys in chemistry class have lost their hands and their eyes because they played with that which they did not understand well enough. The nitration of glycerine is not too hard to perform, yet in the hands of an amateur it may take the house skyward before the project is finished.