"Perhaps I should check them every six months instead of every year," suggested the psychologist. "Good idea if it can be done without arousing their fears." "I see what you mean." Majors took his hat from the rack and left the doctor's office. Pollard addressed the man in the chair again. "You are James Forrest Carroll." "No." "I have proof." "No." "Remove your shirt." "No." This was getting nowhere. There had to be a question that could not be answered with a grunted monosyllable. "Will you remove your shirt or shall I have it done by force?" "Neither!" That was better--technically. "Why do you deny my right to prove your identity?" This drew no answer at all. "You deny my right because you know that you have your name, blood type, birth-date and scientific roster number tattooed on your chest below your armpit." "No." "But you have--and I know it because I've seen it." "No." "You cannot deny your other identification. The eye-retina pattern, the Bertillion, the fingerprints, the scalp-pattern?" "No." "I thought not," said the doctor triumphantly. "Now understand, Carroll. I am trying to help you. You are a brilliant man--" "No." This was not modesty cropping up, but the same repeating of the basic negative reply. "You are and have been. You will be once again after you stop fighting me and try to help. Why do you wish to fight me?" * * * * * Carroll stirred uneasily in his chair. "Pain," he said with a tremble of fear in his voice. "Where is this pain?" asked the doctor gently. "All over." The doctor considered that. The same pattern again--a psychotic denial of identity and a fear of pain at the dimly-grasped concept of return. Pollard turned to the sheets of notes on his desk. James Forrest Carroll had been a brilliant theorist and excellent from the practical standpoint too. Thirty-three years old and in perfect health, his enjoyment of life was basically sound and he was about as stable as any physicist in the long list of scientific and technical men known to the Solar System's scientists. Yesterday he had been brilliant--working on a problem that had stumped the technicians for thirty years. Today he was not quite bright, denying his brilliance with a vicious refusal to help. He remembered nothing of his work, obviously. "You know what the Lawson Radiation is?" "No," came the instant reply but a slight twinge of pain-syndrome crossed his face. "You do not want to remember because you think you will have to go back to the Lawson Lab?" "I--don't know it--" faltered James Forrest Carroll. It was obviously a lie. "If I promise that you will never be asked about it?" "No," said Carroll uneasily. Then with the first burst of real intelligence he had shown since his stumbling body had been picked up by the Terran Police, Carroll added, "You cannot stop me from thinking about it." "Then you do know it?" Carroll relapsed instantly. "No," he said sullenly.