Norden shook his head. The incident appeared grotesque to him. Fluoroscope or not, something was wrong with him. He couldn't have been so different from other men before the ordeal on Hardwick's asteroid. That ruined steak had cost a small fortune to transport from Earth, and the man would lose valuable time while waiting for another to be cooked. And yet, Norden could see that somehow it had been effective therapy, had relieved an almost intolerable tension. They spent the afternoon sending out the test "balloon" rockets with the various elements of Hardwick's screen. On the way back to the barracks, Norden noticed there were now six guards stationed about the laboratory, two of whom instantly fell into step behind him. He had been shifted to the dormitory over the Headquarters building, where he would be in the least danger--and also have the least freedom from observation! But he forgot it the next day as the results of the tests came in. The shields had been completely ineffective. Dead rabbits still were unmolested, but live ones had been picked off in everything they had sent out. Miles accepted the result with a despairing shrug, but Pat was hit hard by it. None of the other research teams seemed to be getting anywhere. There was no way to detect Aliens, and no way to screen humans. On the fourth day, when the last possible variation of Hardwick's formula had proved useless, and the Aliens had moved their lines up to fifty million miles from Earth's orbit, Pat was down early, re-checking the translation the computer had made. Norden came in, saw the results, and swore. For three hours, he pored over the Japanese scientist's mathematics--and as before, he found his mind reaching for something, only to begin some useless side speculation that threw him off. It was as if he had a censor in his mind telling him he could go no further. He considered the grim prospect of ten days or more of life for himself, and the men here, until the noonday signal sounded. Somebody had put a new plastic glue on the handle of his knife and fork, and it was fifteen minutes before he could locate a solvent that removed it. Pat laughed at his plight along with the others. He checked his anger, swallowed it--and suddenly realized that in a strange way, the practical jest played on him was a mark of acceptance. He went back to the laboratory trying to think of something ingenious enough to enable him to live up to their queer code. An idea that had nagged him tantalizingly, just below consciousness, nibbled again at his mind, but he let it go. If he could fit a protogravity generator under a plate.... And abruptly, he was digging for the complete set of Hardwick's notes, and scanning the nonsense that the computer had declared meaningless. He picked up the telephone and called the library. "Give me what you've got on Martian sand lizards!"