"You killed the mad dog," he said. "You didn't hesitate about that. I thought him into Port City to give you an object lesson. You missed the point, I'm afraid. You couldn't understand that you were yourself a mad dog yapping at our heels. Potentially, all the older generation threaten us the same way. Your kind of emotional reasoning, in one form or another, will sooner or later infect them all. We encouraged the migration to the colonies in order to prevent a conflict. By administering the Redearth to every adult who left the earth, we thought we might make a few of them realize their mental capacity. Apparently the catalyst works only with an infant, and not always then. In a sense, Captain Greg, your frontier has made us two species--ours, mankind; yours, the rejects; the unfinished men." Dr. Vayle made a choking sound deep in his throat. His dream was gone; the comfort of his madness had been stripped away from him. "And if it does come to the point of conflict," the boy went on quietly, "we fully intend to survive." "Not after I reach the satellite," Greg answered grimly. His voice sounded hollow and uncertain, even to himself. The boy had destroyed the dramatic fiction of a virus invasion. Greg's dream, too, was gone. "I tried to save you, Captain, but by your own violence you made that impossible. Now you will provide another object lesson. What I have told you is true; every man has our ability. In sixty seconds your ship will reach the old satellite; the airlock will open automatically--only there will be no air in the wheel. This shell rusted open years ago. You face death just as certain as if you leaped into outer space. But you can save yourselves--all three of you--by thinking yourselves back to the earth, or out to one of the colonies. This experiment interests us a great deal. We didn't intend to resort to it quite so soon, but you've given us an ideal opportunity. If you can unshackle your minds now, we have hope for the rest of the rejects. There will be fewer mad dogs for us to dispose of later on." The boy was gone. Greg felt the ship slide into the ramp of the satellite. He heard the grapples clang against the hull, and the scream of rusting metal as the airlock began to open. A paralyzing emotional opiate flamed through his mind: this was a dream, nothing more. In a moment he would jerk himself awake and be amused by his terror. But there was something else in his mind, too, a stirring of greatness, a fire of magnificence, a new self he had never known before. He groped blindly toward that pinpoint of light. From a great distance, like an echo of shattering ice, he heard Adrian Vayle's voice, "The children have mastered the art of hypnotic illusion, but obviously they cannot violate the established physical laws. Our problem is entirely mechanical. I am sure Captain Greg can work out...." Vayle had found the sublime ignorance of sanity; and that was no solution.