"Come on. If I'm going to work on that serum project I'd better inspect the volunteers and line up the blood donors and look over old whatshisname's papers." But beyond the window the snowy ridges of the mountain, inscrutable, caught and held his eye; a riddle and a puzzle-- "Ridiculous," he said, and went to his work. * * * * * Four months later, Jay Allison and Randall Forth stood together, watching the last of the disappearing planes, carrying the volunteers back toward Carthon and their mountains. "I should have flown back to Carthon with them," Jay said moodily. Forth watched the tall man stare at the mountain; wondered what lay behind the contained gestures and the brooding. He said, "You've done enough, Jay. You've worked like the devil. Thurmond--the Legate--sent down to say you'd get an official commendation and a promotion for your part. That's not even mentioning what you did in the trailmen's city." He put a hand on his colleague's shoulder, but Jay shook it off impatiently. All through the work of isolating and testing the blood fraction, Jay had worked tirelessly and unsparingly; scarcely sleeping, but brooding; silent, prone to fly into sudden savage rages, but painstaking. He had overseen the trailmen with an almost fatherly solicitude--but from a distance. He had left no stone unturned for their comfort--but refused to see them in person except when it was unavoidable. Forth thought, we played a dangerous game. Jay Allison had made his own adjustment to life, and we disturbed that balance. Have we wrecked the man? He's expendable, but damn it, what a loss! He asked, "Well, why _didn't_ you fly back to Carthon with them? Kendricks went along, you know. He expected you to go until the last minute." Jay did not answer. He had avoided Kendricks, the only witness to his duality. In all his nightmare brooding, the avoidance of anyone who had known him as Jason became a mania. Once, meeting Rafe Scott on the lower floor of the HQ, he had turned frantically and plunged like a madman through halls and corridors, to avoid coming face to face with the man, finally running up four flights of stairs and taking shelter in his rooms, with the pounding heart and bursting veins of a hunted criminal. At last he said, "If you've called me down here to read me the riot act about not wanting to make another trip into the Hellers--!" "No, no," Forth said equably, "there's a visitor coming. Regis Hastur sent word he wants to see you. In case you don't remember him, he was on Project Jason--" "I remember," Jay said grimly. It was nearly his one clear memory--the nightmare of the ledge, his slashed hand, the shameful naked body of the Darkovan woman, and--blurring these things, the too-handsome Darkovan aristocrat who had banished him for Jason again. "He's a better psychiatrist than you are, Forth. He changed me into Jason in the flicker of an eyelash, and it took you half a dozen hypnotic sessions."