"The remainder of the litter--my brothers and sisters, if I could think of them as such--were callously placed in a weighted sack and tossed in the swamp, but by that time I had found a home. The Douglas home. Their child, Timmy, was an imbecile whose short-circuited mind lay open to me. I found by hasty experiments that Homer's mind was capable of controlling and manipulating the imbecile, like a puppeteer. The difficulties of controlling two bodies at once are tremendous, which is why Homer always struck you as clumsy and almost half-witted--he had to receive the absolute minimum of concentration so that his exhaustion at climbing the bluff this afternoon, for example, was not recognized in time. Well, there it is. I took over Timmy's helpless body eight years ago--too abruptly and with many errors--but it insured my survival for a short time at least. Now that time is at an end and the greater part of what I must do is still to be done--" * * * * * Phil sat with his face averted, his hands clenched between his knees. "The instinct to survive," he said in a muffled voice. "I can't blame you for what you did, but it was cruel! What a damnable trick to play on the parents!" "Believe me, I know what you feel but there was no other way." "No other!" He swung around, his face mottled and his breathing heavy. "Whatever you are, you made a Machiavellian puppet-master out of a lousy, flea-bitten mongrel! Was it beyond _those_ powers to heal Timmy's mind?" "I am not a psychopathic criminal." "Do you imply that healing Timmy would involve repeating the swindle you worked on Homer?" "No. I could have by-passed the simple neural block that was leaving Timmy helpless, and so have given him what to you would have seemed his normal intelligence. In addition, I could have completed the work that nature left incomplete in all of you, and so have released his full, enormous capabilities. I could have done all this--can still do it--and still leave Timmy's ego untouched, to develop in its own way, among its own kind, knowing nothing of me for what I am." "But you haven't done so. Why? Why!" "I dared not." "Danger? From a small boy?" "Deadly danger--danger of infection that might threaten every intelligent race in the galaxy and even spread across the great gulfs of space beyond--" "All this from poor little Timmy?" "From what he might thereby become." "I'm licked." Phil threw out his hands angrily. "I try to get a straight answer and all I get is implications. You tell me an outrageous story, and I believe you. You tell me you've neatly arranged to break the hearts of two of my best friends, and I respect your good intentions in doing so. Why? I love you like a brother, but I'm ready to take a rock and crush your skull in for a monster. I mean it! I could kill Homer with a single kick! I could--"