"It may cause trouble," the bald man put in. "There was a case once in which a man came within speaking distance of his wife, and the women went wild about it. Some women even insisted on living near their husbands after that, and then the divorces began. You shouldn't do it, Fillmore. Take my word for it, you'll start something that will be hard to stop." "Maybe you're right," Fillmore admitted. "Men have killed themselves for their wives, but that's nothing. They have given them planets, but that is nothing; they have showered them with stars, and that is very little because there are so many stars. But no man has ever given a woman, up until this time, a strand of his hair, largely because no man had any hair to give. Yes, it would cause trouble. You'd have to grow hair then, and that would cause the race to slip right back into the dark age. This is a problem that calls for fourteen power thought." "Not here," the bald man shouted. "Right here," Fillmore insisted. "I'll project a thought-proofed wall about me so that you won't get hurt." "Well, don't take all day. You've been in this room nearly thirty seconds and haven't accomplished anything yet. Get to work and finish the task. But remember, don't shake this place down or burn it up." "Relax," Fillmore said. The bald man and the woman watched the wall grow and then become a sphere. They could easily tell that it was more than six feet thick and harder than a diamond, for it would take every bit of that to restrain Fillmore's full voltage. Besides, he sometimes became radio-active when he turned on full power. The full matter required one point three seconds. Then the thought-proofed sphere was complete. Then began the dreary wait. Every second seemed like a light year. Five seconds passed, then ten, and still they waited. Then the woman sat bolt upright and uttered an exclamation. "The sphere is bulging out," she screamed. "It's going to explode." It was then that the bald man caught the thought beam that came through the sphere: "I've got it! Thinking about hair reminded me of the twentieth century man--he destroyed himself and the world with fissionable hydrogen--only he didn't really destroy himself! Do you get it? He only changed things. "That's the answer. To eliminate the mind and body we don't destroy, we merely change. Change is the only definite thing anyway. Besides, it will be an interesting thing to cogitate on--the change." The thought ended on an excited note. Then the sphere shimmered through the spectrum and with a pyrotechnic display burst outward. Red, white, blue, purple, and finally black heat shot ten thousand miles through the earth below. The planet shuddered in protest, then disrupted into a gaseous nova. The ultimate quest had succeeded. Just as in the dark age....