What check would limit the whispering spheres? No germ, surely. What possible check was there except man's nature? What part of man's nature? That was the answer Taylor wanted to know. His chain of thought was suddenly interrupted. Pember was coming on the run. The private saluted the captain. "Something's wrong, sir! Orkins is throwing a fit." "Can't you quiet him? The spheres are near." "Norden held his hand over Orkins' mouth, but it made Orkins worse. I--I think it's serious, sir." Taylor followed Pember to the place where Orkins had been digging. Norden was there, bending over Orkins, who lay on the ground. Masters, standing behind Norden, shook his head. "He's dead," Norden said, straightening. "He was scared to death by the spheres," Masters said. "No one harmed him, except to hold a hand over his mouth. He wasn't choked. He could have breathed through his nostrils--" "Wait--" Taylor held up his hand. Something clicked in his brain. Masters had said something about the spheres that fitted. He said, _Maybe you don't have to touch 'em to kill 'em._ Figuratively speaking, Orkins hadn't been seriously touched either. The answer! CHAPTER V AN ESCAPE Taylor ordered Pember and Norden to bury Orkins where he had been digging, then the officer took Masters aside. "We've got a weapon," Taylor announced. Masters grunted: "Yeah? Indians had bows and arrows, too. Look at what happened to them." "This is different. A new weapon. We can beat the spheres through their emotions." "You mean fear, love, hate--all that stuff? How do you know these spheres have emotions?" "What is life but a series of sensations and emotions? If the spheres are alive, they must have something which correspond to emotions. The emotions may be different from ours, but they'll be emotions just the same. Orkins died of fear. Of course, you can call it heart attack, but fear brought it on. That sphere that had me cornered in the plant died, too. Do you see?" "Was the sphere afraid of you or the tunnel?" "Don't be flippant. The emotion wasn't fear. It might not have been any emotion we have, but an emotion that we'd expect a creature made of energy to have. An emotion of frustration! It had me cornered. I escaped. The energy sphere met resistance. When energy meets resistance it changes!" "I don't get it." "Look, Masters. If the spheres are mixtures of energies, like we are mixtures of chemicals, death means extinction, just as biological death means the extinction of the chemical action in our lives. Theologians say we don't die--that there's a change and we go on existing in a spiritual life. Now let's take a peep at what science tells us about energy: Newton says energy is never extinguished. When it ceases in one form, it changes to another. What happens when you run electricity through a resistance coil?" "It turns to heat, of course!" "And when you enclose light where it can't escape?"