The level was entirely taken up with bare ten-foot cubicles, each cramped chamber dominated by a cryptic metal-and-crystal likeness of the Hymenop head set into the metal wall opposite its corridor entrance. From either side of a circular speaking-grill, the antennae projected into the room, rasplike and alert, above faceted crystal eyes that glowed faintly in the near-darkness. The craftsmanship was faultless, stylized after a fashion alien to Farrell's imagining and personifying with disturbing realism the soulless, arrogant efficiency of the Hymenop hive-mind. To Farrell, there was about each image a brooding air of hypnotic fixity. "Something new in Hymenop experiments," he reported to Stryker. "None of the other domes we found had anything like this. These things have some bearing on the condition of the natives, Lee--there's a path worn through the dust to every image, and I can see where the people knelt. I don't like it. I've got a hunch that whatever these damned idols were used for succeeded too well." "They can't be idols," Stryker said. "The Hymenops would have known how hard it is to displace anthropomorphism entirely from human worship. But I think you're right about the experiment's working too well. No ordinary compulsion would have stuck so long. Periodic hypnosis? Wait, Arthur, that's an angle I want to check with Gibson...." He was back a moment later, wheezing with excitement. "Gib thinks I'm on the right track--periodic hypnosis. The Hymenops must have assigned a particular chamber and image to each slave. The images are mechanicals, robot mesmerists designed to keep the natives' compulsion-to-isolation renewed. Post-hypnotic suggestion kept the poor devils coming back every morning, and their children with them, even after the Hymenops pulled out. They couldn't break away until the _Marco's_ Ringwave forced a shutdown of the dome's power plant and deactivated the images. Not that they're any better off now that they're free; they don't know how--" Farrell never heard the rest of it. Something struck him sharply across the back of the head. * * * * * When he regained consciousness, he was naked and weaponless and lost. The rustling of approach, bodiless and dreadful in darkness, panicked him completely and sent him fleeing through a sweating eternity that brought him finally to the dome's lowest level and the Hymenop power plant. He went hesitantly toward the shadowy bulk of the Ringwave cylinder, drawn as much now by its familiarity as driven by the terror behind him. At the base of the towering machine, he made out a control board totally unrecognizable in design, studded with dials and switches clearly intended for alien handling. The tinny whispering of Stryker's voice in the vaultlike quiet struck him with the frightening feeling that he had gone mad.