Part 2

"Nothing exactly--happened. I don't quite know how to describe it." She hurried them down the corridor and opened a door into a large children's playroom. "See what you think."

The boy sat stolidly in the corner of the room. He looked up as they came in, but there was no flicker of recognition or pleasure on his pale face. The monitor helmet was still on his head. He just sat there, gripping a toy fire engine tightly in his hands.

Lessing crossed the room swiftly. "Tommy," he said.

The boy didn't even look at him. He stared stupidly at the fire engine.

"Tommy!" Lessing reached out for the toy. The boy drew back in terror, clutching it to his chest. "Go away," he choked. "Go away, go away--" When Lessing persisted the boy bent over swiftly and bit him hard on the hand.

Lessing sat down on the table. "Tommy, listen to me." His voice was gentle. "I won't try to take it again. I promise."

"Go away."

"Do you know who I am?"

Tommy's eyes shifted haltingly to Lessing's face. He nodded. "Go away."

"Why are you afraid, Tommy?"

"I hurt. My head hurts. I hurt all over. Go away."

"Why do you hurt?"

"I--can't get it--off," the boy said.

_The monitor_, Lessing thought suddenly. Something had suddenly gone horribly wrong--could the boy really be sensing the source of the trouble? Lessing felt a cold knot gather in the pit of his stomach. He knew what happened when adult psi-contact struck a psi-high youngster's mind. He had seen it a hundred times at the Farm. But even more--he had felt it in his own mind, bursting from the child. Like a violent physical blow, the hate and fear and suspicion and cruelty buried and repressed in the adult mind, crushing suddenly into the raw receptors of the child's mind like a smothering fog--it was a fearful thing. A healthy youngster could survive it, even though the scar remained. But this youngster was sick--

And yet _an animal instinctively seeks its own protection_. With trembling fingers Lessing reached out and opened the baffle-snap on the monitor. "Take it off, Tommy," he whispered.

The boy blinked in amazement, and pulled the grey helmet from his head. Lessing felt the familiar prickly feeling run down his scalp as the boy stared at him. He could feel deep in his own mind the cold chill of terror radiating from the boy. Then, suddenly, it began to fade. A sense of warmth--peace and security and comfort--swept in as the fear faded from the boy's face.

The fire engine clattered to the floor.

* * * * *

They analyzed the tapes later, punching the data cards with greatest care, filing them through the machines for the basic processing and classification that all their data underwent. It was late that night when they had the report back in their hands.

Dorffman stared at it angrily. "It's obviously wrong," he grated. "It doesn't fit. Dave, it doesn't agree with _anything_ we've observed before. There must be an error."

"Of course," said Lessing. "According to the theory. The theory says that adult psi-contact is deadly to the growing child. It smothers their potential through repeated contact until it dries up completely. We've proved that, haven't we? Time after time. Everything goes according to the theory--except Tommy. But Tommy's psi-potential was drying up there on the Farm, until the distortion was threatening the balance of his mind. Then he made an adult contact, and we saw how he bloomed." Lessing sank down to his desk wearily. "What are we going to do, Jack? Formulate a separate theory for Tommy?"

"Of course not," said Dorffman. "The instruments were wrong. Somehow we misread the data--"

"Didn't you see his _face_?" Lessing burst out. "Didn't you see how he _acted_? What do you want with an instrument reading?" He shook his head. "It's no good, Jack. Something different happened here, something we'd never counted on. It's something the theory just doesn't allow for."

They sat silently for a while. Then Dorffman said: "What are you going to do?"

"I don't know," said Lessing. "Maybe when we fell into this bramble bush we blinded ourselves with the urge to classify--to line everything up in neat rows like pins in a paper. Maybe we were so blind we missed the path altogether."

"But the book is due! The Conference speech--"

"I think we'll make some changes in the book," Lessing said slowly. "It'll be costly--but it might even be fun. It's a pretty dry, logical presentation of ideas, as it stands. Very austere and authoritarian. But a few revisions could change all that--" He rubbed his hands together thoughtfully. "How about it, Jack? Do we have nerve enough to be laughed at? Do you think we could stand a little discredit, making silly asses of ourselves? Because when I finish this book, we'll be laughed out of existence. There won't be any Authority in psionics for a while--and maybe that way one of the lads who's _really_ sniffing out the trail will get somebody to listen to him!

"Get a pad, get a pencil! We've got work to do. And when we finish, I think we'll send a carbon copy out Chicago way. Might even persuade that puppy out there to come here and work for me--"