Michelson backed away from her, haltingly, then ran into the lab. He came back out and knelt down. He had a long hypodermic needle. The needle came down. It looked bigger and bigger.

She had thought maybe he would understand. But he didn't. He couldn't. Nobody could.

A few words could have made all the difference. But she could not speak.

What she wanted to explain most of all was that it was no kind of Martian intelligence that had been given to her. The Martians had no familiar kind of intelligence. They had worked on her, developed her own brain to its capacity. If they only knew that here it would be so different. I'm more like you, she wanted to explain, more like you than you could possibly guess. She could say nothing.

She could only whimper as the needle went in. Dimly, she saw the table wheeled out, the shiny familiar gleam of the instruments, the septic chrome containers and the rising cleansing waves of steam.

She felt herself being lifted to the table. The wheels turned inexorably under her. The ceiling swam in a blur above her. The gray aging tired face bent over her. She could roll her eyes back and see the dark mouth of the laboratory door opening wider and wider as she was wheeled toward it, through it—

You said you loved me, she thought, as he bent over her and she could hear the clinking of glass. But you never did because if you did you would understand, even though I cannot speak.

She closed her eyes. Around her were the familiar smells, the antiseptic, the chemicals, the odor of animals waiting to die or be experimented on in their cages. She could hear the chattering of the monkeys, the coughing of dogs, the squealing of rats. She could remember how the placid guinea pigs would be seeking one anothers' warmth in the corner of a cage.

It was all beginning again, and there would never never, she knew, be an ending to it.

She clutched at his hand, squeezed it between her hands and pressed it against her cheek.

"Daddy," the thought whispered unheard, "Daddy Mike—"

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