he came forward to interfere the first time. That is when you should have caught him. Instead you ignored him for too long. Idiot!"

"All right," grumbled Sargenuti. "But this is just telling Carroll things he wants to know."

Kingallis smiled sourly. "Perhaps it is better that way," he said. "When he sees what he is up against he may be less violent."

"And if he again escapes?"

"He will not escape."

Sargenuti laughed roughly. "It would be drastically amusing to find that James Forrest Carroll is smarter than the great Doctor Kingallis."

"Shut up!" snapped Kingallis angrily.

He turned to Carroll. "You know too much," he said. "Yet I have no qualms about telling you more. It is our job to prevent the spread of knowledge about the Lawson Radiation, to discourage research and to cause the importance of the Radiation to diminish.

"We employ mass hypnotism to intercept the reports, to read them, to make the minor changes that prevent correlation of certain data that would lead to some discovery of importance. This happens only once in a few months.

"We can tell by the title of the experiment whether it may or may not include a clue. When someone comes upon a real find we erase his mind."

"And I came upon something?"

"You did."

"What was it?"

Kingallis smiled tolerantly. "You wouldn't expect me to tell you?"

Carroll shrugged. "I suppose not," he said. "But just why do you think I am a basic threat to your plans?"

"Obvious. Of all, you are the first that ever came back to full control of his faculties after we erased your mind. The others have pain syndromes every time they consider research at all. You do not.

"Not only that, you were capable of avoiding the block. We used mass hypnosis on the people within a visible radius of that corner. Of them all, you alone can see the black sedan 

 Prev. P 23/87 next