Deep in her cold, hard, angry face, Roby found the answer even as her fingers tightened and things grew dark.

Deep in her face he saw a vestige of the Sandman.

The Sandman. The star falling on the summer sky. The silver sphere, the ship toward which this 'woman' had been running. The disappearance of the Sandman, the appearance of the red ball, the vanishing of the red ball and now the appearance of his mother. It all fitted!

Matrixes. Moulds. Thought habits. Patterns. Matter. The history of man, his body, all things in the universe.

She was killing him.

She would make him stop thinking, then she would be free.

Thoughts. Darkness. He could barely move, now. Weak, weak. He had thought 'it' was his mother. It wasn't. Nevertheless 'it' was killing him. What if Roby thought something else? Try, anyway. Try it. He kicked. In the wild darkness he thought, hard, hard.

With a wail, his 'mother' withered before him.

He concentrated.

Her fingers dwindled from his throat. Her bright face crumbled. Her body shrank to another size.

He was free. He rose up, gasping.

Through the jungle he saw the silver sphere lying in the sun. He staggered toward it, then cried out with the sharp thrill of the plan that formed in his mind.

He laughed triumphantly. He stared once more at 'it'. What was left of the woman form changed before his eyes, like melting wax. He reshaped it into something new.

The garden wall trembled. A vacuum cylinder was hissing up through the tube. Mr. Grill was coming. Roby would have to hurry or his plan would be ruined.

Roby ran to the spheroid, peered in. Simple controls. Just enough room for his small body—if the plan worked. It had to work. It would work.

The garden trembled with the approaching thunder of the cylinder. Roby laughed. To hell with Mister Grill! To hell with this island!

He thrust himself into the ship. There was much he could learn, it would come in time. He was just on the skirt of knowledge now, but that little knowledge had saved his life, 

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