the pain of death. Crowded in between those two sensations that represented a person's life span, pain was the dominant impetus. What drove a man to do anything except the impetus of pain and the instinct to avoid pain? A man did a million things to avoid physical pain. To avoid hunger pains, a man would eat; to avoid the pain of coldness, a man would light a fire; to avoid aching muscles, a man would make a wheel to carry his burden; to lessen that burden, a man would split an atom.... And a man did a million other things to avoid emotional pain. To avoid the pain of loneliness, a man would make friends; to avoid the pain of boredom, a man would play a game; to avoid the pain of ugliness, a man would create beauty....

Not an unpleasant reality, he realized. Not unpleasant because it was necessary. Nothing in the universe moved unless a force pushed or pulled it. A man unable to sense physical or emotional pain would do nothing. There would be nothing to push him. As wind moved clouds, pain moved man.

The sight of his body was not exactly painful to him. They had not disfigured him; they had only changed him. To disassociate him from his body, no doubt. What they had done to him many would call an "atrocity," he realized. But, in a war, every time one soldier killed another, it was an "atrocity"—one man had taken the life of another. They had a job to do and they were doing it.

Successfully, he knew. When they came the next time, he would tell them what they wanted to know. Want to know where Fort Meade is located on Earth? Give me a map and I'll show you. How many soldiers do we have in the mountain range a hundred miles from here? I'll give you my best estimate. I'll tell you anything you want!

Pain was the impetus to push a man, he knew. They had pushed him and pushed him. Doing their job. And they had pushed him far enough. A man was not linked to other men and his nation and his world by tangible threads. A man was separate and distinct; a man's body was a world in itself. He had been pushed into his world by pain. Somewhere—beyond the wall of pain that came or vanished when they wanted—somewhere, he had friends, an army, a world called Earth. But they didn't matter. His world mattered....

And, oddly, he wasn't afraid of pain any more. It was just a thing, a thing to be avoided in any way. And he wasn't to be pitied. They had changed him. Sergeant Chester Gregg wasn't a man any more. He was something that could be added to and subtracted from, a pliable thing that could be prodded and molded, an object that 

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