Bryce Walton

“ He ran past the mouth opening into the main corridor. Then came back and ran into the darker, strangely-lighted artery. He ran harder. And yet he wasn't running. Not all of him. As he ran, he was conscious of some undefinable, but terrific conflict.
Beneath the suit, his skin burned with sweat. He felt the rigid pattern of tensed neck and jaw muscles.
I don't feel at all familiar. Something's very wrong. Everything's wrong. I'm displaced, like something that has slipped into an alien dimension. ”

“ It makes a man capable of physical aggressive action, and able to kill, if he has to. High motivation is required though, in most cases. With you, my probable death wasn't enough. It took the vision of Pat here in the clutches of a monster to make the Kappa factor work on you, Greg."
Greg rubbed his eyes. Pat came over and he took her hand, held it tightly. A warmth came out of her and into him, into his mind.
Drakeson went on. "We isolated the Kappa factor, made it into solution. We all have it, even the anesthetic citizens of the Cowls, but the mass shock psychosis won't let it work. ”

“ We feel that the big Chain blow-up shocked the whole human race into a mass psychosis, comparable to individual cases of hysteria, schizophrenia, escape from reality. That's why the non-change, non-aggressiveness Codes were established. Also, the anesthesia, the Dream Continuity Scale—nothing but hysteria on a mass and planned basis."
Merrol got up. He walked around and sat down beside Greg.
"Carried out to its inevitable end, this could only lead to mass racial suicide. That's obvious. It was a static dead end. A few people recovered from the psychosis. They escaped, and formed the Colonists. ”

“ He felt Drakeson move, and then he saw Drakeson's hand with that infernal injection solution jiggling around in a big hypodermic syringe.
"I've just given myself another shot, Greg. You'd better have another right now. If we land down there we'll need all the adrenolex we can get."
Greg hardly felt the injection as he tried to think, clarify his situation. I'm not psycho, he thought desperately. I'm doing something a little bit different, but it isn't psychosis.
But good integrated citizens would not fight against the orders from Control. All right. He would submit to brain-probing. ”

“ In seconds he had zipped thin resilient aerosilk about his body, and was running across the wide plastic mesh roof toward the heliocruiser in which Drakeson was waiting.
Greg felt the physical power flow as he ran. It sickened him. The conditioners kept the body in good shape, but only to allow the cortical-thalamic imagery faculties to function better. Actual physical business like this was revolting to any Cowl citizen. Any sort of physical and materialistic activity, divorced from anesthesia, might be a sign of encroaching psychosis. ”

“ Not the Controllers. They could employ only the neuro-guns to paralyze. So he decided that Colonists had probably saved Drakeson.
Terror gripped Greg then. He remembered Drakeson yelling at him, the distended eyes, the straining face. And how he himself had almost given in, had almost killed.
Had almost gone psycho.
But he hadn't. That was the important thing. He was still a sane, integrated part of the Cowls and the Codes. And after a test like that, he figured that nothing could break him. Let them send him to psychometry. Let them clamp on the brain-probers and leave them on for months. ”

“ Give Drakeson a chance to employ the rhodium tracker, and spot her location.
A kind of panic got loose in Greg's brain. "Pat, don't you have any insight at all? Can't you see that this is advanced psychosis, that—"
She interrupted. "I've tried to explain to you before, Greg. But you've always preferred anesthesia. You loathe reality. But I'm part of reality."
Yes. He had dreams. The anesthetic cubicles, Stage Five where a man was master of thalamic introjection, dream imagery. A stage where any part of reality was supposed to have faded into utter inconsequence. ”

“ He pulled Drakeson's hands away from the controls. Drakeson was trying to stop him from bringing the cruiser down.
Drakeson gasped. "Even with the heat-blasters, we'll never get a hundred meters away from where we land. I figured on landing directly over the place—"
"So will the Controllers," Greg said. He hurled Drakeson back, heard him sprawl on the mesh flooring where he lay, half sobbing.
Greg angled the ship down abruptly. "As soon as we land, I'm running for it," he called back. "The Controllers will be down there swarming all over us, and I don't want to lead them to where Pat is." ”

“ It will take a long time yet, but we'll win. You have noticed the increase in so-called insanity in the Cowls. It really means just the opposite. Our numbers are increasing by leaps and bounds."
Greg said, "The Controllers think you're using some psychological or physical pressure to create these—cures."
Merrol smiled. "We've got a recruiting system. Drakeson, for example, is a spy. We have spies all over the Cowls."
Greg stared. "Drakeson?"
A door opened. The lean cynical man entered, nodded, and stood beside Pat. His eyes shone more brightly as he looked at Greg. ”

“ They concerned themselves then with the freeing of the Citizens of the Cowls from their psychosis. The world is untenable on a large scale now, due to radioactive poisoning. It will remain untenable for some time. Meanwhile we decided to Colonize Venus. We've established Colonies there. Thriving communities, but the important thing is this, Greg—it's given new impetus and enthusiasm to those who become sane and escape the Cowls. It presents a big challenge and solidifies the cure. ”

“ There's a law against any aggressive destructive action on the part of any Citizen."
The audio replied. "The neuro-guns aren't destructive. Temporary paralysis."
Greg said. "This cruiser is at a high altitude and traveling fast. If you paralyze us now, the cruiser will crash. By using the neuro-guns on us, you will be destructive, homicidal."
A dead silence greeted this statement. Greg went on. "I'm a Stage Five citizen. Legally, there's no restriction against going outside the Cowl. I'll report your action and attitudes to the Council if you fire those neuro-guns." ”

“ A spot of nausea bounced into Greg's stomach at Drakeson's reference to what the big Chain blow-up had done to almost all high cellular life forms, including crows. Only insects and a few shielded humans had withstood the radiation. Most higher complex cellular organisms had paid for their complexity. ”

“ However, a strong overload of Kappa injection will sometimes break the psychosis, force the person back into an aggressive personality, capable of destruction. Each individual carries an armament of between 200 and 800 particles of the Kappa factor after we give an injection. It took 1600 particles to break your suicidal hysteria."
Pat squeezed his hand. Greg looked up. ”

“ You haven't considered any of the angles. For example, I picked up a couple of shielding suits which you hadn't thought of. And two small wrist Geigers. If I hadn't thought of them, then we'd probably have been contaminated with hard radiation out there, and would have been thrown into the septic pools for about six months. ”