it had begun.

"His feeling, after talking with Chard for some hours, was that Chard
was an overcondensed man. That is Oliver's own term, you understand.
Chard obviously was intelligent, had a very strong survival drive. He
had selected a good personal survival line to follow--good but very
narrow. Actually, of course, he was a frightened man. He had been
running scared all his life. He couldn't stop."

Simms nodded.

"Base Eighteen stopped him. The things he'd been running from simply
no longer existed. Ollie believed Chard would go into a panic when he
realized it. The question was what he'd do then. Survival now had a
very different aspect. The only dangers threatening him were the ones
inherent in the rigid personality structure he had maintained
throughout his adult existence. Would he be intelligent enough to
understand that? And would his survival urge--with every alternative
absolutely barred to him for five years--be strong enough to overcome
those dangers?"

"And there," Simms said dryly, "we have two rather large questions."
He cleared his throat. "The fact remains, however, that Oliver B.
McAllen is a good practical psychologist--as he demonstrated at the
meeting."

"I expected Ollie would score on the motions," Fredericks said. "How
did that part of it come off?"

"Not too badly. The first motion was passed unanimously. A vote of
censure against Dr. McAllen."

Fredericks looked thoughtful. "His seventeenth--I believe?"

"Yes. The fact was mentioned. McAllen admitted he could do no less than
vote for this one himself. However, the next motion to receive a majority
was, in effect, a generalized agreement that men with such ... ah ...
highly specialized skills as Barney Chard's and with comparable
intelligence actually would be of great value as members of the
association, if it turned out that they could be sufficiently relieved of
their more flagrant antisocial tendencies. Considering the qualification,
the psychology department could hardly avoid backing that motion. The same
with the third one--in effect again that Psychology is to make an
unprejudiced study of the results of Dr. McAllen's experiment on Base
Eighteen, and report on the desirability of similar experiments when the
personality of future subjects appears to warrant them."

"Well," Fredericks said, after a pause, "as far as the association
goes, Ollie got what he wanted. As usual." He hesitated. "The other
matter--"

"We'll know