unreasoning,
uncontrollable panic of absolute terror? That's what would happen to
Manny if you put him behind the wheel of a running automobile. It's
worse than fear; fear is controllable. Blind terror isn't.

"Manny had one little twist, in his mind. He liked to get into a
car--_any_ car, whether it was his or not--and drive. He became king
of the road. He wasn't a little man any more. He was God, and lesser
beings had better look out.

"We got to him before he actually killed anyone, but there is a woman
in Queens today who will never walk again because of Manny the Moog.
But there won't be any more like her. We took the instrument of
destruction away from him; we 'cut off his hands'. Now he's leaving a
reasonably useful life. We don't need to sacrifice another's life
before we neutralize the danger."

"What about Joey Partridge?" His Grace asked. "He's one of your
zanies, too, isn't he?

"That's right. He couldn't keep from using his fists. He liked the
feel of solid flesh and bone giving under the impact of those big
fists of his. Boxing wasn't enough; he had to be able to feel
flesh-to-flesh contact, with no padded glove between. He almost killed
a couple of men before we got to him."

"What did you do to his hands?"

"Nothing. Not a thing. There's nothing at all wrong with his hands.
But he _thinks_ there is. He's firmly convinced that the bones are as
brittle as chalk, that if he uses those fists, _he_ will be the one
who will break and shatter. It even bothers him to shake hands, as you
saw last night. It took a lot of guts to do what he did last
night--walk over to those two thugs knowing he couldn't defend
himself. He's no coward. But he's as terrified of having his hands
hurt as Manny is of driving a car."

"I see'" the Duke said thoughtfully.

* * * * *

"There are other cases, plenty of them," I went on. "We have
pyromaniacs who are perfectly harmless now because they have a deathly
terror of flame. We have one fellow who used to be very nasty with a
knife; he grows a beard now because the very thought of having a sharp
edge that close to him is unnerving. The reality would send him
screaming. We have a girl who had the weird idea that it was fun to
drop things out of windows or off the tops of high buildings. Aside
from the chance of people below being hurt, there was another danger.
Two cops grabbed her just as she was about to drop her baby brother
off the roo