to appear were covered with the curious writing, very large and
only a few words to a page. Then came pictures of many things, not
photographs but drawings and paintings in vivid color, and the things
could in no way be linked to science. There were portraits of the tall
creatures themselves, in various settings, some in labs like this one,
some outdoors in a landscape that was predominantly scarlet and green;
there were group scenes in which they ate odd-looking foods and walked
down blue pathways and examined strange pets and familiar animals. Under
each picture was a short grouping of squiggles, marks, scribbles, etc.

"Can that be a science book?" asked Cal, leaning over his wife's
shoulder. The beings were pictured as simply as possible, in no minute
detail whatever, and their activities were of the dullest and most
prosaic sort.

This pattern was followed through page after page--a picture (some of
them were of things so alien they could not be placed by either the
Fulls or himself), a single character, then a short word and another,
long or short as the case might be. After a dozen of them had flashed on
and off Adam noticed that the large character was always repeated at the
beginning of the last word.

When he realized what it meant, the whole business clicked into focus.
The whole damned deal, the lab and the scientists and the experiments
and the meaning of the four magic slates, and everything. There was no
particular reason why this last slate should have done it, for it was no
more suggestive than many other things that he had seen; it was simply
the last piece of evidence, the final push that sent him headlong into
terrible knowledge.

Carefully, desperately, he went over it all in his mind, while the Fulls
spoke in low tones.

_God_, he thought, _oh, God!_ He was shivering now. He was more
terrified than he had ever been before. His tongue felt thick.

The punishments, the high stool and the arbitrary cuffs and swats; the
gadgets, the mazes, the puzzles; were they all a part of the
conditioning to neurosis of a scientific experiment? They were not.

* * * * *

Adam had found an answer, the only possible answer. The fourth slate had
given it to him, although a hundred hints of it had shown up every day.
His psych teacher would be ashamed of him for muddling along so many
days, believing in a theory that was so plainly impossible.

He addressed Mrs. Full. She was a