The man's voice was harsh, cutting across the room impatiently. "The
truth, I said. The problem, you fool, what you saw, what you learned;
you know perfectly well what I'm referring to. But we'll swallow no more
of this silly four-dimensional superman tale, so don't bother to start
it."
"I--I don't understand you. It's--it's true--" Again he tried to peer
across the room. "Why are you hunting me like this? What are you trying
to do to me?"
"We want the truth. We want to know what you saw."
"But--but _you're_ what I saw. You know what I found out. I mean--" He
stopped, his face going white. His hand went to his mouth, and he
stared still harder. "Who are you?" he whispered.
"The truth!" the man roared. "You'd better be quick, or you'll be back
in the corridor."
"_Webber!_"
"Your last chance, Harry."
Without warning, Harry was across the room, flying across the desk,
crashing into the big man's chest. With a scream of fury he fought,
driving his fists into the powerful chest, wrenching at the thick,
flailing arms of the startled man.
"_It's you!_" he screamed. "It's you that's been torturing me. It's you
that's been hunting me down all this time, not the other people, you and
your crowd of ghouls have been at my throat!"
He threw the big man off balance, dropped heavily on him as he fell back
to the ground, glared down into the other's angry brown eyes.
And then, as though he had never been there at all, the big man
vanished, and Harry sat back on the floor, his whole body shaking with
frustrated sobs as his mind twisted in anguish.
He had been wrong, completely wrong, ever since he had discovered the
not-men. Because he had thought _they_ had been the ones who hunted and
tortured him for so long. And now he knew how far he had been wrong. For
the face of the shadowy man, the man behind the nightmare he was living,
was the face of Dr. George Webber.
* * * * *
"You're a fool," said Dr. Manelli sharply, as he turned away from the
sleeping figure on the bed to face the older man. "Of all the ridiculous
things, to let him connect you with this!" The young doctor turned
abruptly and sank down in a chair, glowering at Dr. Webber. "You haven't
gotten to first base yet, but you've just given Scott enough evidence
to free himself from integrator control altogether, if he gives it any
thought. But I suppose you realize that."
"Nonsense," Dr. Webber retorted. "He had enough information to do that
when we first started. I'm no more worried now than I was then. I'm sure
he doesn't know enough about the psycho-integrator to be able
voluntarily to control the patient-operator relationship to any degree.
Oh, no, he's safe enough. But you've missed the whole point of that
little interview." Dr. Webber grinned at Manelli.
"I'm afraid I have. It looked to me like useless bravado."
"The persecution, man, the _persecution_! He's shifted his sights!
Before that interview, the _not-men_ were torturing him, remember?
Because they were afraid he would report his findings to me, of course.
But now it's _I_ that's against him." The grin widened. "You see where
that leads?"
"You're talking almost as though you believed this story about a
different sort of people among us."