“We?”

“Yes, Barbara, you and I.”

“But why don’t you help me now?”

“How can I, Barbara?”

“Look at father! Help me stop him. Stop him. Stop him. Help me scream. Help me! For pity’s sake, help me!”

She knelt again, placid, doll-like, dead.

Powell felt a hand under his arm and realized he was not supposed to be kneeling too. The body before him slowly disappeared; the orchid room disappeared, and Mary Noyes was straining to raise him.

“You first this time,” she said grimly.

He shook his head and tried to help Barbara D’Courtney. He fell to the floor.

“All right, Sir Galahad. Cool a while.”

Mary raised the girl and led her to the dais. Then she returned to Powell. “Ready for help now, or don’t you think it’s manly?”

“The word is virile. Don’t waste your time trying to help me up. I need brain power. We’re in trouble.”

“What’d you peep?”

“D’Courtney wanted to be murdered.”

“No!”

“Yep. He wanted to die. For all I know he may have committed suicide in front of Reich. Barbara’s recall is confused. That point’s got to be cleared up. I’ll have to see D’Courtney’s physician.”

“That’s Sam @kins. He and Sally went back to Venus last week.”

“Then I’ll have to make the trip. Do I have time to catch the ten o’clock rocket? Call Idlewild.”

Sam @kins, E.M.D. 1, received Cr. 1,000 per hour of analysis. The public knew that Sam earned two million credits per year, but it did not know that Sam was efficiently killing himself with charity work. @kins was one of the burning lights of the Guild long-range education plan, and leader of the Environment Clique which believed that telepathic ability was not a congenital characteristic, but rather a latent quality of every living organism which could be developed by suitable training.

As a result, Sam’s desert house in the brilliant arid Mesa outside Venusburg was overrun by charity cases. He invited everyone in the low income brackets to trek their problems out to him, and while he was solving them, he was carefully attempting to foster telepathy in his patients. Sam’s reasoning was quite simple. If, say, peeping were a question of developing unused muscles, it might well be that the majority of people had been too lazy or lacked opportunity to do so. But when a man is caught up in the press of a crisis, he can not afford to be lazy; and Sam was there to offer opportunity and training. So far, his results had been the discovery of 2% Latent Espers, which was under the average of the Guild Institute interviews. Sam remained undiscouraged.

Powell found him charging through the rock garden of his desert home vigorously destroying desert flowers under the impression that he was cultivating, and conducting simultaneous conversations with a score of depressed people who followed him about like puppies. The perpetual clouds of Venus radiated dazzling light. Sam’s bald head was burned pink. He was snorting and shouting at plants and patients alike.