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there was a disaster, but this is how we're going to solve it in the future. But we can't do that, can we? So we're going to warn people, and warn them now, that somec does exactly what we've claimed it does, with one side effect. It wipes out memory."

"Dammit, George, we don't know that!"

"We suspect it. That's enough."

"If you do this, George, I can promise you that you'll never have a research or teaching job in the United States of America. Or Britain. Or anywhere!"

"In five years there'll be Russian troops all over America and none of us will have teaching jobs except those of us who know what we're doing in a laboratory. No more fund-raising experts, Dr. Tell. So I'm really not worried about your threat."

"And if the Russians don't come, Cassandra?"

"I will have saved some lives."

"'You're out for headlines, you bastard, if it destroys American science in the process! You want to be a crusader! You want to--"

The door slammed, and George didn't hear the rest of the speech. In a way, he knew Dr. Tell was right. George's own first impulse was to keep his discovery silent. He had wrestled with the problem all night, had hardly slept, but he decided at about four a.m. that he really had no choice. Either he could be the crusader who was hated by other scientists, or he could be one of the bastards who hushed it up, hated by the rest of the world. The rest of the world was bigger. And none of the scientists would be left mindless.

He returned to his office to clean out his desk and load his books into boxes. The reporters would be meeting him at his home in three hours. There was no point in pretending to stay at the Institute. His letter of resignation was already on the Director's desk. It was, almost a formality, telling Dr. Tell. But he was the man who was supervising the whole somec project-- he had to know.

I feel like a murderer. So much hope for somec. But is it my fault? No. We were too excited. We thought we had tested everything. We deserve to be punished for acting too quickly, too unthoroughly.

Punished? George frowned at the thought. Not a matter of punishment or guilt or anything. Just stop the somec and find a way to get around the problem.

When he pulled the Scientific Americans off the shelf, they scattered in every direction. There were quite a few of them, most of the recent ones dogeared where he meant to read an article sometime soon. It was the only way he had to keep up on fields other than his own.

Perhaps in order to avoid thinking about the announcement he was going to make to the reporters in a couple of hours, or perhaps because moving out of the office was so distasteful to him, George picked up the top magazine and opened it to the first dog-eared page. He skimmed; read two more articles; then opened another magazine. Braintaping was the title of the first article he turned to; "Instantaneous teaching by establishing currents in the brain? It may be within reach." It intrigued George enough to lead him into the magazine. And what he found there meant that he wouldn't pack up after all.

It took half an hour to finish the entire article. It took another ten minutes to get in telephone contact with Doran Waite, the man whose name led off the article. And it took three minutes to verify the hope that the article gave.

"Yes, Dr. Rines, that's right. We can't do it with complicated mammals like primates, but with rats we can take the entire learning of one rat and put it into the head of another. For quite a while, they're okay."

"And after a while?"

"They're not okay. They go crazy."

"Dr. Waite, can you come out here? Or better still, can I go out there?"

It took another fifteen minutes to get reservations, and then George left his office without calling home. The reporters could wait until tomorrow. Then he'd have the hopeful note Dr. Tell wanted, the one that could forestall drastic government action, the one that might save the,hundreds of people whose memories were already irrevocably lost.

When it became clear to the reporters who showed up at his house that George Rines was not there and would not be there, they called his office and were told that he had resigned and left. Most gave up