headache was gone, but I still couldn't remember my axioms! I felt guilty over not going to Psych, but there just wasn't the time.

Hell, I'd never needed indoctrination. I was an Amalgamated man through and through. Finally I grabbed an engineering manual, leafed angrily through it—and sat there, empty and shaking.

I'd gone insane.

The words were gibberish. Oh, I could read them all right, but they didn't make sense. What a filthy trick. Semantic block, Starza would call it. I kept staring at the meaningless words, conscious of a tearing sense of loss. And I wanted to cry.

Six o'clock was zero hour.

Six o'clock came, and the factory held its collective breath while nothing happened.

At six-thirty Starza made a long speech over the public address. About the selfless spirit of man, helping the Terms reach the stars, about how we would never admit defeat, and about how, after tonight, the Term festival would be discontinued. The Terms had adopted mankind's culture, they had no further need of their effete native customs.

At seven, Fern and I were walking past Administration towards the lighted square-mile enclosure of the Term village. Fern had never seen a festival.

"A throwback," I said, "to their old tribal days. Their harvest, when they pay tribute to the Queen-Mother and pray for good crops and work well done. It's their yearly substitute for Stammverstand. Back in the native villages, whenever a Term's in trouble, he goes to the council hut and the others join him in a silent, group telepathy. But we've just about weaned them, angel! They'll be individuals soon."

We walked down the deserted row of Term huts, past the council hall, to the great stone amphitheatre, and sat with the other execs. Fern was very gay and cheerful, but I kept thinking about my axioms, trying to bring them back to life. I felt dead, all dead inside.

Starza came up, frowning, and I congratulated him.

"It's too pat, Jake, it worries me. Where's Carmody?"

"Setting up those semantic reaction tests you gave him," Fern said.

"But I never gave him—"

Abruptly the lights snuffed out. At one end of the arena loomed a twelve-foot statue of a bloated Term, limned in a soft pale glow. The Queen-Mother.

The hush. Then the radiance.

Slowly the Terms filed into the arena, rank upon rank of living flame. First the fighters, their antennae shining crimson and splendid against the tall night. Then the twins glows of blue that denoted the spinners, the weavers. The golden blaze of the harvesters. The lambent colors crept through the air like a mood, like a dream, and deepened into a shimmering cataract of rainbow fire, a paean of light and glory that whirled and spun in a joyous rhythm as old as the race itself.

Then—chaos.

A blinding flare cascaded from the six-foot antennae of the statue. The radiance grew, brighter than an atomic flare, more terrible than the sun. The Terms stood frozen. Beside me, Starza swore.

This wasn't in the script.

That colossal voice.

Ear-snapping clicks, and liquid vowels. Terminese. The forbidden tongue. The voice blared. I caught most of it.

"Children, you have sinned. You are defiled with the taint of alien monsters. You have failed the Queen-Mother. Return, my children, return to your tribes. Return to the tabernacle of unity, the one-in-all, the Queen-Mother! For in death there is life, and there is joy in immolation. Return!"

Lastly, the climax. That last shattering hunk of propaganda that would have been so tritely amusing if it hadn't been so terrifying.

"You have nothing to lose but your chains."

The giant antennae faded to a liquid silver. The silver of hope, of forgiveness.

For a moment I was blind. I felt Fern trembling against me. The execs were chattering like frightened sheep. Then I could see. I saw Starza. He was moving down the aisle, cursing in a tight, dull monotone.

I followed him down