Merle gulped. He could remember nothing of the sort. Only the accident and awakening in the hospital to darkness.... But there was a strange blankness, a hiatus in his memories, that ended with his hated job in the cigar stand. He could not recall his first day there or—

Could Blanche be telling the truth?

"You—spiteful old hag!" he shouted at her, and rushed out of the offices.

His feet pounded at the yielding softness of the walkway. The hospital was less than two blocks distant—no need to take a travel strip—and he needed the automatic motion of walking to steady his thoughts.

The forgotten months. Four months, or was it five months, ago, he was in the cigar-and-news stand. That was the day when an old acquaintance from the lower levels sold him the chance on the 80th Level's breakthrough.

That night he had begged Janith to let him rent a super mech. And she had scoffed at his wastefulness. Yet, now that he remembered it again, there had been a wistful note of hope in her voice.

Could she have been trying to fan his faint desire for sight into something more powerful and consuming—so he would become again the engineering Duggan he had been?

He had surrendered then, as he did many times afterward. Sullenly, yes, but he had surrendered. Perhaps she knew he was not ready for sight. When he refused to obey her, when he insisted on hiring a super mech—then, perhaps, she would know the cure was complete.

But that was only theory. He remembered her clearly expressed hatred for the mucking, lower-level life of a rockhound. Always his hatred for her grew as she spoke of his work....

She had never expressed herself in that way before the accident. She had gone with him on many exploratory trips into the caverns that the lower levels of Appalachia cut across. And she had enjoyed the experience—he was sure of that.

Remember! Think back. Back before the cigars and papers. Back to the days and months after the accident. It hurt to think. His temples, here on the mentrol-hooded sleeping plate, were pounding irregularly....

Huddling in a bed, knees drawn up and head tucked in, trying to gain somehow the safety that an infant once knew. Janith's voice, soft and understanding, and the acid of panic that set his lips to mumbling meaningless jargon....

Why had Janith not sent him to the medical centers for mental clearing and re-education as was done with all cases of psychoed abnormals? The answer was with him. She loved him as he was, Merle Duggan—not as a new personality in her husband's body.

Artificial amnesia automatically dissolves all marriage partnerships. She had not wanted that. Instead she had three years of hell....

Striking out at emptiness, his fists contacting soft flesh, and the pained cry, swiftly suppressed, of Janith. His voice, cursing and high-pitched, as he fought the straps that now were restraining his sightless body. The bite of a needle and gradual dissolution of feeling....

Memory was coming reluctantly back to Duggan. This was not the self-imagined visionings of an abused helpless man. These memories were true. He had fought against all mental therapy and turned from those who loved him.

Now the hospital entrance was before him. He paused for a moment and then went inside. The automatic hush of the door shutting out the muted street sounds was all too familiar.

"Mrs. Janith Duggan," he told the crisply white woman at the desk.

"Room 212, second floor."

"Thank you."

He used the steps in preference to the lift. He needed more time to think—would he ever find enough time?

Undoubtedly, now, Janith's love for him was dead. His desertion of her must have finished the dissolution of their marriage. It had been cowardly—he should have faced her and declared what he was going to do and what she could do.

These past weeks, working with the rock hogs, had been invaluable. They had restored something of his self-esteem.

The second