mirth that drifted quickly into hysterical hopelessness. I dug my fingers into her flesh until the pain brought her to her senses.

"Coincidence," I said. "Nothing more. I've seen seventeen cases just like his. How else did I spot him? I recognized the type. None of the others found what they rationalized themselves into thinking they remembered from the time they were Martians. Eventually one of them would stumble onto something. That's coincidence. Not incarnated memory."

She turned her head and blinked at me. I nodded grimly. "I'm an agent," I said. "I go out on the tours for one purpose only—to spot psychos and make sure they don't get out of control. You'd be surprised how many there are. Some of them, like your husband, probably show no sign of instability until they get here. They look around at the evidence of a civilization that existed before homo sapiens had evolved on the Earth, and it throws them. If you want to understand more about it read the medical books. They get irrational pre-memories. They look at something and the idea of familiarity associates with the new impression. They look around a corner and see something, and build up the conviction that they had consciously known what was there before they looked around the corner."

I felt that I was making headway with her. I wanted to. I had to.

"You—you say there were others, and they didn't find anything?" she said. She was groping for something logical to grasp. I had to give her that something.

"That's right," I said. "And the law of averages said that someday someone would uncover something that's been missed."

She was nodding slowly now, accepting what I was saying. It was authoritative. She would find confirmation in authoritative books. If she wanted to pursue the subject she would find plenty of evidence, real evidence, to support it. It is a common form of insanity. It was important that she believe that.

We reached the road. C.I. had been prepared. There was a car to take her back to the hotel, a stationwagon for Herb who was now very submissive and somewhat dazed, and a third car for me and my precious cargo.

Ten minutes later I was in the Science Building basement, laying the thing on a wooden table, very gently. It seemed solid, each integral part of its form being of a different metal.

None of the men watching me lay it down discounted the danger it contained. They knew too much about how shape and dimension can affect the electronic properties of metal. They knew the thing probably didn't contain an erg of power of its own, but probably triggered and directed the release of cosmic energies as yet unknown to them.

They stared at it. One of them reached out to touch it, then slowly drew his finger back.

I could see the decision crystallizing in their minds behind their serious eyes. This thing would go with the other strange and incomprehensible machines locked in vaults in a concrete building far out on the Martian desert away from the tourist trails of this dead planet. It would remain there until the day when human science advanced far enough to understand it.

"What about the wall in the dome?" I asked.

"They roped it off. They're afraid of it."

"Did you convince his wife he's insane?" one of the science staff asked.

I nodded. "I used the same old line. Told her there were dozens like him, and the law of averages made it certain at least one of them would find something."

He nodded, grinned without humor. "How we love to lie."

I turned away. There was a bitter taste in my mouth from all the lies I'd told—all the bilge.

But I knew the truth, too. I was as sure of that as I was of anything. It wasn't insanity, of course. And it wasn't reincarnation. It seemed to be, because the mind has a habit of possessing for its very own anything that enters it.

The truth of the matter was that somehow, in some incomprehensible way, the Martians were still with us. They hated us and