"Why are you afraid, Tommy?"
"I hurt. My head hurts. I hurt all over. Go away."
"Why do you hurt?"
"I—can't get it—off," the boy said.
The monitor, Lessing thought suddenly. Something had suddenly gone horribly wrong—could the boy really be sensing the source of the trouble? Lessing felt a cold knot gather in the pit of his stomach. He knew what happened when adult psi-contact struck a psi-high youngster's mind. He had seen it a hundred times at the Farm. But even more—he had felt it in his own mind, bursting from the child. Like a violent physical blow, the hate and fear and suspicion and cruelty buried and repressed in the adult mind, crushing suddenly into the raw receptors of the child's mind like a smothering fog—it was a fearful thing. A healthy youngster could survive it, even though the scar remained. But this youngster was sick—
And yet an animal instinctively seeks its own protection. With trembling fingers Lessing reached out and opened the baffle-snap on the monitor. "Take it off, Tommy," he whispered.
The boy blinked in amazement, and pulled the grey helmet from his head. Lessing felt the familiar prickly feeling run down his scalp as the boy stared at him. He could feel deep in his own mind the cold chill of terror radiating from the boy. Then, suddenly, it began to fade. A sense of warmth—peace and security and comfort—swept in as the fear faded from the boy's face.
The fire engine clattered to the floor.
They analyzed the tapes later, punching the data cards with greatest care, filing them through the machines for the basic processing and classification that all their data underwent. It was late that night when they had the report back in their hands.