Had almost gone psycho.
But he hadn't. That was the important thing. He was still a sane, integrated part of the Cowls and the Codes. And after a test like that, he figured that nothing could break him. Let them send him to psychometry. Let them clamp on the brain-probers and leave them on for months. They'd not find any psycho tendencies in Greg Dalson.
Greg tried to reason. But he had no place, no foundation, for a beginning. He didn't know where he was, or why he had been left here. He knew that someone, the Colonists probably, had saved Drakeson from that plant thing. Some mental pressure had blacked him out, he thought, and then what? He didn't know.
Which way? It didn't seem to matter. He started walking.
He was bone-weary. His head throbbed. His eyes burned. And he was afraid. He had gotten himself into a completely un-Codified situation. He was lost, helpless, outside the protection of the Cowls, the Codes, and anesthesia.
He was surrounded by reality. Reality in all its essential horror. Conflict. Physical danger. Uncertainties. Materialistic barriers. All the old shibboleths that the Cowls and the Codes and the anesthetic dreams had protected him from.
And all because of Pat Nichols.
But he'd stood a big test. And he'd won. He hadn't killed. He wasn't destructive. He—
The cry touched his ears and died. It was too violent and filled with pain and terror to make any definite impression the first time. He crouched. His eyes distended. The scream came again, and this time it chopped through him. His nerves seemed to shrivel and curl beneath the repeated onslaughts of the screams.
Then he was running. He didn't know why, except that he had to run. He ran with fearful, gasping desperation. But he didn't know why.