"I know the Codes," Greg whispered. "Legally, there's no reason to be apprehended just for leaving the Cowl. And as for the blasters, well—we can drop them off, hide them, if the Controllers get after us."
The cruiser moved down the sloping arc of the Cowl toward the dark patch that Greg recognized as a merging chamber. The plastic spires of the City reached up around them as though reaching for the sun. Only a few human figures could be seen far below, on roofs, and in the streets. A few low stage humans not in anesthesia.
Greg crawled into the shielding suit. He took over the unfamiliar controls while Drakeson got his own shielding suit on. They weren't heavy, but were sluggish material that could throw off ordinary radiation.
Behind him Greg heard Drakeson's harsh yell. "Sky-cars! Ten of them! Shooting up out of the Control Tower and coming right toward us! Merge, and merge fast, Greg, if you still want to go Outside."
Inside the thick sheeting of the suit, Greg's skin was soaked with perspiration. His face was strained as he moved the cruiser into the first lock chamber. The cruiser had to move through a series of locks to the Outside. A precaution to keep bacteria, radiation, other inimical elements from coming in while an exit from the Cowl was being made.
One by one the locks opened and closed as grav-hooks pulled the cruiser through. It was a precariously balanced culture, this one inside the Cowls, Greg thought. Like living inside a gigantic sealed test-tube. Any slightly alien elements introduced into that test-tube could make it a place of sealed death in a short time. A rigidly controlled, non-changing environment. That was fine, except that some humans within it had a habit of changing, and for the worse. Retrogression, psychosis.
Psychometry was trying frantically to find the cause. It seemed obvious that the Venusian Colonists might be causing psychotics to appear in order to swell their ranks of volunteers to go to Venus to start a "new dynamic, progressive order." Madness. Suicide.
Progressive evolutionary philosophies meant change, and change might lead anywhere. But eventually it could only lead to another horrible Chain. One Chain had been enough.
The earth had been thoroughly wrecked. The few survivors had set up the anti-reality standards, the Cowls and the Codes—and the Controllers. They established the Dream Continuity that led to the various anesthetic stages.
But people went insane. They disagreed. They fled the Cowls. Venusian Colonial Enterprises resulted. It was organized insanity. A neatly planned psychosis, with grandiose delusions of justification. They would save humanity! Madness. Schizophrenia.