"Go ahead and tie, Doc."
Pollard nodded. "His is a classic form of schizophrenia. For his years of study he is presented with the knowledge of certain destruction. This is terrible to face per se. It is terrible to think of one's self telling the world that he has just discovered the first true and provable link in the ending of the Solar System. It is like uttering the clarion of doom.
"Now remember," said Pollard, pointing off the pertinent spots on his fingers, "that Carroll probably tampered with the records or at least did not list the truth. Tampered with or falsified. That's point number one. Secondly, the true schizophrenic-paranoid cannot rail against a mechanistic fate.
"He must find some sentience to fight, some evil mind to combat. For the paranoid feels that he can win in the end, which of course would be impossible against a case of mechanistic doom. Therefore Carroll needed some sentient manifestation of this doom, something that he could strike at, fight against. Therefore he has accused an 'alien culture' of tampering with the records to prevent us from knowing the truth.
"I tried to tell him of many others who claimed to have discovered a 'master-mind' that treated humans as we treat goldfish and guinea pigs. I tried to ask him why, if these master minds are so omnipotent that they can spend fifty thousand years watching an experiment in humanity, they were not smart enough to do away with the one man in that time that might cause them trouble. That's the link that stumbles most Prophets of Doom."
He paused.
"But James Forrest Carroll is completely self-justified. His explanation was simple enough to sound right. He merely claimed that, since his mind was sufficiently strong to best their 'hypnosis beams', they kept him alive to study him. You see? He is so mighty that they do not dare. True paranoia.
"Now, point three. Carroll is a brilliant man with a vast imagination. Yet his training as a physicist kept him from trying many wild schemes or things that might be against the teachings of modern physics. Therefore he attributes the many superscientific marvels to the techniques of the 'aliens'. In truth no Terran physicist would believe them possible. The conscious mind rejects the idea of the teleport for instance.
"But there was terrible compulsion. He must avert the destruction of Sol. This he can do, he believes, by learning much of the alien science and turning their own trick against them. Things that no sensible physicist would even consider must be given a try in this period of emergency. Therefore he went into hallucination in order to invent this 'science'—because his conscious mind tells him that it is impossible."