"Not only that, you were capable of avoiding the block. We used mass hypnosis on the people within a visible radius of that corner. Of them all, you alone can see the black sedan and the resulting interception."
"But when I went with Sally you intercepted me, too."
"Of course. But you were then right in the main focus of the control beam."
Kingallis turned to Sargenuti. "I thank you for not killing him under the beam," he said. "Your unimaginative mind might have done that. It would have erased a danger, true, but would have prevented our study of the danger at first hand."
Then he turned back to Carroll. "We might not have been able to kill you, at that," he said. "I don't know. You seem to have become stronger each time you underwent the control instead of becoming weaker like the average subject of hypnotism."
"But—?"
Kingallis shrugged. "Most interesting," he said reflectively. "Most interesting."
"What is so interesting?" grunted Sargenuti.
"Consider," said Kingallis. "He finally entered direct control alone. He was the focus. You did succeed in controlling him to a certain point but James Forrest Carroll—mentally living in a perfect dream—recognized the fact that this was not true.
"He broke the dream, the power of our beam. His unaided will-power, Sargenuti, came up from below a sensory delusion and forced recognition of the truth against the evidence presented by his physical senses."