"None of the men ever saw each other before being sent to Minerva. None realized that they carried with them the order for George's annihilation. The general, who was not one of the hypnotics, was given loose instructions, as were several others, so they could not possibly know the intention. Those of us who had conducted the hypnosis had to stay several hundred miles away so that we could not be reached by George's prying mind...."
In a pasture next to a wood near Brentwood, a metal box buried in the ground suddenly exploded, uprooting a catalpa tree.
On a planet many millions of miles away, a red light—one of many on a giant control board—suddenly winked out.
A blue humanoid made an entry in a large book: _System 29578, Planet Three Inhabited+.
_Too dangerous for any kind of development.+