"Jim, this is Dr. Heller," Wolf told him as they walked into the room. "She will work with us in here. Now suppose you get up on this table."
The two husky attendants who were always in the background helped Britten onto the table and strapped him down. As Wolf fastened the electrodes to Britten's head, he said, conversationally, "In the old days we would have just sat and talked to each other. It would have taken months to get to first base. Now we have ways of aiding the memory, of triggering associations, of lowering resistances to thoughts. It makes psychotherapy a much less tedious process than it used to be."
As he spoke, he slipped a hypodermic needle into Britten's arm.
"Now, suppose we see how much we can remember. Let's begin the day before Glover was killed. I want you to think back to that day and remember everything that happened, how you felt, what you thought about. We want to go through this traumatic experience of yours, and relate it to the elements in your life which caused such a profound shock."
And in addition—Wolf thought bleakly to himself—a good many people were anxious to know other things. For example: was Glover's demise at this particular time a coincidence? The Atomic Energy Commission, though cagy about their reasons, had given top priority to the answers to their questions.
The strength of official interest in this case was further evidenced by the assignment of Bill Grady and Calvin Jones as attendants to Jim Britten. For some time Morris Wolf had wondered vaguely why two such clean-cut and alert young men should follow the low-paid calling of hospital attendant, until recently he had become aware that their pay checks actually came from the U. S. Treasury by way of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
"Now," Wolf said, as Alma Heller switched on the tape recorder, "tell us what you remember."
After a year of being stationed on the Lunatron, Jim Britten had the feeling of being fed up. Lunatics they call us, he thought. Real crazy.
Looking out of the ports, he saw a black, starry space in which the only thing that ever changed was the view of the earth, a thousand miles below, and the moon which was sometimes on one side and sometimes on the other. The stars were incredible jewels, and the sun was something that one never looked at with mortal eyes.