Cochrane leaned back in his chair.

“That may be good medical ethics,” he observed, “but it’s lousy business practice, Bill.  You say he’s adjusted to reality.  That means that he will now have a socially acceptable reaction to anything that’s likely to happen to him.”

Holden nodded.

“A well-adjusted person does.  Dabney’s the same person.  He’s the same fool.  But he’ll get along all right.  A psychiatrist can’t change a personality!  All he can do is make it adjust to the world about so the guy doesn’t have to be tucked away in a straight-jacket.  In that sense, Dabney is adjusted.”

“You’ve played a dirty trick on him,” said Cochrane.  “You’ve stabilized him, and that’s the rottenest trick anybody can play on anybody!  You’ve put him into a sort of moral deep-freeze.  It’s a dirty trick, Bill!”

“Look who’s talking!” said Holden wearily.  “I suppose the advertising business is altruistic and unmercenary?”

“The devil, no!” said Cochrane indignantly.  “We serve a useful purpose!  We tell people that they smell bad, and so give them an alibi for the unpopularity their stupidity has produced.  But then we tell them to use so-and-so’s breath sweetener or whosit’s non-immunizing deodorant they’ll immediately become the life of every party they attend!  It’s a lie, of course, but it’s a dynamic lie!  It gives the frustrated individual something to do!  It sells him hope and therefore activity—­and inactivity is a sort of death!”

Holden looked at Cochrane with a dreary disinterest.

“You’re adjusted, Jed!  But do you really believe that stuff?”

Cochrane grinned again.

“Only on Tuesdays and Fridays.  It’s about two-sevenths true.  But it does have that much truth in it!  Nobody ever gets anything done while they merely make socially acceptable responses to the things that happen to them!  Take Dabney himself!  We’ve got a hell of a thing coming along now just because he wouldn’t make the socially acceptable response to having a rich wife and no brains.  He rebelled.  So mankind will start moving to the stars!”

“You still believe it?”

Cochrane grimaced.

“Yesterday morning I sweated blood in a space-suit out in the crater beyond Jones’ laboratory.  He tried his trick.  He had a small signal-rocket mounted on the far side of that crater,—­twenty-some miles.  It was in front of the field-plate that established the Dabney field across the crater to another plate near us.  Jones turned on the field.  He ignited the rocket by remote control.  I was watching with a telescope.  I gave him the word to fire....  How long do you think it took that rocket to cross the crater in that field that works like a pipe?  It smashed into the plate at the lab!”

Holden shook his head.

“It took slightly,” said Cochrane, “slightly under three-fifths of a second.”

Holden blinked.  Cochrane said: