The Bryd was awakened with a rude jolt. It didn’t even have time for a mental yawn. Something terrible was going on in Dale Stevenson’s mind, and the turmoil there made the Bryd most uncomfortable. It shook off the lethargy of its long sleep. It knew instinctively that Dale Stevenson was about to get in trouble and make his mind unsuitable for the Bryd’s occupancy.

The Bryd sighed. These humans were so unstable, so impulsive. The Bryd took a look around.

They⁠—Dale Stevenson and he⁠—were not on Earth. They seemed to be in space somewhere, 5,100 miles from Earth. Well, well, so men finally were breaking the shackles of gravitation. The Bryd became a little more interested.

But Dale Stevenson was reaching for a button that would fire a rocket to position the mirror and burn a path across the biggest city in Europe. Hey! what was going on here, anyway?

The Bryd had about a quarter of a second to do a lot of research. What was Dale Stevenson doing up here? What had he done with himself in the twenty-four years since the Bryd had curled up in the boy’s cozy four-year-old mind and settled down for a long nap?

The Bryd could have stayed Dale’s hand for a while, but the Bryd very much believed in minding its own business. It didn’t like to interfere with humans; that was policy. So it decided to get busy. It had a quarter of a second to find out things and decide what, if anything, to do about them. Certainly it couldn’t expect to stay comfortably in a mind as upset as Dale Stevenson’s⁠ ⁠… so it got busy.