Sweat was pouring down his pale face, and he was breathing harder. “It will come any minute. They are gathering strength for it. But I am I,” he said triumphantly. He shook violently and gasped for breath.

I understood now. They were all Alaree. It was one planet-wide, self-aware corporate entity, composed of any number of individual cells. He had been one of them—but he had learned independence.

Then he had returned to the group—but he carried with him the seeds of individualism, the deadly, contagious germ we Terrans spread everywhere. Individualism would be fatal to such a group mind; it was cutting him loose to save itself. Just as diseased cells must be excised for the good of the entire body. Alaree was inexorably being cut off from his fellows lest he destroy the bond that made them one.

I watched Him as he sobbed weakly on my acceleration cradle. “They… are… cutting… me… loose… now!”

He writhed horribly for a brief moment, and then relaxed and sat up on the edge of the cradle. “It is over,” he said calmly. “I am fully independent.”

I saw a stark aloneness reflected in his eyes, and behind that a gentle indictment of me for having done this to him. This world, I realized, was no place for Earthmen. What had happened was our fault—mine more than anyone else’s.

“Will you take me with you?” he asked again. “If I stay here, Alaree will kill me.”

I scowled wretchedly for a moment, fighting a brief battle within myself, and then I looked up. There was only one thing to do—and I was sure, once I explained on Earth, that I would not suffer for it.

I took his hand. It was cold and limp; whatever he had just been through, it must have been hell. “Yes,” I said softly. “You can come with us.”

And so Alaree joined the crew of the Aaron Burr. I told them about it just before blast-off, and they welcomed him aboard in traditional manner.