The lift stopped. Ford’s motionless body was about a yard away. Crockett could not see the man’s face.
Insanity – manic-depressives are fairly simple cases. The schizophrenic are more complex. And incurable.
Incurable.
Dr. Ford was a schizoid type. He had said that, weeks ago.
And now, Dr. Ford, a victim of schizophrenic insanity, had died by violence, as Bronson had died. Thirty white pillars stood in the Brainpan, cryptically impassive, and Crockett looked at them with the beginning of a slow, dull horror.
Thirty radioatom brains, supersensitive, ready to record a new pattern on the blank wax disks. Not manic-depressive this time, not the downbeat.
On the contrary, it would be uncharted, incurable schizophrenic insanity.
A mental explosion – yeah. Dr. Ford, lying there dead, a pattern of madness fixed in his brain at the moment of death. A pattern that might be anything.
Crockett watched the thirty integrators and wondered what was going on inside those gleaming white shells. He would find out before the blizzard ended, he thought, with a sick horror.
For the station was haunted again.