 What ultimately brings Torp down?
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Fall 1942. He stared appraisingly around at the luxuriant green growth of foliage further inland; and started toward the little stretch of trees and brush, walking carefully because of the lesser gravitation. Here he patiently sat down to wait for an Earthman or an Earthwoman to pass. His task now was to bring a native, intact if possible, back to the carefully buried space cruiser where his two fellows and himself would drain the creature's mentality of all its knowledge. In this way they could learn whether a planet was suited for colonization by later swarms of Orthans. This latest planet, however, 72-P-3 on the chart, appeared to be an ideal world in every respect. Feebly he had punched a key two days ago and a $ sign had appeared. Then he had no time for further speech, the massive arms of the stranger had wound around him and two hamlike hands shut off his speech and his wind. "With a psychic relay we will transfer the Earthman's memories and meager store of knowledge to the brain of Thig! So it was that the bodies of the Earthman and the Orthan were strapped on two parallel tables of chill metal and the twin helmets, linked to one another by the intricacies of the psychic relay, put upon their heads. An hour later, his scars and altered cartilage already healed and painless, Thig again scraped sand over the entrance to the space ship and set out along the moonlit beach toward the nearest path running inland to his home. Men had no mates on Ortha, sex had been overthrown with all the other primitive impulses of barbarism; so he was incapable of understanding the emotions that swept through his acquired memory. Tonight or tomorrow night at the latest he must contact his two fellows and report that Earth was a planetary paradise. No other world, including Ortha, was so well-favored and rich. An expeditionary force to wipe the grotesque civilizations of Earth out of existence would, of course, be necessary before the first units of new Hordes could be landed. For three months he had lived with people who loved, hated, wept and sacrificed for reasons that he had never known existed. There was no abrupt division of men and women into definite classes of endeavor. Uncertainty added zest to every day's life. For a hundred thousand years the Orthan civilization had remained static, its energies directed into certain well-defined channels.
 Thip shoots him with a blaster before he can comprehend what happened.
 He went mad from the same disease that's afflicting Thip.  Thip shoots him with a blaster before he can comprehend what happened.  His own madness. His overly trained mind can't handle the new circumstances.  He was never trained for a situation like this. He's not able to keep up with Thip.