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scientists." 199 THE MYSTERY LINGERS a definite personality who identified itself as "a sentinel for those who set life on the planet." "I have been trying for eons to get hold of somebody," said the voice, explaining that its reserves of energy had been exhausted after thousands of years of waiting, and it could only manifest when a burst of energy took place in the vicinity of its target. Teesdale, who woke up in the mud of the battlefield, found a strange object in his hand as the interior voice told him: "It has been decided that the human race shall be given a clue. All that is required is that you place this in the hands of your best Teesdale survived the war and continued to regard the object he had found in November 1916 as a kind of personal talisman. A quarter century later he found himself serving in yet another war. He was at the retreat from Dunkirk with eight other men running toward a boat when a splinter from an exploding shell hit him in the thigh. One of the men dragged him to the boat and threw him in. A German plane circling overhead dropped a bomb toward them. At that point Teesdale experienced a repeat of the earlier flash of light, the white and gold impressions, the darker center and the voice, scolding him for not getting the "clue" to the right people. To be sure, he had once tried to give it to a doctor friend, but the man had only frowned on it. Later a chemist and a biochemist similarly returned it without comment. Was it his fault, he asked, if the object he had been given failed to impress these people? The voice said that a second object would be handed to him. The two together would provide an obvious scientific proof. Teesdale saw no more active service, but he suffered from a limp for the rest of his life. As for the objects he had been given, he never fulfilled his mission by having them analyzed. The people to whom he mentioned them dismissed his story. He found it unbearable to be