purpose of the abuse is apparently to try to use trauma to force the subject to rediscover a vital finding he had uncovered during his earlier experimental work, which may be what had driven him insane to begin with. "Meeting of the Board" - another satire, this one set in a future in which American industry has been badly compromised by workers purchasing full joint-stock ownership of their companies, mismanaging them into a state of stolid uncompetitiveness. For its humor, the story relies on the role-reversal of workers abusing and mistreating management, until the white-collar employees go on strike, withholding managerial services. "Circus" - a very human-like alien is stranded on Earth, and futilely tries to convince Earthlings that he is an authentic extraterrestrial. Unfortunately the only human who will believe him is an SF writer, who over coffee in a diner gently informs the visitor that - due to his profession - no other human would find him credible on the subject. "My Friend Bobby" - a disturbing story told in first person, by a young boy who can read minds. His father is mostly absent, and his power causes his mother to slowly come to fear and hate him, his only companion being his collie Bobby, with whom he has formed a telepathic link. "The Link" - a cultured, gentle alien society has spent millennia fleeing from planet to planet, one step ahead of "the Hunters," their long-separated militaristic cousins, with whom they had fought a long-past war on their mutual homeworld. A young man and woman elect to stay behind on the aliens' current homeworld, which is being abandoned in the face of an advancing Hunter war fleet, to meet the pursuers face to face for the first time in ages. They hope to sue for peace, but find the Hunters implacable and cruel, lacking empathy or culture. Ordered to sing for the Hunters' commander, they are accused of trying to telepathically subvert their listeners, and are tortured for information until they erase their own minds in despair. However, their captors - oddly and subtly affected by their music - decide to dump them in the wilderness of the abandoned world, instead of killing them. The ending implies an "Adam and Eve" scenario. "Image of the Gods" - the hardscrabble human agricultural colony on the hostile world of Baron IV is informed that Earth has undergone a