"I tell you ..."

"Don't interrupt, please. I might inform you that I sent you to the other planet both to test you and to keep you out of the way while we investigated further and I could reach a decision. You were not supposed to come back yet. I sent Philander a letter to that effect, but he s.p.a.ce-radioed you were already on the way back when he read it."

A light dawned on Hanlon as memory skipped back to that take-off.

Philander had merely stuck the mail in his pocket when it was given him, and evidently started reading it on his way back to the mine. That explained his running back, waving a letter and trying to attract attention just at blast-off.

That small part of his mind that was paying attention to the men in the room heard His Highness say "take Abrams away. He ... uh ... is of no further use to us. And wait outside until I call--all of you."

When they had gone His Highness leaned forward, and Hanlon knew he had better pay strict attention and keep his wits about him for any opening to improve his perilous position.

"I'll speak more frankly, now that we are alone, Hanlon. I am impressed with you. I think you have ... uh ... tremendous abilities, and I want you on my side. But I have to be sure. I would advise you, for your own good, to be honest and frank with me."

"I am being, but you won't believe me," Hanlon said earnestly. "When I take a man's pay, sir, I give him everything I've got. You gave me a chance at the kind of money I want to make, and I'm doing everything I can to earn both the money and your trust. I was kicked out of the Corps, and I'll do _anything_ I can to get even!"

"As I said before, we have ... uh ... ways of making you tell us the truth," the Leader continued as though Hanlon had not interrupted, "but you would not be any good either to us or the Corps or yourself if we have to use ... uh ... persuasion. I don't want to see you broken. You may remember you once asked me if I could 'dish it out'? Let me a.s.sure you that I can."

"But how can I prove anything when you've already made up your mind not to believe me?" Hanlon asked plaintively. "I'm doing my best to make you believe. I'll admit some of those points you've brought up could look fishy if viewed from one standpoint, but I a.s.sure you you're putting the wrong interpretation on them. If you'll look at them from my viewpoint you'll see they are just as true."

His Highness regarded Hanlon silently but with a steady concentration for some minutes. "That might be true. I had about begun to believe you when we found Abrams, and when we questioned him he ... uh ... admitted what you had done, and why. That revived my doubts. Are you willing to be tested under a truth drug?"

Hanlon almost gasped in dismay, but stifled it. He knew only too well the efficacy of modern truth drugs. They would reveal every thought and bit of knowledge he had ever had--all about the Corps, the Secret Service and everything.

That hurt look came back into his face. "You sure are asking a lot, sir," he said. "I haven't anything to conceal from you, but no man likes to have his whole mind invaded that way--all his private thoughts and feelings. I don't see why you need suggest such a thing. I've told you the truth on matters you want to know about."

"You appear to have done so, and I honestly want to believe you. For you see, Hanlon, I want you with me. You're my kind of a man. I like you because you have tremendous drive and imagination and ability--yes, and perhaps a bit because you're the only man I've ever met who wasn't ... uh ... afraid of me. I have tremendous plans for the future--and I would like to have you as my chief aide in them. I would train you as you've never guessed it possible for a man to be trained.

And then, _together, Hanlon, we could rule the Universe_!"

But George Hanlon was only half-listening, even to that last, that shocking, that totally unexpected proposition, his real goal. Here was the plot he had been seeking, the plot the Corps needed so desperately to know. Yet his personal crisis was, for the moment, more important if he was ever to be of any further benefit to the Secret Service or the Corps. To use his just-discovered knowledge, something else must come first.

His mind, therefore, was seeking a way out. He well knew that once the truth drug was administered--and this Highness would not now be satisfied with anything less--he was as good as dead. They would find out the truth in minutes, and then would have no other recourse but to kill him.

His spirits sank to nadir with the knowledge that he had failed ... failed the Secret Service and the Corps, failed his father, failed the Guddus, failed himself. Curiously, perhaps, at that moment the thought of failure was far more important to him than the imminence of death, as such.

He had half-consciously noticed when he first glanced about this room, that there was a small ventilator near the ceiling in one corner.

Desperately he pushed his mind through it, and could sense that it opened onto a park-like place, probably around one of the city's palaces.

Hanlon finally heard His Highness call, "Panek, you and the others bring me the hypodermic. We'll have to give him the truth serum. I'm sorry, Hanlon," he addressed himself now to the young man, "but this is the only way. I hope we won't have to use enough to harm you, but that depends on your co-operation. If you will tell us the truth quickly and willingly I can, as I said ... uh ... use you, and you will profit greatly by it."

Hanlon didn't struggle when they bound him firmly in the chair with manacles on hands and feet. He knew it would be useless anyway. He let his body slump into his chair, and again directed his mind through that vent. He must not let them defeat him! He had to survive--to get word--to the Corps!

Then his searching mind contacted another--a weak, primitive one, but a mind. Avidly he fastened onto it, merged with it ... and found himself inside the brain of one of those Simonidean pigeons.

Ah! This is wonderful! Pigeons seldom fly alone. Where you find one you almost always find a number. Activating the bird's brain he sent out a call to others of its kind that it had found food in abundance. Soon more and more of them flew down to where the now enslaved pigeon was standing, and as each one came, Hanlon sent into its brain all of his mind it would hold.

Inside the cellar room His Highness rose and stepped up to Hanlon's body, the hypodermic in his hand. "Remove his coat and roll up his sleeve," he directed Panek, and the small part of Hanlon's mind still remaining in his body felt the latter doing so, and an instant later, the p.r.i.c.k of the needle.

Slowly at first, then with increasing swiftness he felt his remaining mind growing numb and his will weaken. His body slumped against the restraining manacles.

"Can you hear me, George Hanlon?" he dimly heard His Highness' voice.

"Yes." It sounded like a whisper.

"Are you a member of the Inter-Stellar Corps?"

"I ... I ...", he struggled not to answer.

"Tell me!"

"I ... I ..." and then, in a last desperate effort to keep from telling what he must not tell, George Hanlon did a thing he had never dared attempt before. He sent all the remaining parts of his mind into the last of the pigeons.

One of the first birds he had already sent into the ventilator so he could look through it into the room below. He got it there just in time to hear the Leader's gasp of dismay as he saw Hanlon's body slump still further in apparent lifelessness.

"Is he dead, Boss, is he?" he heard Panek's anxious cry.

His Highness felt the pulse in Hanlon's wrist and the one in his throat.

"No, he's still alive."

The man stood there in deep thought, his forehead creased with a frown of concentration. "There's something peculiarly wrong here," the Leader finally said aloud. "Something very wrong and very strange. This isn't an ordinary fainting spell. It's ... uh ... beyond my previous experience."

He straightened and addressed Hanlon's body once more. "Can you still hear me, George Hanlon?"

There was no answer, no slightest indication that his words were heard.

He reached forward and lifted the body into a more upright position in the chair. "Answer me, George Hanlon. Do you hear me? I command you to tell me, are you a Corpsman?"

Still no answer, no twitch of muscle, no movement of awareness. He shook the body a little, and raised his voice still more.

"I demand an answer, George Hanlon! The truth drug must make you speak!"

But only silence, and when he let go of the body it fell backward into the chair, and the head lolled forward as though the neck was broken.

"Let me work on him, Boss," Panek pleaded. "Let me give him a going over, let me."

Barely waiting to see that His Highness did not forbid it, the thug raised a short, ugly piece of rubber hose, and struck the unresisting body again and again--across the face, over the top and back of the head, vicious blows at the ribs and even in the groin.

But he might as well have been pounding a sack of meal. The body sagged beneath the blows, and became b.l.o.o.d.y and discolored, but no movement--no conscious movement--did it make.

"That will do, Panek," His Highness finally commanded. "That does no good. This I cannot understand, but I do know there is ... uh ... something most peculiar here. It is almost as though ...", he paused and frowned again. "But that is ridiculous!"

"What's ridiculous, Boss, what is?"

"It is almost as though there was ... uh ... no mind left in the body,"

His Highness said slowly. Then, abruptly, "Are you sure that was truth-serum in that hypodermic?"

"You fixed it yourself, Boss."

His Highness wheeled suddenly, rudely awakened from his thinking by the loud _shoo_-ing noise one of the guards was making. He was astonished to see the man making vain motions toward a pigeon whose head was sticking through, the ventilator vanes.

But the bird didn't leave.