"Here comes the luck piece, Jat!" Two of the lounging men were playing pitch and toss with black and white counters. He who spoke leaned forward as Farree approached, holding out a stiff finger.

The hunchback longed to dodge that touch now but knew deep within him that it would be best to keep hidden the fact that his back burden was so tender. They might well make a torturous use of such knowledge. So he suffered the slap of those fingers stoically and tried not to show any pain.

"Luck for all of us if we need it," one of the onlookers commented. "And need it we might." j

"Your lips are too loose, Deit," commented Farree's guard. "Better not let the Veep hear you."

"I signed on for service, not sitting around in rock piles – we all did."

"We all did," agreed the guard, "and you don't go back on a sign-up. Not with him in there – " He gestured with an outstretched thumb at the door just behind him.

"Get on with you!" Once more that punishing jab, but this time high on his arm, and that was as nothing. Farree went inside the building. Again he was surprised at the carpeting, the hangings on the wall, the various bits of a less austere life which the Veep of this company had carried for his own comfort.

For the second time there were the two at the table: the man in uniform and he who was so fat he bulged in sections out of his chair. He was intent upon a small picture corn; the Commander was more at ease, smoking a spice stick, the scented air of which fought with the mustiness of the ancient room.

Neither of the men paid any attention to the entrance of Farree. He and his guard stood together back by the wall until the fat man gave an impatient push to the viewer before him.

"There is no silencer according to the reading, but this will not reach into that valley."

"Nor will it ever," commented his companion. "These Thassa have their own protections – "

The fat man pouted petulantly. "What kind of learning can defeat a far viewer?" He put thumb and forefinger together and clicked them against the silent screen.

"An efficient one it would seem." The Commander drew deeply on the spice stick and then expelled a puff of bluish smoke. "Is that not so, DUNG!" His voice lost all its calm laziness and snapped as a leader might snap an order and expect to be instantly obeyed.

Farree fought to remain steady. He had feared and hated Russtif but that was nothing to the emotion this man raised in him. He could feel the threat behind those words as if a whip had been snapped in his direction and flaked a scrap of skin from his cheek.

"I do not know what the Thassa can do." He offered the truth but was afraid that it would not be accepted.

"Yet you have traveled with them, you have gone into their forbidden valley. And they do not allow that to any they do not believe is one with them. Or are you so weak and poor a specimen of living thing that they treat you as they would one of their 'little ones' – those beasts they gather about them, changing places with them? Which are you, Dung, man or beast? Perhaps they have already worked their will upon you and in truth you might have claws and fangs. Yet I do not believe that – not yet."

The fat man pushed aside the viewer with one hand and looked also at Farree.

"Get to the truth," he said sulkily. "Verify him!"

Farree knew what he meant, and he had the greatest need of holding on to himself, not to shiver and cry out. They meant to use upon him one of the enforcing machines which spacers told so many tales about. Within the influence of that he could hold back nothing that these two wanted. They need only ask their questions, and the machine would at once betray and subvert any desire of his to keep information hidden.

"Very well. It will be illuminating at least. Why do the Thassa want you, Dung? You are a sorry specimen. But perhaps for those who deal intimately with animals your ugliness does not matter. We shall see."

The Veep made a gesture with one hand, and before Farree could move the guard beside him grabbed a handhold on his shirt where it hunched across his tender hump, bringing, in spite of all effort, a murmur at the pain. He was so swung to the right and pushed down on the seat of a chair which another of the spacer guards had jerked forward.

One of them held his head cruelly at a backward angle while another one forced a silvery band well down on his forehead and into his tangle of black hair. Wires ran from this up into the space overhead. He could not tilt his head far enough back to see where they ended. But now he was a prisoner to a power he feared more and more as his helplessness became so clear.

"What is your name?"

The fat man was the questioner.

"Farree."

"Farree?" There was a slight frown on the Commander's face as if he were trying to capture a small thread of memory.

"What are you?"

"A hunchback." He made a true answer, trying to see if he could so limit their knowledge gained from him.

"And what else?" The Commander leaned a little forward on the table. He pointed his smoke stick straight at Farree as if he could use it at his wish as a laser to send the other into smoking refuse.

"Farree." That was also true. He held to the thought that if he limited any answer to the exact question he might not be so great a traitor after all.

"You were born in the Limits?"

"I do not know." Again the truth, and they could nor reach behind that for something he did not know himself.

"A man knows where he is born, unless he is an idiot," puffed the fat man. "We do not believe you are an idiot."

"Why do you say you do not know?" The Commander showed none of the irritation of the other, but he was the more dangerous of the two and Farree had known that from the beginning.

"I cannot remember."

"You were wiped?" The Commander no longer stared at him so intently, but was looking over his head at whatever there betrayed his speech as true or false.

Wiped – a memory erased for some reason. Was that the truth which he had not faced during all the seasons in the Limits?

"I do not know."

"What do you first remember?" The Commander had back his gentle, ruthless voice.

Because he dared not try any tricks with the truth this time, Farree spoke of that which had been in his dream – the death of Lanti and his own escape into the jungle of the Limits.

Chapter 11.

Lanti." Again the questioner repeated the name. He looked to the fat man who was still running his fingers around the edge of the visa-screen. That other shrugged.

"Who knows of the actions of one man among millions?"

"He had a purpose – "

"Do not we all unless we are being wiped into nothings? A kidnapping?"

"How could this" – the Commander indicated Farree – "be supposed to be anything worth the worry or a copper nick in any market, Sulve? Unless he knows something. This bit of something which was taken from Lanti – or which at least he knew about – what was it?"

"I do not know."

"You do not know!" parroted Sulve in his high voice. "There seems to be very little that you do know, doesn't there? Why did Vorlund and the woman take you with them?"

Why had they? Because he had touched minds with the smux? But he must keep Toggor out of this if it were possible.

"Russtif dealt in wild creatures, they were hunting such, and they discovered I could mind touch with some of them."

"Thassa reason right enough – perhaps." The Commander scratched a thumbnail across his chin. "It is known that the woman once showed trained beasts – and doubtless changed bodies with them from time to time as she did on Sehkmet."

Sulve's fat hands were suddenly still. "This one?" he jerked his fat-rolled chin toward Farree.

"No, the inquirer would have recorded that. Did they promise you a new body, a furred one. Dung?"