"Precisely. My biochemical staff in the Mercury laboratories is superlative technically, but they need a broader, more incisive mind to shape their concepts. I gave them that--outlined the exact requirements they'd have to meet in developing the type of creature we'd need to send against the Kalquoi." "The type of _creature_?" "Of course. You didn't think you were human, surely?" Dane's throat drew so tight he couldn't answer. Numbly, he dug his fingers into the dirt of the arena, trying to hide their trembling. Jessup watched him for a moment, then threw back his head and laughed--jubilant, sadistic; the self-same laugh Dane had heard that other time, so many worlds away. Only then, suddenly, Nelva Guthrie was on her feet--fists clenched, eyes blazing. "Stop it, you fiend!" she screamed. "Stop it! Stop it!" Jessup's laugh cut off as if severed by a knife. "Oh, my dear! Have I disturbed you?" Mock solicitude flowed from him like oily vapor. "Really, I _did_ have to handle it this way, though. I simply couldn't use a human. There was the matter of subconscious memory, inadverent knowledge. You have to consider those things when you're dealing with telepaths like the Kalquoi, you know." Beside the Security chief, pig-eyed, smirking Pfaff moved smoothly into the conversation: "You didn't have much time, either, Mr. Jessup." "A vital factor," the hairless man nodded. And then, to Dane again: "As you may have guessed, the Kalquoi already had perfected a shield against the brain-drain. It was urgent for us to strike a strong blow at them before they seized the initiative. I decided the Sandoz Shaft, here, offered us our best opportunity. We'd already worked out a new-type catalytic relay that would activate it on practically no power. The only problem lay in coupling the relay to the shaft. To do it by normal procedure, with a task force, would have destroyed its whole value, because it would have driven the Kalquoi from Callisto." From Pfaff: "Brilliant analysis, Mr. Jessup!" "So, I conceived the idea of an artificial man with the relay built in, made part of his tissue structure--a creature something on the order of my guard, here"--a gesture to the blank-faced man in uniform--"but of a higher order. He'd be physically strong, well endowed with initiative. His mind would be good, too, and properly pre-stocked with all necessary information, as well as conditioned to a compulsive drive to reach Callisto and the Sandoz Shaft." * * * * * Dane shuddered. Were these the things that dreams were made of--conditioning, packaged data, concepts born in someone else's brain? Was he really one with the blank-faced guard--"but of a higher order"? He wished he'd died at the shaft's base.