He started to rise. Jessup's twisted smile was gone now. All gone. Sharp and hard, he rapped, "Get him, Pfaff!" The squat Security rep whipped out a pelgun. Dane went flat on the ground in the same instant. Clawing out, he caught Pfaff's ankle and jerked the leg from under the thick body. Pfaff crashed to the ground. Twisting, he fired a pellet. It went wild. Before the Security rep could trigger off a second shot, Dane swung up a ten-pound chunk of broken masonry in both hands and brained him with it. Jessup's voice echoed, shouting to the guard. The man-creature raced towards Dane and Nelva. * * * * * Wrenching the pelgun from Pfaff's dead hand, Dane shot for his new attacker's knees. The guard spilled headlong; lay moaning. Pelgun at the ready, Dane swung to Jessup. But the Security chief's voice stayed calm, even though his hairless skull was glistening. "You can't shoot, Dane. You can't." And then, forceful and vibrant: "Remember? I'm your master. You're my slave!" Dane stopped in his tracks. Deftly, while Dane stood as if paralyzed, Jessup took the pelgun. "You see, I'm still master, Dane. I created you. That's why you're going to stay here. You and Nelva Guthrie. Together. Dead." Sweat came to Dane's forehead. In an agony of desperate tension, he tried to drag up his hand. But it was like being thrown back through time into a nightmare. Once again, it was as on that other, dark-remembered day. The control, the conditioning--they gripped him in spite of all his efforts; bound him tight. "Can you guess why you two will die, Dane?" Jessup taunted. "Is there any reason you can see?" Mumbling, Dane said, "Because ... we know ... too much?" "That's right. But what about?" "About the Kalquoi wanting peace? About the way you sent me to activate the shaft, so they'd think men were all against them?" "Very good, Dane. Now tell me why." "Because you ... run things ... so long as there's trouble ... with the Kalquoi. But if peace comes ... you'll be just another man." "Correct." Jessup's hairless face set in a death's-head grin. "And now, to get on to the business at hand...." He moved towards Nelva. Face chalky with fear, she stumbled backward, behind Dane, out of his view. Again Dane strained. Again he failed. Was it true, then? Was he really Jessup's slave? Numb, aching, he prayed for some power to break the deep-conditioned trance into which Jessup's cue-words had thrown him. Behind him, then, Jessup said something too low to catch. A blow thudded. Like an echo, Nelva screamed. Dane never knew what happened in that moment. Yet within him, it was as if some tight-confining band had snapped. The new stimulus overrode the old. Whirling, leaping over Nelva's crumpled form, Dane threw himself bodily at Jessup. The Security chief's voice, half-choked, gasping the cue-words: "Dane! Remember! I'm your mas--"