And then Jean was in Don Denton's arms, her slender shoulders shaking in a torrent of sobs, and he was soothing her with a clumsy gentleness that felt strange and good to him. * * * * * They sat in the control room of the great freighter, _Moonstone_, their faces were turned to where Don Denton stood at the control panel. The trouble shooter grinned at the fifteen people that made up his audience, and he summed up all of his thoughts and theories. "Those slugs," he explained, "were little more than animated brains. They lived somewhere in the oceans, and probably discovered the _Lanka_ camps by accident. They had no ways of subduing you men by physical means, because of their grub-like bodies, so they took control of your minds. Unluckily, they failed to gain control of one of you men and of both of the freighter pilots; and the three men tried to escape in a small rocket. The rocket crashed, killing all three of the men." Jim Palmer nodded. "That's what I've got figured out," he said, "But I've just got a hazy memory of the past three months." "Well," Don Denton continued, "these slugs must have got the idea of going to Earth and the other inhabited planets, and taking control of them. But they needed your help and a space pilot to transport you and them. They put all of you in a cataleptic state, while waiting for some space pilot to appear. They left a guard, the slug I shot down the moment I begin searching the camp. But before he died, he sent out a call that brought a single slug into camp." Jean Palmer shivered, held tightly to the trouble shooter's hand. "I know," she said, "I took off my helmet to adjust the oxygen valve, and I looked up to see that whitish thing at the corner of the hut. Before I could call out, something seemed to grab my mind--and then I was running toward the jungle. I tried to scream to you, when you found me gone, but I couldn't move." Don Denton smiled, tightened his strong fingers over the girl's. "It's fairly easy to reconstruct from there on," he said carefully. "The slugs tried to get control of my mind. But because thought is of an electrical nature, absolute control wouldn't pass through the copper of my oxy-helmet. They set a scene to make me think I was crazy, and sent Palmer to take off my helmet." "I remember that," Jim Palmer said thoughtfully. Don Denton nodded. "Well," he went on, "their mental control was enough that it played tricks with my mind. They blanked out my vision when I looked at them, and later, they blacked out the sight of the freighters, trying to make me think that I was so crazy I should take off my helmet for an examination."