He got better treatment after that. They assigned him to a cell where he could lie down and sleep and when they talked to him, they offered him cigarettes and joked with him. Even Mr. Malcolm went out of his way to be pleasant. They were uncannily accurate when they told him about his past life and he got to thinking more and more that there was something in what they said. His mother had been no prize and his brother was a lying, little sneak. Almost a year went by before they led him up to the big one. When they told him, point blank, that he hated humanity. * * * * * Stan felt like somebody had knocked the wind out of him. "You can't be serious!" Mr. Ainsworth sighed and shook his head. "Stan, do you remember when I first picked you up? Three of your fellow human beings had dragged you into an alley and were beating you up--you would have been killed if I hadn't come along." He shrugged. "That's the human race for you, son!" "But they were only three individuals!" Stan objected. "And the others are so much different?" Mr. Ainsworth sneered. "Nobody cared about you, Stan--not even your own family. No human being cares for anybody else but himself! There's a war every generation where they slaughter each other by the millions. And sickness. Have they ever made any really concerted drive against it? Have they ever really tried to stamp out poverty?" His lip curled. "They're apes! Nothing but apes!" "You talk like you're not human!" Stan said, and then realized that he had made a mistake. Mr. Ainsworth started to flicker again, like film in a projector that's run down. Stan gripped the sides of his chair and froze, trying desperately not to show his fear. Mr. Ainsworth was watching him closely. "I think we should tell you what this is all about, Stan. Watch." He pressed a button on his desk and the wall behind him started to glow, then drifted away like cigarette smoke. Stan closed his eyes, feeling dizzy and sick and horribly afraid that he was going to fall. He opened them again, slowly. The end of the room opened out on a harsh, black sky dusted with the tiny pin points of stars. Stars that didn't twinkle but shone with a bright, steady blaze. To his left and below he could see a huge segment of a mottled green and blue globe, laced over with shifting shreds of white. He was almost sick again and then the grandeur of the scene struck him and he caught his breath, sharply. He was somewhere in space, suspended thousands of miles above his home planet and seeing the universe as man had never seen it before. The blazing infinity of stars and the slowly rolling, green globe that was the Earth.... "The home of the apes," Mr. Ainsworth mused. He paused. "We can use that planet to far better advantage than the human race. We intend to take it. And you're going to help us." Stan looked at Mr. Ainsworth coldly. "What's in it for me?" CHAPTER IV