The incredibly beautiful and life-like face floating inside the crystal laughed mockingly up at Venard through opaque, silvery mists. No horror there. The little, diaphanous, three-dimensional figure dancing through the shifting vapors of the memory-sphere floated in a never-ending dream of things as they might have been. Vale, lovely and enchanting Vale, the way she had looked and danced when she had loved him in those carefree happy days before the Solar War. Nostalgia, bitterly sweet, of lost and unrecoverable nights, dream-lost beauty of Luna nights the blood-drenched holocaust. Vale, before she had went away to Venus and to that hungry maw that ate up _the_ best minds of the Solar System, Solar Science City. Venard swore softly to himself. How silly he was to feed on memory, like a parasite gnawing on itself and growing hungrier with each futile bite. The little man's eyes stared through the bars into the dreary shadows of the cell block. "Gods, Karl!" he moaned suddenly. "Karl! I hear 'em comin' down the line! Dirty heathens." Ex-lieutenant K. Venard looked down curiously at the bald head. No one would guess the existence there of steel nerves, iron will, somehow strangely integrated with a golden heart. "I hear 'em," Larson whispered hoarsely. "Swissshhh--swissshhh--swisshhhh. I hear their slimy feet squeegyin' along. I hear their body juices sloshin' around inside their cold bellies like walkin' quarts of _stihn_. Karl--if I only had a quart of _stihn_!" Abruptly he sank down in a sad, dejected heap. "Yeah," growled the ex-lieutenant. "Keep crying, Kewpie Doll. If something happens to our memory-crystal here, we'll be drinking vat-acid tonight." "Oh, don't talk that way, Karl!" moaned Larson. "Things is bad enough. Things is simply terrible. Either we blow ourselves to tendons or get pried and peered into by these furriners. We're gonna have those probosci dinnin' into our innards. We're gonna--" "Shut up!" yelled Venard. Maybe the little man really was cracking up. No man is infallible. Maybe he, Karl Venard, would crack up too. He and Larson had been through a lot. But never anything like this. This was definite, inescapable. Maybe a little rationalizing, and wishful thinking, would be a good idea. Maybe he could even talk himself into believing that grapevine story about the Zharkon. "What do we care, Kewpie Doll," he said, grabbed Larson and lifted him onto his feet. "I been thinkin' it over, and I think maybe that story about the Zharkon getting his double-brain injured might have some basis in fact. The way I figure it, that story is too fantastic to be handed out with any expectation of having it believed if it weren't true. Or at least we can assume it has some basis in reality." Larson's round, staring face altered with sudden violence. His hands clutched Venard's sleeves. His eyes brightened. "Say it again. Keep on sayin' it."