At the kick, the race mind clicked in. This was the effect Zen had--as if a third person had suddenly come in on a party line. After that, the pain from the kick did not seem so important. The torture from the matches under his nails seemed to diminish also. Not that the contact with the race mind nullified the pain or made it any less real. Fire was still fire and torture was still the same. But neither were very important. Other things were. Zen tried to concentrate his attention on the other things. The room, the shouting Cuso, the two Asians who were holding him down while the third thrust the matches under his nails, the shivering Cal, the lieutenant who was over-eager to obey his leader's orders, all these seemed to become misty and vague. These things were real; there was no question about that. But his mind was contacting another reality which made these things different. Time began to lose its meaning. He wondered if he was fainting. Another question came across his thoughts, heeled over like a sailing ship moving across the wind. Was he dying? There was no shock with the thought. If that was the way it was, then he was more than ready. "You are not fainting and you are not dying," the race mind whispered to him. "Come closer to me." "How do I come closer to you?" "Let go." The voice of the race mind was like a whisper from the other side of infinity. "Let go and come to me." Dimly, he wondered how one let go. The answer came with the question. The words meant exactly what they said, the meaning was literal--_let go_. As he performed the action that went with the words, the big gallery, Cuso, the lieutenant, and the torturers faded away and became a part of a misty world that seemed to have no real existence. Even the pain vanished. "Come to me," the race mind whispered, again and again, a luring voice that drew him irresistibly. Abruptly, he was back in the gallery. He did not know how long he had been gone but he realized that some time must have passed, enough to allow them to set up a portable radio transmitter in the gallery. The set looked to be very powerful. A yellow-skinned operator was huddling over the controls. "In contact with Asian headquarters," Zen thought. He knew his thinking was correct. Off somewhere in the distance outside the mountain the night shuddered. He knew the meaning of the sound. A rocket ship was either landing or blasting off, probably the latter. A long line of burdened Asians was moving through the gallery. At the sight of their loads Zen knew what had gone into the hold of that ship. The equipment of the hidden center here. He saw parts of the super radar go past on the backs of sweating Asian soldiers, and he knew where this was going. At this knowledge, anguish came up in him. With West's super radar in their possession, no American secret was safe from prying Asian eyes, unless some way could be found to shield the frequencies employed.