The girl raised her eyebrows. "There would be no sense in your making a choice now; you can't understand, so no choice would be valid. It would be only blind emotionalism." "I see." I was mad. I could handle this cruiser myself. I'd been kidnapped by people who considered me nothing more than a robot they were going to use. I swung my feet around, got them planted solidly down on the mesh grid flooring. I got my hands down on either side of me so I could move fast and hard. "I see. Well, I'm not playing sucker for anybody." I could hear the soft whispering of space against the platinum lined skin of the cruiser. Her eyes burned into me. I felt helpless and very much alone. But the devil with them I thought. So I jumped straight for the aristocratic gent, and swung a long stiff right for his jaw. He faded into the air. I yelled wildly as he seemed to drift away like smoke, and into nothingness. I turned and there he was over in the corner of the cabin. [Illustration: I jumped straight for the aristocratic gent, and swung a long stiff right to his jaw. He faded into the air....] His eyes shot sparks, but he wasn't mad; he just looked grim. "You may cause us trouble when we cushion in," he said softly. "So I think you had better go back to sleep." He moved toward me. I tried to move my arms and legs, but I suddenly found that I couldn't move anything. "And perhaps it will be better if you have no more resistance to our suggestions after we reach earth." His eyes seemed to expand out and out and out. It was like I was falling into a widening black pool. "And," I heard his distant voice say, "that is the way it will be. Until you can make free choice of your own, you will have to agree with us completely. Subconsciously you know we are right; some time you will know it with your full consciousness." They had it all right, whatever it was. But not as much as their friends. They had as much of the greater power as you can have, and still be bounded by Third-Plane reality. It was mental power. Mind-energy they called paraphysical. Nothing trite, like I'd seen the quack women along the North Canal pull with mass hypnotism; this was something big and way beyond me. I fell forward into a black hole. 2 Kill For Us! Their names were Glora and Malcolm Mergon; he was her father. They could make suckers out of anyone they wanted to; they could get into another guy's mind and make him think, see, feel, hear anything they wanted him to. Take Extra Sensory Perception, and imagine somebody who's perfected all of it--and that's the way Glora and Malcolm Mergon were. Only more so.