"I don't like to think Terra has only dregs left. After all, I came from there, you know," Hanlon grinned and they smiled back companionably. "But I know you're right in part--at least, that will probably be the case in time. Just as it will with the other planets as their best and younger top-notchers go out to open up still more worlds." In the middle of that first night on Algon something, perhaps his sub-conscious, brought George Hanlon wide awake, his every mental faculty clear and alert. Click! Click! Click! ... like pieces of a jig-saw puzzle falling into place, many of the odds and ends of apparently unrelated information and experience fell into place in this enigma. He remembered clearly now, an incident that had merely brought a momentary wonder at the time. Those last minutes before the ship took off. The leader had stared long and piercingly into his eyes and Hanlon, wondering and puzzled as to what the man was seeking, merely stared back dumbly. Now he remembered the flashing thought--quickly dismissed as ridiculous--that even if he did find out where he was going, he must never tell anyone; must forget it entirely and instantly on pain of severe torture. Why, that leader must have been trying to implant a hypnotic compulsion in his mind ... and must have thought he succeeded, else Hanlon would never have reached here alive. That was why he could never read that knowledge from the mind of any of the people he had contacted who were in on this game--not even that ship's officer, who certainly should have known. But wait a minute. What about Philander? He knew. Hadn't the hypnosis worked on him? Or was that name "Algon" merely one the super used in place of the real one he didn't know he knew? Or, again, could it be that he was so well trusted that the knowledge had not been sealed off from him? Of the three, Hanlon argued the latter was probably the truth. Another point. That vague reference to "if or when you leave here" was undoubtedly a slip of the tongue. Philander had probably guessed--or perhaps it was so with all first-time men--that Hanlon was here on probation. "If so," the thought was insistent, "I sure will have to watch my step every minute, and not let slip what I'm trying to do here." But further moments of thought brought the reasonable conclusion that he could lull their suspicion by buckling down and making a real record for efficiency. Or ... and this gave him the cold shivers for a moment, so that he instinctively burrowed a bit further down beneath the sheet, as though it could protect and warm him ... did they know all about him already, and had sent him here to get rid of him? Was he to become another victim of one of the leader's "little accidents"? Yes, if they still disbelieved his story about his dismissal, they might well be determined to get rid of him in a way that would not incriminate them. They would know that if Hanlon was still a Corpsman his death would be most thoroughly investigated.