Guerlan nodded in silence. His face was impassive, but the odd, slanting green eyes were burning with lambent fires and his powerful hands were knotted. * * * * * Within seconds the passageway led them to an immense cavern--on Terra it would have been unthinkable, but in keeping with Neptune's bulk, the cavern was a gargantuan retreat. Stupendous stalactites pending from the ceiling defied adjectives, their bases lost in darkness. The walls as far as the eye could reach were sheathed in a gleaming plastic new to Guerlan. The floor, too, was resilient plastic, smooth and perfectly laid, as if an army of workmen and machines had labored on its perfection, which indeed they had. Buildings clustered at the far distant end, like a miniature city; and in the very center of the vast grotto, surrounded by an army of scientists and technicians, an atomo-Spacer, super-armored and longer than any Guerlan had ever seen, rested in its cradle in all its sleek, shining glory. Testing and repair machines were scattered around the great subterranean chamber, driven by technicians and coordinators who worked feverishly, silently, as if engaged in a life-and-death race with time. Toward the left, where the cavern extended into another vast grotto, an ordine-plastic building caught Guerlan's eye because of the fact that it was ordine. That plastic was used only where need for the staunchest material existed. Ordine, an adaptation of the plastic mineral principle, could withstand a siege--was practically indestructible, and Guerlan wondered what it housed. Perlac sensed his curiosity and gazed in turn at the great structure. Her eyes brooding and dark with an emotion he could not fathom slowly filled with tears. "That's the psycho-clinic," she told him. "We try to neutralize the amnesiac treatment, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. Under certain conditions, it can be neutralized, but remember the amnesiac treatment here on Level Five is an intensification of the treatment applied on Levels Three and Four.... They're practically lost when they come here, but our work in the higher levels is too dangerous to be carried out in large numbers. Care to go in and watch the therapy used?" "Yes." Guerlan's laconic reply was an index of his mental state. Words came with difficulty in the face of this ghastly drama that had suddenly unfolded before his eyes. He wondered about the other cities, Perdura, and Telluria and semi-tropical Columbia, with its warm springs and teeming soil where the most exquisite delicacies for the Inner Council, and to a lesser extent the First Order were grown. Wondered if they, too, were condemned to this inhuman rule of death and oppression.