Herb felt a little shudder crawl along his mind. Then his thoughts whirled away. "It will be infinitely more difficult to win the crucial support of Senators Klein, Stilson and Council after the Committee hearings end. We must bring them to our side. They have become the focal point of the opposition. We must prolong the Committee hearings until we have convinced them. If we can convince them, the full Senate will go along. We'll have ripped the heart out of the opposition." Herb tried to concentrate on the reasoning. "Yes," he said. "They will press for an immediate vote. They have known, even if they don't realize it consciously, that the longer they delay, the surer they are of being defeated." "If we don't ... can't...." _I don't know_, the Oligarch thought. _I don't know. Threats? Try to plant the charges secretly?_ "We'll have to convince them. And we've got to do it within a week--maybe a little more, a day or two more." "What do we do? How? I mean, what do we tell them?" Herb's thoughts were like fog. He wished he could go back to sleep. The Oligarch knew he was wasting his time explaining to Herb. He wished that he could go before the Committee, himself, but he dared not. Automatic reactions were far more consistent and convincing than his calculating deceit would be. _He_ could conceivably be caught in a lie. Not Herb. "I'll ... I'll try...." The Oligarch analyzed Herb's potential. _Ten days. Ten days. If he becomes unreliable, where shall I find another?_ "We have almost three weeks," Herb said. "We could give them fifteen or sixteen days.... We could plant the charges in one day...." "You may as well go back to sleep, Herb." "Yes." Herb stood up and stumbled away. The Oligarch returned to his cabin, washed his hands, and went to his desk. He fumbled at the newspapers. He saw an editorial: "Council Makes Starmen Hearing Political Football." The people were slowly coming to the starmen's support, but how long, how long...? He saw another headline: STARMEN POSSIBLE MENACE TO EARTH SOCIETY. * * * * * The first thing Herb did upon arising the morning of the third hearing was to fill in his dream form. He had filled in thousands of them during his life, and yet it was always a frightening experience. A chill of the Unknown confronted him. Watchful eyes were, in a way, reassuring; planted microphones could be circumvented; spies could be recognized. But the dream form could not be cheated. What awful secrets did it reveal? Life and death hung in the balance. Somehow they could tell from the fantasy fiction of a dream how you felt about the reality around you: about the Oligarchy, about your job, about your family. And they could tell when you lied. And if you said you didn't dream. Everyone on Brionimar dreamed. If they didn't like your dreams, they shot you.... Even into his numb and information filled mind, terror crept as his pencil moved across the dream form.