"Good, good. The doc says you'll be okay." Berg sat down on the edge of the bunk. "I can't stay here long, but the hell with it. We'll be at the station soon. You deserve to know some things, such as that you've been rescued." "Well, that's obvious," said Lancaster. "By us. The rebels. The underground. Subversive characters." "That's obvious too. And thanks--" The word was so ridiculously inadequate that Lancaster had to laugh. * * * * * "I suppose you've guessed most of it already," said Berg. "We needed a scientist of your caliber for our project. One thing we're desperately short of is technical personnel, since the only real education in such lines is to be had on Earth and most graduates find comfortable berths in the existing society. Like you, for instance. So we played a trick on you. We used part of our organization--yes, we have a big one, and it's pretty smart and powerful too--to convince you this was a government job of top secrecy. More damn things can be done in the name of Security--" Berg clicked his tongue. "Everybody you saw at the station was more or less play-acting, of course. The whole thing was set up to fool you. We might not have gotten away with it if we'd used some other person, more shrewd about such things, but we'd studied you and knew you for an amiable, unsuspicious guy, too wrapped up in your own work to go witch-smelling." "I guessed that much," admitted Lancaster. "After I'd been in the cells for awhile. Your way of living and thinking was so different from anything like--" "Yeah. I'm sorry as hell about that, Allen. We thought you could just return to ordinary life, but somehow--through one of those accidents or malices inevitable in a state where every man spies on his neighbor--you were hauled in. We knew of it at once--yes, we've even infiltrated the secret police--and decided to do something about it. Quite apart from the danger of your betraying what you knew--we could have eliminated that by quietly murdering you--there was the fact that we'd gotten you into this and did owe you something. We managed to get Dr. Pappas transferred to the inquisitory where you were being held. He drugged you, producing a remarkably corpse-like figure, and smuggled you out as simply another one who'd died under questioning. I used my Security papers to get the body for special autopsy instead of the usual immediate cremation. Then we simply drove till we reached the stratorocket we'd arranged to have ready, and you were flown to our spaceboat, and now you're on the way back to the station. You were kept under drugs most of the way to help you rest--they'd knocked you around quite a bit in the inquisitory. So--" Berg shrugged. "Pappas can't go back to Earth now, of course, but we can always use a medic in space, and it was well worth the trouble to rescue you." "I'm honored," said Lancaster. "I still feel like hell about what happened to you, though."