Songeen smiled wearily. "It is possible that I am infected. I am inoculated against it, but so was Genarion. Will you believe that I loved him? He was my husband. We were children together, like brother and sister. Later, we were schooled together, were married, and asked to be assigned our task together. I did not sentence him, and I would have died myself first. But he had been here too long. If he had gone back, the contagion would have gone with him. It was fated. You and I were mere tools. Weapons." "I'm sorry, Songeen. I do believe you loved him." She shook her head in curious ruffle of emotion. "He was not the first. Many of our kind have renounced their birthright to go among your people, become like you and share your hideous lives. They are part of your great religions, part of the legendary history of your races." Silence fell between them. Newlin thought of dying Mars, the burnt-out husk of Venus, the political and economic pesthole of Earth--even the grim, gray, terrible frontiers on the further planets and moons. His recollections were a dreadful pageant of spectres, of an ugly, terror-haunted childhood, of the bleak years of his barren, lonely wanderings--the memory kitbag of a homeless, and often hunted, spacebum. "I can believe you," Newlin admitted slowly. "Most of the truly worthwhile leaders of mankind stand so far above the mob that they seem cast in a different mold. The real leaders--not politicians, nor military brass. The thinkers and scientists, even the prophets. Every great religion sprang from the vision or inspiration of a single leader. Beyond the chaff, the fragments of his actual thoughts and words--always sound good. But their followers don't follow them." Songeen's face twisted in bitter wrath. "How terribly true! Can blind men follow the sun? They feel its warmth and reach out to it, but they stumble and fall on their own clay feet. Blind eyes and hands can never reach the light. Most of our emissaries, of that kind, die horribly, and their message is distorted to serve the ends of madness and corruption." "Is there no hope for us?" She stared at him. The pale glow of her moonbright eyes softened and intensified. "One hope, and only in yourselves. We have tried and failed. If you feel so strongly, why have you done nothing?" Bitter hatred snagged in Newlin's throat, making his laugh a sound of horror. "Not me. I can pity the masses of poor and down-trodden, but only as masses. As abstractions. Individually, I loathe them. Cornered rats will fight back--but men lick the boots of their tormentors. I learned only hate and defiance. I'm a cornered rat, not a man." There was sound now, outside the door they had entered. Low at first, a mere scrabbling, as if the trackers had located their refuge. In moments only, there came a heavy pounding, followed by the skirl of atomic drills. Newlin tensed, his hand itching at the butt of his blaster.