Now there was a faint flicker of answer in the man's eyes. He asked quietly: "What do you remember, Brodie?" "Enough to know that I am not Brodie. That I did not get here on the L-B, did not build that camp." He ran one hand over the stock of the needler. Whatever motive lay behind this weird game into which he had been unwillingly introduced, he was now sure that it was serious enough to be dangerous. "You have no cup this time." "So you do remember." The other accepted that calmly. "All right. That need not necessarily spoil our plans. You have nothing to return to on Nahuatl--unless you _liked_ the Starfall." His voice was icy with contempt. "To play our roles will be for your advantage, too." He paused, his gaze centering on Rynch with the intensity of one willing the desired answer out of his inferior. Nahuatl. Rynch caught at that. He had been on or in Nahuatl--a planet? a city? If he could make this man believe he remembered everything clearly, more than just the scattered patches that he did.... "You had me planted here, then came back to hunt me. Why? What makes Rynch Brodie so important?" "Close to a billion credits!" The man from the spacer leaned well back in the hole, his arms spread flat out on either side to keep his body from sinking deeper. "A billion credits," he repeated softly. Rynch laughed. "You'll have to think of a better one than that, fly-boy." "The stakes would have to be high, wouldn't they, for us to go to all this staging? You've been conditioned, Brodie, illegally brain-channeled!" To Rynch the words meant nothing. If they ever had, that was gone, lost in the maze of other things which had been blotted out of his mind by the Brodie past. But he would not give the other the advantage of knowing his uncertainty. "You need a Brodie for a billion credits. But you don't have a Brodie now!" To his surprise the prisoner in the earth trap laughed. "I'll have a Brodie when he's needed. Think about a good share of a billion credits, boy, keep thinking of that hard." "I will." "Thoughts alone won't work it, you know." For the first time there was a hint of some emotion in the man's voice. "You mean I need you? I don't think so. I've stopped being a plaque for someone to play across the board." That expression brought another momentary flash of hazy memory--a smoky, crowded room where men slid counters back and forth across tables--not one of Brodie's edited recalls, but his own. Rynch stood up, started for the rise of the slope, but before he topped that he glanced back. The damaged com box still smoked where its wearer had flung it. Now the man was already straining forward with both arms, trying to reach a rock just a finger space beyond. Lucky for him the burrow was an old one, uninhabited. In time he should be able to work his way out. Meanwhile there was the whole of a wide countryside in which Rynch could discover a hideout--no one would find him now against his will.