It was, Jupiter realized with horror, a wholly parasitic culture. Orgies were held, and gladiatorial combats, one Anolyn pitting its human vehicle against another. Empathy was perfect. There were other things, unmentionable things which Jupiter tried to thrust from his mind. Scenes from the training pits, the biological breeding stations.... He was sick at his stomach, sick and emotionally exhausted. He could see no hope of escape. Not so long as the horrid parasite remained fastened to his spinal cord. And by its very nature the creature couldn't be dislodged or killed! He closed his eyes, feeling as depleted as if he'd run the mile, slid over the lip of consciousness into deep sleep. V He was roused by Tabak, the Caligan girl, shaking his shoulder. "Wake up!" she was whispering urgently, her violet-blue eyes shining with suppressed excitement. "Wake up, Wanderer-from-Beyond, and come with me!" Jupiter sat up with a start. "How did you get in here?" Tabak rotated her shoulder, and the yellow furred boj rippled like liquid light. "Through the door." "But it was locked." "It operates by telepathic control." "Of course." Jupiter scratched his beard. He'd known it all along. Nor was that all. If he would only concentrate, he could manipulate the lock himself! To his growing amazement, he realized that he knew the city by the _Dra Dur_ as well as his home town of Venusport. While he slept, his subconscious had integrated Tabak's fund of knowledge, made it a part of his own. He was changed. He didn't look at things quite the same. His own hard ruthless personality had become tinctured with something of Tabak's soft deviousness. He didn't like it. His fingers closed on the girl's shoulders, bit into the flesh. "What have you done to me?" "I? I've done nothing. I've come to help you, Wanderer-from-Beyond." "How?" "Please," she said; "don't you believe me?" "Why should I?" She lifted her arms, touched his temples with her fingertips. "Come in," she said simply. "Come into my mind so that you can have no more doubts." Almost against his will, he peered into her eyes, experiencing an odd frightening sensation of sinking into their wide, violet-blue depths. Down. Down. His very being seemed to merge with the girl's. All at once, the room swam back into his vision, but from a different angle. Everything looked a little strange. Then he saw himself! Literally! Saw himself through Tabak's eyes! With a peculiar sense of detachment, he observed his own lean, muscular, sun-reddened frame, his wiry red beard, tangled hair, half-closed green eyes. And all the time he was aware of Tabak's flow of thought--her emotions, sensations, the bubbling fluid well of her subconscious. "Now do you trust me?" Jupiter was acutely embarrassed. Their conjoining was more intimate than any physical relation could have been. Tabak's very soul lay naked before his mind's eye.