"No. He's stubborn as all hell. But he'll talk soon or I'll kill him." "That's what the Imperator was afraid of," Ostby said bleakly. "And that's why he sent me. Now get out while I try to save what you may have lost already with your stupidity." For a moment the inspector seemed determined to bluff it out. "What did you say?" he asked pugnaciously. "I said get out!" Ostby's voice did not rise, but there was no mistaking the threat behind it. Boorrls broke easily. He was a bully. "C'mon, Jorg," he mumbled and the two men left the room. * * * * * The figure suspended on the hooks could not see Ostby. Where his eyes had been were now only bloody orifices. His stomach was cut to ribbons and the inside organs showed through. He was beyond the help of any doctor. He seemed to have recognized Ostby's voice. His lips and tongue moved agonizingly as he strove to speak. When he finally succeeded his voice came from far back in his throat--hardly more than a whisper. "For God's sake," the voice croaked, "kill me! Please!" Ostby repressed a shudder as he gently touched the tortured man's leg. They had picked him, back on Earth, for this job because his was a sensitive organism, keyed with "high survival characteristics." His nervous system was geared exceptionally high, and its acute reflexes with their delicate balance of intricate excitations made his response to stimuli proportionately more rapid than that of other men. Yet this very sensitiveness of brain and nerve fiber made the brutal circumstances with which he was forced to cope all the more difficult to endure. It was ironical that the very qualities that made him the most fit for this dangerous kind of work, made him suffer the greatest under its harshness. Ostby could remember how, even as a child, he had suffered through this keenness of emotional reaction. His empathy with any person or animal in distress always caused him pain nearly as great as that of the sufferer. In later years he had developed a philosophy that helped carry him through most of those trying times. He had never exactly defined that philosophy but it encompassed the ability to recognize "the little things as little, and the big things as big; and to laugh in the face of the inevitable, to smile even at the looming death." This philosophy was never able to give him the shell of hardness which would have shielded him from most of the meanness of the world, but it had given him the strength to bear it. Now the suffering of the wretched creature before him played along Ostby's nerves like a live flame. "Everything will be over in a minute," he said softly. He opened his shirt front and exposed a mesh-weave vest fitted close against his skin. In the innumerable pockets of the vest he carried everything he owned on this world.