Wyatt spun around, still holding the man. Makvern had got up. He was standing beside the door with a weapon in his hand. The door was now open and Brinna was standing in it, her thumbs hooked in her belt, watching. Men were arriving behind her in the corridor. Wyatt said, "If you shoot me you'll get your own man too." He shifted his grip, dragging the man closer to the control panel. Feeling even while he was speaking the absolute hopelessness of this last ditch play, he said, "Tell him what I want or I'll smash your communication system so thoroughly--" "It was a good try, Wyatt," said Makvern, not without a certain admiration, and pressed a stud on his weapon. Wyatt never knew what hit him. When he awoke he was lying in a bunk in a small metal cabin. Close beside his head there swung a curious helmet-like device linked by cables to a squat cabinet. Makvern was standing looking down at him. He looked alert and wary and his hand rested casually on his holstered side-arm. "How are you feeling now?" said Makvern. Wyatt started a sour reply, and then he froze in an incredulous astonishment. Makvern had not spoken in English. He had spoken in a totally strange language--and yet he, Wyatt, had understood him! "What--how--" Wyatt began. Makvern smiled. "How do you know the language of Uryx, our language, all of a sudden? Simple. Learning-tapes." He gestured toward the helmet and the cabinet. Wyatt gaped like a yokel. It was too uncanny. Hearing words he'd never consciously heard before, and yet understanding them-- He articulated with difficulty. "Learning-tapes?" Makvern sat down. "You've been under a seda-ray for some days, Wyatt. In fact, we're nearly to our rendezvous with the fleet, off Alpha Centauri." So time had passed? That wasn't surprising. But this other thing-- Makvern went on. "Don't you yet have it on your Earth, the technique of teaching arbitrary knowledge to a subject in his sleep?" Wyatt began to get it now. "You mean, a recorded voice repeating facts over and over in a sleeping man's ear? Yes. We have that--but it's not good enough to teach a man a whole new language in sleep." "With us," said Makvern, "it is good enough. We always use it, once we pick up the vocabulary and grammar from our first captives. Makes it easier to question them. Instead of all our intelligence officers, technicians and so on having to learn the captive's language, we give him _our_ language." It was still too much for Wyatt to take in. He lay looking at Makvern, and after a moment he said, "You seem like a decent guy, not a butcher or a greedy conqueror type. Maybe you can tell me what gives your people the idea they've a right to go around acting like a bunch of goddamned bandits." * * * * *