"Do you know what he does then, Mark? Can you guess?" I said thickly, "Nothing. Not if he's been properly conditioned." "That's right, Mark. Nothing. Not if he's been properly conditioned. He can't even hate his wife in the first place. That's one of the reasons compulsory conditioning came in. "But back before that, he did something: He struck out; he over-reacted; he kicked the dog instead of his wife." I didn't say anything. I was shaking too hard. Celeste said softly, "Could that be you in that picture, Mark? Could you be hating one thing and striking another?" Spasmodically, I drew up my knees and hugged my arms round them--burying my face, squeezing my eyes tight shut in a vain, desperate effort to blot out the room, and Celeste, and the things she said. Only they wouldn't blot out, because they were inside of me, too, churning and roiling and spinning round in my brain. I had a queer, detached feeling, as if I were two rather than one, and one of those two was a great, yawning, black pit, and the other hung on the brink, ready to cast himself in. That was how close I came to madness in that moment. Then, abruptly, the moment passed. With a curse, I sat up straight, my mood gone suddenly savage. Celeste's eyes distended. She started to draw away. I caught her wrist fast; jerked her back. "Where do you think you're going?" "Mark, please--!" "Forget it. It's my turn for questions." And then, tightening my grip: "Who's supplying those thrill-mills?" A thin white line of pain had formed round her lips. But she spoke coolly, levelly: "The Kel, of course." In spite of myself, I breathed in sharply. "And you--?" "I survived Bejak II. The price was to help them." "The thrill-mills--" "They're part of a plan. Man's conditioned consistency was a bit difficult for the Kel to handle. They felt the simplest solution was to upset the conditioning." A pause. "Thanks to you, they'll probably succeed." "Thanks to me--!" "Yes. You see"--a smile, without mirth--"the Kel are shape-shifters. They can take any form. Tonight, an infiltration party will move into Rizal's defenses and take over the posts of the men you had seized. No one will know them from the originals. By morning, there'll be a Kel ship dropping down in the port without interference. After which, we'll all be utilized as laboratory animals for various experiments. The Kel feel we're ideal for that role." "You know, and you didn't warn us? Your own race; your own people?" I stared at the girl in numb horror, her beauty turning to ashes before my eyes. Only there was no time for numbness, nor for recrimination. I had too many things to do; too large a role to play. I came up fast, dragging the woman bodily with me. "Get me out of here. Now, before I kill you." She tottered, wincing and cringing as I twisted her arm slowly round. But as before, her voice stayed strangely level. "I'm sorry, Mark. I can't do that." "You're going to!" "I can't."