Suddenly Kennon wanted to run. Panic flooded him! What had he been thinking about? Had he thought of--two times two are four, four times four are sixteen, sixteen times sixteen are--let’s see, six times sixteen is ninety-six, one times sixteen is--six, five, carry one--two--two hundred fifty-six. Two hundred fifty-six times-- “What’s eating you?” Alexander demanded. “I’m angry,” Kennon said. “I told you the conditions I’d sign that contract, and you wrote a Peeper Clause into it. And then you peep in the worst way possible. There’s no defense against a Telep unless you know about him; you’ve had my whole mind bare! You’ve violated my personal privacy like no man has done before. Sure I’m mad. I expected honesty from you--and you peep!” The anger was stronger now--a wave of raw emotion based on a lifetime of training in mutual respect of a man’s privacy--a feeling intensified by his childhood environment of a crowded planetary ecology and the cramped crew quarters on a spaceship. To Kennon, Alexander had committed the ultimate sin. “I can see I made a mistake by not telling you,” Alexander said. His voice was cold. “But you have no right to insult me.” “I’m not saying it, am I?” Kennon snapped. The moonflower on the bookcase behind Alexander was a thing of beauty. Alexander liked beauty. He had said so, and the Great Hall below them bore it out. It was a lovely room. Those four bronze Lani in the fountain were works of art. One of them looked remarkably like Copper. Copper in bronze. The little witch had probably posed for the casting. Maybe it had even been made from her body. “They’re all of Susy,” Alexander said. “I can see why you are angry, and I don’t blame you. But remember I warned you about Lani.” Copper--Kennon wrenched his thoughts back to the moonflower. It had twelve petals, limpid white on the borders shading to deep blue in the center-from which the cream-colored stamen surrounded by transparent pistils sprang to burst into a golden glory of pollen that dripped in tiny yellow flecks to the broad petals below. It was a magnificent flower. There was nothing like it on Beta. That was a marvelous thing about flowers--wherever one went in the universe, plants used the same methods to fertilize their seed and spread their germ plasm. It was too bad that--Kennon jerked his attention to Alexander’s face. He detested the thought that his mind was common property. A man should have something he can call his own. There had been a clinics instructor in Year Six who was a sensitive. The classes had protected themselves against his prying with a circlet--a thought screen--he had done it too. Maybe he had brought the circlet with him. If he did, no one was going to catch him without it. It was a dirty business, this reading of others’ thought. Now where had he put that circlet? Was it among his old books--or was it with his instruments?