"Black-headed girl?" asked the third man in the room. He had his chair leaned against the wall. A tall, angular, sandy-haired man with pale blue eyes like gimlets. "Does she have hazel-green eyes, small delicate features? Ears peaked like an animal's...." "I hadn't noticed the ears," Saxon confessed, swinging toward the sandy-haired man. Gavin Murdock, T.I.S. agent, had been assigned as T.I.S. representative to this first expedition beyond the Solar System. He said, "No, I guess not. She wears her hair in a page-boy bob." Villainowski interrupted: "Well, damn it, man, who gave you permission to horn in on the T.I.S.'s work?" "I knew her. She'd been set to pump me dry of information by General Atomic. If anyone could get anything out of her, I could." "You don't fancy yourself much," the chief grunted with a touch of asperity. "What did you find out?" Saxon related events just as they had transpired, omitting only the alien telepaths in the street and his own telepathic ability. "By Pluto!" exploded Villainowski when he had concluded. "We can grab the lot of them." "Not so fast," Murdock interrupted from his chair against the wall. "What proof have you? Only Saxon's word. It won't hold in a court of law." "But the girl!" Villainowski protested. "She's General Atomic's representative on the expedition. You don't intend to let her--" "It's better to have her where we can watch her," the T.I.S. agent returned. "Saxon can keep an eye on her. He seems to be able to pry more out of her than any of my agents have. If he can persuade her that he hasn't told us about the fracas in her apartment...." "I can convince her of that, I think," said Saxon. "But she doesn't know anything...." "Except," Murdock interrupted again, "that she's to take orders from an agent known as Q62. At least, she should lead us to him." He paused, regarded Saxon with his penetrating pale blue eyes. "What the devil did you do to her, man, to get that information out of her? Stick darts under her finger nails?" In both Murdock's and Villainowski's mind Saxon read a cold determination to keep him under surveillance as well as the girl. * * * * * Villainowski, he knew, hated the corporations in general, but it was nothing to the black flame of hatred that consumed the man whenever he thought of General Atomic. It was almost psychopathic. He had never forgotten or forgiven General Atomic, Saxon knew, for stealing his first three discoveries and then disgracing him. It was a queer friendship that existed between the two men questioning Saxon--the gaunt cold-blooded manhunter, who had sent a girl with whom he was infatuated to the Lunar Penal Colony, and Villainowski, the small wiry scientist, ex-Jovian slaver, and at present head of the first expedition into deep space. "Well," the sandy-haired Murdock repeated inexorably, "how did she happen to tell you about Q62?" "It was a slip," explained Saxon. "I followed it up."