"Now Mustapha IX has had to flee for his life. Most of our agents on Earth have been murdered. Only a handful escaped with him!" The Moderator pressed another button, began to speak rapidly, tonelessly in the alien language into a microphone. The thoughts of the seven old men were flashing back and forth like streaks of light behind their mental barrier. The crisis, Saxon realized, had arrived with a vengeance! Suddenly the guard came running through the door in answer to a summons by the Moderator. For the first time Saxon intercepted a thought as the Moderator directed the guard to take the prisoners away. "_Send the girl to Zara_," he commanded the guard. "_Confine the man here until we can check results!_" "Come along," said the guard in a tight voice to Saxon and Ileth. He took hold of Ileth's arm. The girl shrank away from him, frightened by the swift and ominous change which had come over their captors. Saxon's eyes went bleak. The guard jerked back as he caught a glimpse of Saxon's intentions, but he wasn't quick enough. Saxon's balled fist caught him on his left cheek bone, sent him sprawling to the checkered pavement. Saxon was on him like a wolf. Wrenching the cylinder from the stunned guard's belt, he backed off swinging the unfamiliar weapon in a menacing arc. [Illustration: _He backed off, swinging the unfamiliar weapon._] He saw the withered faces of the Elders blanch. They pressed stiffly against the back of their chairs, jaws sagging. The guard scrambled to his feet. He shook his head groggily but made no move to attack Saxon. Triumph welled up inside Jon Saxon. He said, "The shoe's on the other foot. I don't know how this damned thing works, but there's a button. Unless you start answering my questions straight we'll see what happens if I press it." He paused. The seven old men glared at him but said nothing. "How did General Atomic discover your agents? Why didn't their invisibility protect them?" The Moderator moistened his lips. "The humanoids devised a machine that detects us. An adaption of the thought projector, which enabled them to detect our telepathic potential. Once they could isolate our thought waves, they were able to trace them to their source by a process similar to locating the source of a radio beam." Saxon narrowed his eyes, recalling the thought projector which the radiation branch of Government's Bureau of Research had been experimenting with. So that's how General Atomic had uncovered the Aliens. "General Atomic," the Moderator was saying, "suspected the existence of mutants, telepaths, ever since an agent of theirs by the name of Emil turned in a report on you!" Saxon started. The Moderator's first fright was over, he realized. The old man was regarding him with a faint smile. Saxon glanced behind him in alarm; but there was nothing there. He clenched his fist until the knuckles whitened. "What other methods did you use to keep the humanoids in check?"