"Get along with you." An arm jerked him into motion again. Down a bare coldly-lit hallway, down an escalator, into the guts of the island. Another door, a room beyond it, an ungentle shove. The door clashed to behind him. Dalgetty looked around. The cell was small, bleakly furnished with bunk, toilet and washstand, had a ventilator grille in one wall. Nothing else. He tried listening with maximum sensitivity but there were only remote confused murmurs. _Dad!_ he thought. _You're here somewhere too._ He flopped on the bunk and spent a moment analyzing the aesthetics of the layout. It had a certain pleasing severity, the unconscious balance of complete functionalism. Soon Dalgetty went back to sleep. A guard with a breakfast tray woke him. Dalgetty tried to read the man's thoughts but there weren't any to speak of. He ate ravenously under a gun muzzle, gave the tray back and returned to sleep. It was the same at lunch time. His time-sense told him that it was 1435 hours when he was roused again. There were three men this time, husky specimens. "Come on," said one of them. "Never saw such a guy for pounding his ear." Dalgetty stood up, running a hand through his hair. The red bristles were scratchy on his palm. It was a cover-up, a substitute symbol to bring his nervous system back under full control. The process felt as if he were being tumbled through a huge gulf. "Just how many of your fellows are there here?" he asked. "Enough. Now get going!" He caught the whisper of thought--_fifty of us guards, is it? Yeah, fifty, I guess._ Fifty! Dalgetty felt taut as he walked out between two of them. Fifty goons. And they were trained, he knew that. The Institute had learned that Bertrand Meade's private army was well-drilled. Nothing obtrusive about it--officially they were only servants and bodyguards--but they knew how to shoot. And he was alone in mid-ocean with them. He was alone and no one knew where he was and anything could be done to him. He felt cold, walking down the corridor. There was a room beyond with benches and a desk. One of the guards gestured to a chair at one end. "Sit," he grunted. Dalgetty submitted. The straps went around his wrists and ankles, holding him to the arms and legs of the heavy chair. Another buckled about his waist. He looked down and saw that the chair was bolted to the floor. One of the guards crossed to the desk and started up a tape recorder. A door opened in the far end of the room. Thomas Bancroft came in. He was a big man, fleshy but in well-scrubbed health, his clothes designed with quiet good taste. The head was white-maned, leonine, with handsome florid features and sharp blue eyes. He smiled ever so faintly and sat down behind the desk.