"We can damn well try. If it had come to fighting with the rest of your gang we'd have used you as a hostage but now there's a neater way. On your feet! Here, straighten your tunic, comb your hair. Okay, you'll do just as you're told, because if anything goes wrong we'll have nothing at all to lose by shooting you." Dalgetty rapped out his orders. * * * * * Bancroft looked at Elena and there was more than physical hurt in his eyes. "Why did you do it?" "FBI," she said. He shook his head, still stunned, and shuffled over to the desk visiphone and called the hangar. "I've got to get to the mainland in a hurry. Have the speedster ready in ten minutes. No, just the regular pilot, nobody else. I'll have Dalgetty with me but it's okay. He's on our side now." They went out the door. Elena cradled her tommy-gun under one arm. "You can go back to the barracks, boys," said Bancroft wearily to the men outside. "It's all been settled." A quarter hour later Bancroft's private jet was in the air. Five minutes after that he and the pilot were bound and locked in a rear compartment. Michael Tighe took the controls. "This boat has legs," he said. "Nothing can catch us between here and California." "All right." Dalgetty's tones were flat with exhaustion. "I'm going back to rest, Dad." Briefly his hand rested on the older man's shoulder. "It's good to have you back," he said. "Thank you, son," said Michael Tighe. "I can't tell you how wonderful it is to be free again." IX Dalgetty found a reclining seat and eased himself into it. One by one he began releasing the controls over himself--sensitivities, nerve blocs, glandular stimulation. Fatigue and pain mounted within him. He looked out at the stars and listened to the dark whistle of air with merely human senses. Elena Casimir came to sit beside him and he realized that his job wasn't done. He studied the strong lines of her face. She could be a hard foe but just as stubborn a friend. "What do you have in mind for Bancroft?" he asked. "Kidnapping charges for him and that whole gang," she said. "He won't wriggle out of it, I can guarantee you." Her eyes rested on him, unsure, a little frightened. "Federal prison psychiatrists have Institute training," she murmured. "You'll see that his personality is reshaped _your_ way, won't you?" "As far as possible," Simon said. "Though it doesn't matter much. Bancroft is finished as a factor to be reckoned with. There's still Bertrand Meade himself, of course. Even if Bancroft made a full confession I doubt that we could touch him. But the Institute has now learned to take precautions against extra-legal methods--and within the framework of the law we can give him cards and spades and still defeat him."