"Yes, I am Varon," Julian answered with a sort of sardonic calm he reserved for moments when death loomed very near. "I am too near _the flame_ to have dispensed with your attention. The point is, Fermin, I thought you a gentleman, while you seem to consider me a knave. I'm afraid we are both mistaken!" His generous mouth curved in a contemptuous smile, as the taunt struck home. Death was something the members of the Dekka had to learn to accept in advance. * * * * * Fermin chuckled, if anything as vulgar as a chuckle might be said to issue from those chiselled, aristocratic lips, but his face was ashen as his hand grasped the neutralized hilt of his Power-rapier. "My rank is higher than a Prince, Dekkan--I don't have to be a gentleman! My mistake lay in thinking that you might be interested in an offer I was about to make. After all, _you're a sterile Mutant now_." The savage Felirene licked its golden muzzle and gave a muffled roar as if tired of waiting, its prodigious musculature rippled under the metallic sheen of its priceless fur. Fermin stroked it caressingly. "See, even Sappho has lost patience. I regret I must subject you to the Psycho-graph--that is, unless you prefer to tell me the reason for your visit of your own accord." The mellifluous accents were a study in modulation--clear, precise--sardonic. Julian had a flashing remembrance of what a Psycho-graph could do to him. It had happened once before during his twenty-nine years of existence. He relived for an instant the burst of dazzling light, the agonizing fury in his brain, while voices that mocked and danced and probed penetrated deeper and deeper into his consciousness until they became a searing Babel in his mind. Julian had vowed it would never happen again. Suddenly he blanked his mind with swift ruthlessness. And with the same savage ruthlessness he struck. A tiny paralysis beam flashed from the ring on his left little finger and stretched out the Felirene without a sound. His right hand already had sought the Power-rapier and the flashing blade described a scintillant wheel before him. But Fermin's reflexes were quite as swift. His own blade leaped into his long, aristocratic hand, as he sought cunningly to back toward the Jadite chair.