. It sickened him,
but he steadied himself with the realization that Ciel would be one of
the first to be re-treated.

* * * * *

Several minutes later he had completed his calls. Rysland, Kronski and
the others were on the way. He kept the freezer pointed, and watched his
captives carefully. Ciel had gone over to the couch and was sitting
there, her face in her hands, weeping softly.

"I don't know how you did it," said Larkin. "I don't understand it. The
injection should have worked. It always did before."

"Well, it almost worked," said Pell. "I must admit I had quite a time
fighting off your commands. But, you see, I knew you'd gotten to Ciel
somehow when she called me up to make the date this evening. She spoke
of going out to the terrace at the Stardust Cafe. It was a little odd
that she should speak of the terrace like that, out of a clear sky--and
I wondered why it should be on her mind. Then it struck me that neither
of us had ever noticed a terrace there, and Ciel must have some special
reason for knowing about it.

"She did, of course--she'd been instructed to get me out there where
your boys could slap a freezer on me. So I started guessing with that
hunch to work on. Everything more or less fell into place after that. It
was pretty certain that they'd try to make a loyal Supremist out of me,
too, and that's when I took that little precaution I mentioned to you."

"What precaution?"

Pell smiled. "I had Marco the mentalist hypnotize me and give me a
rather special post-hypnotic command. He ordered me not to believe any
_subsequent_ post-hypnotic commands. That's why your conditioning didn't
work on me."

Larkin could find no words; he just stared.

"Think about it, Larkin," said Pell. "Think hard. Maybe you'd convinced
yourself you were doing good, but your purpose was still tyranny. And
like any tyranny it contained the means of its own destruction. It
always works out that way, Larkin--maybe it's a law, or something."

It had been a long speech for Pell, practically an oration. He was,
after all, a cop, not a philosopher. Just a guy trying to get along.
Just an ordinary citizen whose name was legion, looking at his wife now
and waiting with what patience he could find for the time when she would
be cleared of the poisonous doctrine that any one race or group or even
species was supreme.

He was thinking, too, that the trial would keep him busy as the very
devil