or and he felt his
mind reeling back from those memories. The screaming filled his mind and
body and this time he felt Horng himself blocking him, pushing him back.

But there was no need for that; the fear was not Horng's alone. Rynason
felt it too, and he retreated before its onslaught with an overpowering
need to preserve his own sanity.

When the darkness subsided Rynason became aware of himself still sitting
on the stone bench, sweat drenching his body. Horng sat before him in
the same position he had been in when they had started; it was as if
nothing had happened at all. Rynason wearily raised one hand and
motioned to Mara to break the linkage.

She switched off the telepather and gingerly removed the wires from his
head, frowning worriedly at him. But she waited for him to speak.

He grinned at her after a moment and said, "It was a bit rough in there.
We couldn't break through."

She was removing the wires from Horng, who sat unmoving, staring dully
over Rynason's shoulder at the wall behind him. "You should have seen
yourself when you were under," she said. "I wanted to break the
connection before, but I wasn't sure...."

Rynason sat forward and flexed the muscles of his shoulders and back.
They ached as though they had been tense for an hour, and his stomach
was still knotted tight.

"There's a real block there," he said. "It's like a thousand screaming
birds flapping in your face. When you get that far into his mind, you
feel it too." He sat staring down at his feet, exhausted mentally and
physically.

She sat on the bench and looked closely at him. "Anything else?"

"Yes--Horng. At the end, the second time I went in, I could feel him,
not only fighting me, but ... hating me." He looked up at her. "Can you
imagine actually feeling him, right next to you in your mind like you
were one person, hating you?"

Across from them, the huge figure of the alien slowly stood up and
looked at them for several long seconds, then turned and left the
building.

FOUR

Manning's quarters were larger than most of the prefab structures in the
new Earth town; the building was out near the end of one of the streets,
a single-storied plastic-and-metal box on a quick-concrete slab base.
Well, it was as well constructed as any of the buildings in the Edge
planetfalls, Rynason reflected as he knocked on the door. And there was
room for all of the survey team workers.

Manning himself let him in, grabbing his