t the facts lost
nothing in the simple dramatic way he would relate them.

But certainly the black was as fearful of his master during that period
in the cell as he was of what he saw acted out on the screen.

We can picture him telling of the ordeal, his big eyes rolling and his
deep rich voice trembling with the memories stamped forever in his
brain; and picture too the men who, at one time or another, listened to
him, fascinated, their mouths agape and a tickling down the length of
their spines. It was probably only Friday's genius as a narrator which
later caused some of his listeners to swear that new lines were grooved
in Carse's face and a few flaxen hairs silvered by the minutes he spent
watching Eliot Leithgow strapped down on that operating table, close to
the beautiful surgeon fingers of Dr. Ku Sui.

But whether or not that period of torture really pierced through his
iron emotional guard and set its mark on him permanently by aging him,
it is impossible to say. However, there were deep things in Hawk Carse,
and the deepest among them were the ties binding him to his friends;
there was also that certain cold vanity; and considering these it is
probable that he came very close indeed to the brink of some frightening
emotional abyss, before which he had few shreds of mind and
body-discipline left....

* * * * *

He reentered the cell like a ghost; he stood very still, his hands
slowly clenching and unclenching behind his back, and his pale face
inclined low, so that the chin rested on his chest. So he stood for some
minutes, Friday not daring to disturb him, until the single door that
gave entrance clicked in its lock and opened again. At this he raised
his head. Five men came in, all coolies, three of whom had ray-guns
which they kept scrupulously on the white man and black while the other
two rigged up an apparatus well up on one of the cell walls. They
remained wholly unaffected the several times their dull eyes met those
of the Hawk. Perhaps, being mechanicalized humans, practically robots,
they got no reaction from the icy gray eyes in his strained white face.

The device they attached was some two square feet of faintly gleaming
screen, rimmed by metal and with little behind it other than two small
enclosed tubes, a cuplike projector with wires looping several terminals
on its exterior, and a length of black, rubberized cable, which last was
passed through on