s head and brought
consciousness back hard. His eyes opened and he was suddenly sitting
bolt upright.

"But Lamson, you were twenty days behind--" And the racing thought froze
solid in his fumbling brain. Then there was a torrent of thoughts and
memory overran them, buried them, and red desert was rushing up to
engulf him. He screamed and fell back with his hands clawing at his
eyes.

"You are in no danger. You had thought our planet lifeless; it was an
error. We live underground, John Love. That is why you did not see us,
or surface indications of our existence. A group of us speak your
language, because for eleven days we have been studying your brain and
analyzing your thought-patterns."

Johnny was bolt upright again, and now his eyes were wide and his hands
were knotted, and where there had been only light and shadow before
there was full sight now. Swiftly he was off the low cot and on his feet
looking for the speaker, arms ready to lash out and hit.

But he was alone in the small, sterile-looking chamber, and his muscles
were so much excess baggage. He tried to recover his balance: he had
forgotten about the slight gravity. He tried too hard, and his body
crashed, confused, into a wall. A--damn them, a _padded_ wall!

He regained his feet. Stood still, and raced his eyes about him. There
it was--above the cot. A small round, shuttered opening--some sort of
two-way communication system. He wondered if they could see him, too. If
they could, that part of it worked only one way.

"All right, whoever you are, so you've analyzed me!" He had to direct
his sudden anger at something, so he shouted at the shuttered aperture.
"Now what...."

There was silence for a tiny eternity, and he could feel them probing,
evaluating him, as a human scientist would study a rare species in a
cage. The feeling ignited a new anger in him, and made him want to curse
the teachings that had conditioned his lifetime of thinking to the
belief that Man _was_ more than an animal.

He'd been sold short....

"Damn you! God damn you, what are you going to do to me?"

In a corner of his mind he was aware of a gentle hissing sound, but he
did not listen. The fear and terror had to be broken. Make them tell,
_make_ them tell....

His muscles grew heavy and his face was feverish with his effort, and
his eyes stung. Something ... like roses. But there were no roses on
dead planets--

"Earthman, can you still hear?"

"I can hear," John