he had come down from the ship with Fuzzy on his
shoulder. Before then, he had never considered using his curious power
to protect himself and gain an end; but since then, without even
consciously bringing it to mind, he had known that the next time would
be easier. If it ever came to a showdown with Black Doctor Tanner, a
trap from which he couldn't free himself, there was still this way. _The
Black Doctor would never know what happened_, he thought. _It would just
seem to him, suddenly, that he had been looking at things the wrong way.
No one would ever know._

But he knew, even as the thought came to mind, that this was not so.
Now, face to face with the showdown, he knew that it was no good. One
person would know what had happened: himself. On 31 Brucker, he had
convinced himself that the end justified the means; here it was
different.

For a moment, as Black Doctor Tanner stared up at him through the
horn-rimmed glasses, Dal wavered. Why should he hesitate to protect
himself? he thought angrily. This attack against him was false and
unfair, trumped up for the sole purpose of destroying his hopes and
driving him out of the Service. Why shouldn't he grasp at any means,
fair or unfair, to fight it?

But he could hear the echo of Black Doctor Arnquist's words in his mind:
_I beg of you not to use it. No matter what happens, don't use it._ Of
course, Doctor Arnquist would never know, for sure, that he had broken
faith ... but _he_ would know....

"Well," Black Doctor Tanner was saying, "speak up. I can't waste much
more time dealing with you. If you have something to say, say it."

Dal sighed. He lifted Fuzzy down and slipped him gently into his jacket
pocket. "These charges against me are not true," he said.

The Black Doctor shrugged. "Your own crewmates support them with their
statements."

"That's not the point. They're not true, and you know it as well as I
do. You've deliberately rigged them up to build a case against me."

The Black Doctor's face turned dark and his hands clenched on the papers
on the desk. "Are you suggesting that I have nothing better to do than
to rig false charges against one probationer out of seventy-five
thousand traveling the galaxy?"

"I'm suggesting that we are alone here," Dal said. "Nobody else is
listening. Just for once, right now, we can be honest. We both know
what you're trying to do to me. I'd just like to hear you admit it
once."

The Black Doctor slammed his fist