back and returned to sleep. It was
the same at lunch time.

His time-sense told him that it was 1435 hours when he was roused
again. There were three men this time, husky specimens. "Come on,"
said one of them. "Never saw such a guy for pounding his ear."

Dalgetty stood up, running a hand through his hair. The red bristles
were scratchy on his palm. It was a cover-up, a substitute symbol to
bring his nervous system back under full control. The process felt as
if he were being tumbled through a huge gulf.

"Just how many of your fellows are there here?" he asked.

"Enough. Now get going!"

He caught the whisper of thought--_fifty of us guards, is it? Yeah,
fifty, I guess._

Fifty! Dalgetty felt taut as he walked out between two of them. Fifty
goons. And they were trained, he knew that. The Institute had learned
that Bertrand Meade's private army was well-drilled. Nothing obtrusive
about it--officially they were only servants and bodyguards--but they
knew how to shoot.

And he was alone in mid-ocean with them. He was alone and no one knew
where he was and anything could be done to him. He felt cold, walking
down the corridor.

There was a room beyond with benches and a desk. One of the guards
gestured to a chair at one end. "Sit," he grunted.

Dalgetty submitted. The straps went around his wrists and ankles,
holding him to the arms and legs of the heavy chair. Another buckled
about his waist. He looked down and saw that the chair was bolted to
the floor. One of the guards crossed to the desk and started up a tape
recorder.

A door opened in the far end of the room. Thomas Bancroft came in. He
was a big man, fleshy but in well-scrubbed health, his clothes
designed with quiet good taste. The head was white-maned, leonine,
with handsome florid features and sharp blue eyes. He smiled ever so
faintly and sat down behind the desk.

The woman was with him--Dalgetty looked harder at her. She was new to
him. She was medium tall, a little on the compact side, her blond hair
cut too short, no makeup on her broad Slavic features. Young, in hard
condition, moving with a firm masculine stride. With those tilted gray
eyes, that delicately curved nose and wide sullen mouth, she could
have been a beauty had she wanted to be.

_One of the modern type_, thought Dalgetty. _A flesh-and-blood
machine, trying to outmale men, frustrated and unhappy without knowing
it and all the more bitter for that._

Briefly there was sorro