move. They had probably
been staring at him in relays every second since picking up his scout
ship in the neighboring star system.

That is, Barnsley thought, it must have been the next system whose
fourth planet he had been photo-mapping for the Terran Colonial Service.
He hoped he had not been wrong about that.

_Doesn't matter_, he consoled himself, _as long as the Service can trace
me. These slobs certainly aren't friendly._

He reconsidered the scanty evidence of previous contact in this volume
of space, light-years from Terra's nearest colony. Two exploratory ships
had disappeared. There had been a garbled, fragmentary message picked up
by the recorders of the colony's satellite beacon, which some experts
interpreted as a hasty warning. As far as he knew, Barnsley was the only
Terran to reach this planet alive.

To judge from his peculiar imprisonment, his captors had recovered from
their initial dismay at encountering another intelligent race--at least
to the extent of desiring a specimen for study. In Barnsley's opinion,
that put him more or less ahead of the game.

"They're gonna learn a lot!" he muttered, grinning vindictively.

He finished worrying the cover off the black box. Inside was a plastic
sphere of water and several varieties of food his captors probably
considered edible. The latter ranged from a leafy stalk bearing a number
of small pods to a crumbling mass resembling moldy cheese. Barnsley
hesitated.

"I haven't had the guts to try this one yet," he reminded himself,
picking out what looked like a cluster of long, white roots.

The roots squirmed feebly in his grasp. Barnsley returned them to the
box instantly.

Having selected, instead, a fruit that could have been a purple
cucumber, he put it with the water container into a pocket of his
coverall and closed the box.

_Maybe they won't remember that I took the same thing once before_, he
thought. _Oh, hell, of course they will! But why be too consistent?_

He opened one of the doors and walked along a bluish passage that
twisted to the left, chewing on the purple fruit as he went. It was
tougher than it looked and nearly tasteless. At the next junction, he
unscrewed the cap of the water sphere, drained it slowly, and flipped
the empty container at one of the oval panels. A dim shadow blurred out
of sight, as if someone had stepped hastily backward.

"Why not?" growled Barnsley. "It's time they were shaken up a little!"