oughts to reach them--or perhaps they are already dead."

"Let's not talk of death." Sonali Siddhartha's thought was soft. "We
have so many things to do."

"We will have a language session," said Juan Pedro. "_Si?_"

Matsukuo chuckled. "Good! Houston, until you've tried to learn Spanish,
Hindustani, Arabic, Japanese, and French all at once, you don't know
what a language session is. We--"

The Hawaiian's thought was suddenly broken off by a shrieking burst of
mental static.

The effect was similar to someone dropping a handful of broken glass
into an electric meat grinder right in the middle of a Bach cantata.

It was Sager, coming out of his coma.

Almost automatically, the five contacted his mind to relax him as he
awoke. They touched his mind--and were repelled!

_Stay out of my mind!_

With almost savage fury, the still half-conscious Sager hurled thoughts
of hatred and fear at the five minds who had tried to help him. They
recoiled from the burst of insane emotion.

"Leave him alone," Houston thought sharply. "He's a tough fighter."

* * * * *

At first, Sager was terrified when he learned what had happened to him.
Then the terror was mixed with a boiling, seething hatred. A hatred of
the Normals who had done this to him, and an even more terrible hatred
for Houston, the "traitor."

The very emptiness of space itself seemed to vibrate with the surging
violence of his hatred.

"I know," Houston told him, "you'd kill me if you could. But you can't,
so forget it."

Not even the power of that hatred could touch Houston, protected as he
was by the combined strength of the other four sane telepaths. He was
comparatively safe.

Sager snarled like a trapped animal. "You're all insane! Look at you!
The four of you, siding with a man who has betrayed us to the Normals!
He--"

What Sager thought of Houston couldn't be put into words, and if it
could no sane person would want to repeat the mad foulness in those
words.

"This is unbearable!" Sonali thought softly.

"That's not a mind," said Dorrine, "it's a sewer."

"I suggest," said Matsukuo, "that we do a little probing. Let's find out
what makes this thing tick."

"Stay out of my mind!" Sager screamed. "You have no right!"

"You seemed to think you had the right to probe into the helpless minds
of Normals," said Juan Pedro coldly. "We should show you how it feels."

"But they're just animals!" Sager retorted. "I am