hey couldn't take
from him.

_Could they?_ There was a nightmare he had had more than once, that he
remembered suddenly for the first time, with all its atmosphere of
childish strangeness. The cop psychos were after him. He was trapped
in a big room with lights and they had his head open and were chasing
him around inside his head somehow, trying to catch him, and kill him,
the him that lived in his mind.

Would he know if it was gone?

The black sharp-edged shadows of the crater walls were drawing across
the landing plain outside, bringing to a close the two weeks of
daylight, and the reflected sunlight was dimming in the room. He could
hear the rumble of a heavy ship of a cargo fleet lowering in to a
landing.

His assistant was sitting quietly on the edge of the desk as he had
been for some time, motionlessly watching the thin plume of smoke that
rose from a cigarette in his hand. He was as still as if he were
listening for some subtle sound far away. Rocket jets flashed an
orange glow through the venetian blinds and fell in stripes of orange
light across the dark young face. The brief rumble of a rocket
take-off came, transmitted through the ground and the building. Smoke
curling up from the cigarette was the only motion.

"Roy, is Pierce your real name?"

The light flashed and faded in bars of orange across the young face he
had thought was like his own, the boy he had thought had come from Pop
Yak. The quick deep rumble of sound came and faded in the walls around
them. A fleeting smile touched the face, and the dark eyes rested on
his for a moment as Roy Pierce gave the information casually as if it
were any other information, answering the question that had been
meant. "It is my mother's name. We always take our mother's names. I
am a Manoba--a Manoba of Jaracho."

IX

Looking into Bryce's face he slid to his feet slowly, ground out the
stub of his cigarette and stood before the desk.

Bryce took out his gun and held it where Pierce could see it. "Are
Manobas ever shot?" It was a heavy little gun, his maggy, its barrel
sleek and rounded, the heavy metal warm from being worn close to the
skin.

"Sometimes. It's a natural enough reaction."

It was a spaceworthy gun with adjustable velocity for driving through
padded suits and pressure suits. The velocity was set high, but it
would be inartistic to blow a large hole through a psychotherapist.
Bryce turned the dial down slowly, watching him.

"Do t