he other men who had never
seen Terra moved closer to Hanlon, asking many questions.

"I understand Terra has the best technicians in the universe," one of
the hoistmen said.

"That used to be the case," Hanlon answered honestly, "but now I
understand Simonides has, just as she is the wealthiest planet. Of
course, Terra being the original world, was bound to have the best the
race could breed in all lines of endeavor. But when so many people
migrated to other planets, she gradually lost many of her finest brains.
Later, those other planets offered such fabulous wages to men and women
with skills and trainings her first inhabitants lacked, that Terra was
further drained."

"That's the pity of colonization," the elder engineer sighed. "It builds
new lands at the expense of the old, taking all their strongest, most
adventurous and most imaginative. Soon the original country or continent
or planet is peopled only by the dregs."

"I don't like to think Terra has only dregs left. After all, I came from
there, you know," Hanlon grinned and they smiled back companionably.
"But I know you're right in part--at least, that will probably be the
case in time. Just as it will with the other planets as their best and
younger top-notchers go out to open up still more worlds."

In the middle of that first night on Algon something, perhaps his
sub-conscious, brought George Hanlon wide awake, his every mental
faculty clear and alert.

Click! Click! Click! ... like pieces of a jig-saw puzzle falling into
place, many of the odds and ends of apparently unrelated information and
experience fell into place in this enigma.

He remembered clearly now, an incident that had merely brought a
momentary wonder at the time. Those last minutes before the ship took
off. The leader had stared long and piercingly into his eyes and Hanlon,
wondering and puzzled as to what the man was seeking, merely stared back
dumbly. Now he remembered the flashing thought--quickly dismissed as
ridiculous--that even if he did find out where he was going, he must
never tell anyone; must forget it entirely and instantly on pain of
severe torture.

Why, that leader must have been trying to implant a hypnotic compulsion
in his mind ... and must have thought he succeeded, else Hanlon would
never have reached here alive. That was why he could never read that
knowledge from the mind of any of the people he had contacted who were
in on this game--not even that ship's of