The Commissioner burped delicately and settled back in his chair. "As a matter of fact, there is one thing I left out: the Riders aren't suited for Earth. They have difficulty in adapting themselves to live on this planet. Once they get into a human being, they are okay. But before that they are weak and have to get hothouse care. Exactly that—hothouse care."

Malloy's tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. He pulled it loose and said, "And you can break the windows of hothouses!"

The Commissioner smiled. It was unpleasant to watch.

"Nothing personal, Malloy," the Commissioner whispered almost subvocally as they lay together in the green ooze, "but we haven't known you long enough to give you our trust. The first false step will be a long one for you—exactly six feet."

Malloy tried to squint through the foggy darkness, and almost instantly gave it up. "You can't blame me for everything, Commissioner. I told you I wasn't convinced that some of the Riders in there won't precog our plans to save themselves."

"All the ones we are going to destroy are the unhooked-up ones. They can't send anything any more than one unattached telephone could. They aren't really very good with their psi powers. It's strictly an emergency talent, like our sudden spurts of adrenalin."

He gave an unsatisfied grunt and bellied forward.

Up ahead of Malloy, the Commissioner and an unstable stable of Jockeys who had been coming into town for weeks lay the secret hatchery of unhosted Rider viruses. They could only multiply beyond a certain self-maintaining balance inside the human body, and had to be grown in cultures on Earth, outside the healthy climate of a null-gravity, radiated vacuum in space.

It was the Commissioner's plan to destroy all the virus cultures, so that in eighteen years or so there would come along a Rider-free generation to outnumber the minor supermen still infected by the Riders.

Malloy had a lot of doubts about the plan, but he was willing to go along for his own reasons.

During the past few weeks of indoctrination and commando training, Malloy had had time to think. It hadn't taken nearly that long to figure out the Commissioner.

The Commissioner was simply a man who had to have power, and he couldn't stand for a whole human race to 

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