tremble.

"Pour me a terif," he ordered.

She arose, feeling that she must certainly collapse the next instant. She forced her legs to move, step by step, to the table by his couch. There she picked up the terif decanter and tipped it to fill his glass. The dry clatter of bottle on glass betrayed her shaking hands.

"One for you, too, my dear Lyn."

She held the decanter several inches above her glass to avoid that horrible clatter, and managed to spill quite a bit on the table.

Perat held his glass up to touch hers. "A toast," he smiled, "to a mysterious and beautiful lady!"

He drank prone, she standing. She knew she would spill her drink if she tried to recross to her couch.

"So you're a Terran? Then why did you kill the Terran officer on the balcony?"

She was so relieved that she sank limply to the floor beside him.

"Why should I tell you? You wouldn't believe anything I told you now, or that you found in my mind." She smiled up at him.

"True, true. Quite a dilemma. Should I shoot you now and possibly bring the rage of a noble Scythian house down about my ears, or should I submit you to mechanical telepathic analysis?"

"I am yours, viscount," she laughed. "Shoot me. Analyze me. Whatever you wish."

She knew her gaiety was forced, and that it had struck a false note. The iron gate of doubt had clanged shut between them. From now on he would contain her mind in the mental prison of his own. The dispatch beside Gorph's desk could have no further aid from her. Anyway, the cat had undoubtedly carried off the doll.

"What a strange woman you are," he murmured. A brief shadow crossed his face. "With you, for a little while, I have been happy. But in a few metrons, of course, you will depart under close arrest for the psych center, and I'll be on my way back to the Tharn suns."

Within half a metron the office force would begin straggling into the Administration offices and her letter would be found and given to a puzzled Gorph, who would then query Perat as to whether it should not be in the incoming box for urgent matters. But what would Gorph do if his superior refused to communicate with him or anyone else for a full metron? The first messenger jet left 

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