It was too late. I couldn't brake in time.

Someone yelled as I careened into the group. I glimpsed distended eyes, a startled face. Clawing, I tried to twist past the wall of bodies and slide out the door.

I might have made it, then. But suddenly a bull-voice roared, "Hold him, rack you! Hold him!"

Controller Kruze's voice.

Like lightning, hands came at me from all directions. I rocked back—dazed by their blows; pinned tight against the wall.

Another moment, and Kruze himself was towering over me.

"So!" He hissed the word, as if his rage were too great for normal speech. "I've found you, have I, finally?" And then, turning abruptly: "Back to the warping-chamber with him! I'll deal with him no place short of the Interplanetary Center itself!"

Now the hands that pinned me jerked me forward. Still panting, head still reeling, I found myself dragged out into the street.

"Controller!" I choked. "Controller Kruze! Please! Listen to me—"

"Don't worry! I'll listen! And so will a trial board, and all those fools in Psychogen!"

"No!" I was shouting now; shouting and shaking. Though whether it was out of my own feeling or from the contagion of Kruze's rage, I couldn't say. "Do whatever you want with me. I don't care. But not now! I've laid the ground; everything's set up—"

"No, rack you!"—This in a bellow.

But the others pulling at me hesitated, slowed. Desperately, I babbled on: "Kruze, you don't understand! This whole thrill-mill business—it's a Kel scheme to break through, here on Rizal! But you'll never crack it, trying to back track. You've got to make whoever's in it come to you. That's why I did the things I did. That action order, all the rest—it was just so I could make a contact, be a decoy! I said things that would scare them, raise suspicion. But if you send me back now, it's all wasted. Please, Kruze, please—"

Kruze didn't speak. But standing there, pinioned, looking into his eyes, I didn't need words to know his answer. Not with his hate pulsing out at me like a living thing.

I slumped.

Coldly, then, Kruze said, "Did any of you 

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