Kruze's voice.

The back of my neck prickled. Carefully, I drew my hand away from the paragun, then turned.

The controller of all FedGov Security's far-flung interplanetary operations stood staring down at me out of heavy-lidded eyes that in this moment sparked cold malice. One slab-like hand gripped a paragun, twin to the one I'd tried to snatch.

"So, Traynor...."

"So?" I flung the word back at him with a belligerence to match his gloating. A sudden, swift recklessness surged through me. "I've got some things to say to you, Controller. That's why I came here."

The heavy-lidded eyes didn't even flicker. The thick body stood granite-like, immobile. "What things?"

"Things about the Kel." I got up from the floor; stepped towards him. Sheer urgency drained the anger from me. "Kruze, they're infiltrating. Tonight—right now, maybe—"

"Shall we shut him up, chief? You want us to stop him?"

It was the heavy-set guard, on his feet again now. Beside him, his thinner companion threw me a look of smoldering hate. A sullen-looking Gaylord was dusting himself off behind them.

I said desperately, "Kruze, you've got to listen! I found that girl—the one who called about the thrill-mills on the voco. She's been a Kel prisoner ever since Bejak II. She knows their plan, the details—"

"And just how does she know it?"

"What—?"

"I said, how does she know it?" Never had the controller's heavy-lidded eyes seemed colder, the bulky body less yielding. And then, as I groped: "To the best of my knowledge, no human has ever communicated with the Kel. We don't even know what they look like. Consequently, I find it difficult to accept the concept of alien infiltration as a practical threat, in the face of our warning net and proved defensive measures."

"But they're shape-changers!" Involuntarily, my hands moved in frantic, pleading gestures. "They can simulate men. It's only the conditioned consistency of human behavior that's baffled them—"

Kruze's great head moved. "Guards, I'm tired of listening to this nonsense."

"Yes, Controller."—This from the thin man. As one, he 

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