thick. He stumbled over occasional words, but always recovered.

After a long time, Samson said, "The word will be spread. My government will want to know about your needs and your history, so that we can receive you properly. Will you show me through your ship, and tell me something about yourselves?" The view turned toward the doorway, approached it and went through into a long corridor.

Midge closed the sending circuit between herself and Samson. "Charlie, are you all right?" she whispered. If he was acting, she told herself miserably, it was a magnificent performance. Under the fuzziness of his speech was something else ... an awe, a quiet joy.

"All right, Midge," said Samson's voice quietly, naturally. "Don't worry."

A long succession of rooms: control chamber, power plant, a garden with plants unlike any that Midge had seen before, star charts, transparent tanks full of murky fluid ... Samson's hand, and a narrow strip of something being put into it. Patterns of dots on the strip. Samson's voice: "What does it mean?" Then more corridors, more rooms. Finally Samson's voice again, weak and hollow. "Feeling rocky, Midge. Coming out."

It was Harlow's voice asking, "How is he now?" The "now" was an irony, since even at second-order speeds, his voice had taken fourteen minutes to reach them, and he would not hear the answer for another fourteen.

Samson, in orange pajamas, very pale, said, "Ready to talk, Papa." He looked at the ceiling. "Don't think I need the hypno. I can remember most of it. Fuzzy—a dreamlike quality to it—but I think it's almost all there."

"I've already had you under hypno," said Midge quietly. "As soon as I got you inside."

Samson turned his head to look at her. "So? What for?"

"I wanted to find out if you'd had your soul saved."

Samson grinned weakly. "Is it likely? Harlow—get this. The Kassids aren't invaders in the usual meaning of the term. They haven't got any mind-rays or insidious hypnotic powers, and they aren't interested in taking over anybody's property. That's the first thing. Second, they're not a race and they're not an empire. I saw at least twenty different life-forms aboard their ship, and I learned enough to know that they were all Kassids. That would seem to account for that business in the legends about their being able to change forms. The 

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