reason to hope that you'd be able to do anything, but I did hope."

"I told them I'd kill both of us," he said fiercely. "Maybe I shall! But if I can only find the right cable, we'll both be doomed."

Suddenly, every muscle in his body went rigid and a screaming torment filled him. It lasted for part of a second. His face went gray. He wetted his lips.

"Burt!" he said thickly. "He had a psychometer under his robe. They came here, and he knew my psychogram was changed by the hafnium I'd found, so while they talked he stole the new pattern. It's taken them this long to get it ready for the Circuit. Now they're putting it in."

With a sudden, convulsive jerk, he went rigid once more. His muscles stood out in great knots. He was paralyzed, with every nerve and sinew in his body tensed to tetanic rigor. Agony filled him with an exquisite torment. It was the Disciplinary Circuit. It was those waves broadcast, focused upon him at full power. They would have found him anywhere upon the planet. And their torment was unspeakable.

There was a stricken silence in the[1] face as white as his own. She sobbed suddenly.

"Kim!" she cried desperately. "I know you can hear me! Listen! They must have me on the Circuit too, only what you gave me has thrown it off. They expect to hold us paralyzed while they cut in with torches and take us. But they mustn't! So I'm going to give you the thing you gave me. If it changed my pattern, it will change yours again, to something they can't guess at." She sobbed again. "Please, Kim! Don't give it back. Go ahead and do what you planned, whatever it is. And if you don't win out, please kill me before you give up. Please. I don't want to be conditioned to do whatever they want in their pleasure-palaces."

She took the tiny sliver of metal in her shaking fingers. She pushed aside the flesh of his hand to put it in his grip. Courageously she released it.

The agonized paralysis left Kim Rendell. But now Dona was a pitiful figure of agony.

Kim groaned. Rage filled him. His anguish and fury was so terrible that he would have destroyed the whole planet, had he been able. But he could not permit her gift, which she had given at the price of such torment, to go without reward. He must struggle on to save them both, even though now he had no hope.

He sprang to the control-board. 

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