Bilford walked on into the office. "You wanted to see Captain Gisser, Roysland?" Roysland nodded his massive head. "Bring him in; I want to get the whole picture on this business." Bilford nodded and turned back toward the door. His eyes looked sad and pitying, and he ran a lean, nervous hand through his bushy gray hair as he called out: "All right, Captain Gisser—come in here." As Captain Gisser strolled in from the outer office, Roysland watched him carefully. Gisser was tall and graceful, in the near-perfect physical trim of a fighting man. He moved with military precision, but without the stiff rigidity of formal marching. He took one step through the door—and stopped. Roysland narrowed his gray eyes and looked at the captain's face. The expression on it was definitely not the sleepy, glazed look of the hypnotic catatonic. After a moment, Roysland decided it could be described as a sort of apathetic introspection. "How long will he stand like that?" he asked Bilford. Bilford spread his hands. "Until someone tells him to move or he collapses from lack of food or sheer fatigue." "Have him sit down over there." Roysland pointed. "No use making the poor guy stand up." "Go over to that chair and sit down," Bilford told the captain. Gisser did as he was told. Bilford pulled up another chair and sat down. "Why'd you want to see him?" he asked. "I mean, do you have anything in mind?" Roysland shook his head. "Nothing specific; I'm just trying to see every angle of this. The Enlissa have a new weapon; we've got to do something to counteract it. So far, we don't know anything about it except that it bollixes up the brain—and that isn't very useful. It's like trying to deduce the existence of a pistol from the holes in the target." "Worse," Bilford said gloomily; "we don't even have a hole to analyze." "Yes, we do. A psychic hole." Roysland gestured toward the silent captain. "Are they all like that?" "Essentially, yes," Bilford said. "Can he hear what I'm saying? I mean, can he understand me?"
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