"Keep your hands down," the man on his right said out of the shadows. "It's more than programming, Argerd, No hypnotic block could stand up to penton that way."

The one on his left, slab-faced and quick-eyed, a big man, answered in a weak sibilant voice: "You can't say that—what do we know about their tricks? Anyhow, how can you estimate his resistance—what is he? You, Falk, where is this place you came from, Zove's House?"

"East. I left…" The number would not come to mind. "Fourteen days ago, I think."

How did they know the name of his House, his name?

He was getting his wits back now, and did not wonder very long. He had hunted deer with Metock using hypodermic darts, which could make even a scratch-wound a kill. The dart that had felled him, or a later injection when he was helpless, had been some drug which must relax both the learned control and the primitive unconscious block of the telepathic centers of the brain, leaving him open to para-verbal questioning. They had ransacked his mind. At the idea, his feeling of coldness and sickness increased, complicated by helpless outrage. Why this violation? Why did they assume he would lie to them before they even spoke to him?

"Did you think I was a Shing?" he asked.

The face of the man on his right, lean, long-haired, bearded, sprang suddenly into the lamplight, the Lips drawn back, and his open hand struck Falk across the mouth, jolting his head back and blinding him a moment with the shock. His ears rang; he tasted blood. There was a second blow and a third. The man kept hissing many times over. "You do not say that name, don't say it, you do not say it, you don't say it—"

Falk struggled helplessly to defend himself, to get free. The man on his left spoke sharply. Then there was silence for some while.