“That’s an enemy ship we’ve tracked down,” the Captain was saying. “We’d like to get some information from them. Would you read their minds for us?”

“Yes, sir.” The Telepath’s voice showed his instant misery, but he knew better than to protest. He left the screen and sank into a chair. Slowly his ears folded into tight knots, his pupils contracted, and his ratlike tail went limp as flannel.

The world of the eleventh sense pushed in on him.

He caught the Captain’s thought: “…sloppy civilian get of a sthondat…” and frantically tuned it out. He hated the Captain’s mind. He found other minds aboard ship, isolated and blanked them out one by one. Now there were none left. There was only unconsciousness and chaos. Chaos was not empty. Something was thinking strange and disturbing thoughts.

The Telepath forced himself to listen.

Steve Weaver floated bonelessly near a wall of the radio room. He was blond, blue-eyed, and big, and he could often be seen as he was now, relaxed but completely motionless, as if there were some very good reason why he shouldn’t even blink. A streamer of smoke drifted from his left hand and crossed the room to bury itself in the air vent.

“That’s that,” Ann Harrison said wearily. She flicked four switches in the bank of radio controls. At each click a small light went out.

“You can’t get them?”

“Right. I’ll bet they don’t even have a radio.” Ann released her chair net and stretched out into a fivepointed star. “I’ve left the receiver on, with the volume up, in case they try to get us later. Man, that feels good!” Abruptly she curled into a tight ball. She had been crouched at the communications bank for more than an hour. Ann might have been Steve’s twin; she was almost as tall as he was, had the same color hair and eyes, and the flat muscles of conscientious exercise showed beneath her blue falling jumper as she flexed.