"And if there is trouble?" Hume challenged him. "A report of an alien attack will bring in the Patrol quickly enough."
"You forget Rovald," Wass corrected. "The chance that one of your civs can activate and transmit from the spacer is remote, and Rovald will see that it is impossible. You have picked up Brodie, I see."
"Yes."
"No!" What had possessed him at that moment to contradict? He had realized the folly of his outburst the moment Wass had looked at him.
"This becomes more interesting," the Veep had remarked with that deceptive gentleness. "You are Rynch Brodie, castaway from the Largo Drift, are you not? I trust that Out-Hunter Hume has made plain to you our concern with your welfare, Gentlehomo Brodie."
"I'm not Brodie." Having taken the leap into the dangerous truth he was stubborn enough to continue swimming.
"I find this enlightening indeed. If you are not Brodie—then who are you?"
That had been it. At that moment he couldn't have told Wass who he was, explain that his patchwork of memories had gaping holes.
"And you, Out-Hunter," Wass' reptilian regard had moved again to Hume, "perhaps you have an adequate explanation for this discovery."
"None of his doing," he burst out, "I remembered—"