She gripped his shoulders. The touch did things to Venard's nervous system. Forgotten things. "But it's useless," she said, "for you to try such a scheme here, Karl. The Martians, for all their military might, are just insignificant pawns."
Venard exclaimed, "Martians—just pawns! You haven't been around lately. Those babies have taken over everything, and they intend to keep it. This other menace ... don't be so mysteriously evasive, Vale. Who, or what, is this it? Don't tell me the Martie desert tribes' rumors about an alien god controlling S.S.C. is authentic!"
She tried to answer, but she swayed, shut her eyes, and clenched small white fists. Her body twitched violently, blood drained from her face. He shot an arm about her waist, but she was stiff, cold and unyielding. And this was too abnormal. Her head fell back over his arm. Then she opened her eyes slowly. They were glazing, dulling, as though being seared by a minute but horrific flame. Her lips moved stiffly. "It—back—jo—jo—"
He was holding her that way when the door slid noislessly open and they filed through.
He hated them thoroughly—the weird polyglot of selfish recluses, without purposes here in their rotten, sequestered borough. Greatest minds of the System withholding their marvels of science. The Martie surgeon, the Mercurian medic, the Ganymedian and Saturnian, slippery, metallic and spidery. And weirdest of all, the Jovian liquescent brain in its square, black cubicle body ... a faceless, eyeless, limbless parasite. An incredibly specialized thinking formulae sentiently bubbling in the arms of the Martian medic.
On its own world, there were special mechanisms designed to carry these Jovians around. But here in S.S.C. it evidently utilized personnel for transportation. No Jovian had ever visited another world in the System, and vice versa. They were neutrals with a strict mutual code of hands off with all other planets.
They were the sociopaths of the System. They had never entered the Federation, even on paper. Isolationists who—
Then he knew. Without that clue from poor Vale, he might never have found out the truth until it was too late. If it wasn't already much too late.