“So that’s our big, bad man,” a coarse voice above him observed [p143] caustically. “He doesn’t look so tough now, does he?”
“It might have been better to kill him right away,” a second, less confident voice said. “It’s supposed to be impossible to hold him.”
“Don’t be stupid. We just do what we’re told. We’ll hold him.”
“What do you think they’ll do with him?”
“Execute him, I suppose,” the harsh voice said matter-of-factly. “They’re probably just curious to see what he looks like first. They’ll be disappointed.”
Zarwell opened his eyes a slit to observe his surroundings.
It was a mistake. “He’s out of it,” the first speaker said, and Zarwell allowed his eyes to open fully.
The voice, he saw, belonged to the big man who had bruised him against the locker at the spaceport. Irrelevantly he wondered how he knew now that it had been a spaceport.
His captor’s broad face jeered down at Zarwell. “Have a good sleep?” he asked with mock solicitude. Zarwell did not deign to acknowledge that he heard.
The big man turned. “You can tell the Chief he’s awake,” he said. Zarwell followed his gaze to where a younger man, with a blond lock of hair on his forehead, stood behind him. The youth nodded and went out, while the other pulled a chair up to the side of Zarwell’s cot.