"You knew about that too?" Ostby asked, and was surprised that he was able to speak again.
"Yes. You were right in believing that your confidants would be sympathetic to your schemes, but you forgot one thing. Men can be made to talk."
Ostby had recovered some of his self-possession by this time. "If you know, tell me what that plan was," he said.
"Certainly," Magogar replied. He rose to his feet and walked with long strides about the room. Ostby was surprised at the breath and girth of the man. At first glance he appeared squat. But that appearance was a deception caused by his great bulk. He was as tall as Ostby, but heavier of bone, and must have weighed a hundred pounds more. He walked heavily, each step landing forcefully on the heel of the foot.
"One of our ships," the Imperator said, "read your distress signal of colored rocks and picked you up. Your story was to be that you were a survivor of a ship of ours which crashed twenty years earlier. I believe you had established quite an authentic story. Your mother and father had been hurt, and died several years after the crash, you said. But not before they had taught you, their six-year-old son, to care for himself, to pass as one of the people of the world in which you found yourself, and last, how to establish contact with us. It was a good story, and its background was authentic. Tell me, why did you decide not to use it?"
Ostby shrugged. "Mainly because I made the mistake of confiding my plans to several of your prisoners. And you forced one of them to talk."
Unexpectedly Magogar no longer seemed to be paying attention to Ostby. He had turned his head and was looking to his left. It was then Ostby remembered that he had made no effort to discover to whom the other voice he had heard belonged. The thought of it now made him realize how much his faculties had been dulled by their session under the paralysis. Ordinarily, by this time he would have had every detail of the room catalogued in his mind. He hastened now to correct the omission.
The sight that met his eyes as he turned his head was one that would stay with him for all the years of his life!
A square, paneled box, supported by four sturdy legs, rested against the wall, across the room from them. In the center of the box was a large eye!
The eye had no pupil; its entire surface was one of mottled streaks of gray, pink, and black. The colors slowly flowed and changed, following a seemingly erratic pattern. It was the weirdest sight Ostby ever expected to see. And behind and through it all glowed intelligence—human, reasoning intelligence!