"Some man gave it to me on the street, and gave me a silver penta to bring it to you," the youth answered, then ran out before he could be questioned further.
Three of the gangsters were arrested that night, but somehow—either through his own shrewdness or through someone's blundering—Auldin escaped.
In the spaceship the strange being knew a feeling of profound disquiet. It had followed the two of those strange minds that flew the space-cruiser to its second landing place on this world. It had known when these beings met one and then another additional one of these unknowns who were not like the natives of this world. From the fact that the first two came in a spaceship—which these natives did not possess—the deduction was simple that they were all from some other and unknown—to it—planetary system.
But one of these newest minds could not be touched at all! The scanning intellect knew only that such a mentality was there because the first two (and later, a third) were so evidently holding a long conversation with someone ... and in its multiphased scanner the being could see that that someone was apparently an Estrellan native.
Why, then, could not its mind be touched?
In its scanner the two were followed as they returned to the city and to a dwelling place, and one side of their conversation was "listened to." They were clearly, the mind was forced to conclude, a menace to its carefully-laid plans.
But why could that one mind not be read?