"She, and others," said Shearing. "Listen. We must go soon. We're to be picked up, secretly. Will you trust us—or would you rather trust yourself to those who are hunting you?"
Hyrst was silent. Shearing said, "Well?"
"I'll go with you," said Hyrst.
They went out into the cold darkness, and Hyrst heard Shearing say in his mind, "I wouldn't try to run—"
But it wasn't Shearing speaking in his mind now, it was a third man.
"I wouldn't try to run—"
Frantically startled, Hyrst threw out his mental vision and saw the men who stood around them in the darkness, four men, three of them holding the wicked little weapons called bee-guns in their hands. The fourth man came closer, a dark slender man with a face like a fox, high-boned, narrow-eyed, smiling. It came to Hyrst that the three with weapons were only ordinary men, and that it was this fourth man whose mind had spoken.
He was speaking aloud now. "I want you alive, believe me—but there are endless gradations between alive and dead. My men are very accurate."
Shearing's face was suddenly drawn and exhausted. "Don't try anything," he warned Hyrst wearily. "He means it."
The dark man shook his head at Shearing. "This wasn't nice of you. You knew we had a particular interest in Mr. Hyrst." He turned to Hyrst and smiled. His teeth were small and very neat and white. "Did you know that Shearing has been keeping a shield over your mind as well as his? A little too large a task for him. When you jarred his mind open for an instant, it was all we needed to lead us here."