"Don't try to cover up your own slip. You talk slow, but you get a little ahead of yourself. This outfit is supposed to be cached away with such cleverness that an Earth-mind wouldn't be up to locating it. Only we did. We're not as dumb as we look, even to you. Your record would get a little smeared up if you did away with a couple of potential servants. The wheels might not like that. Tell me I'm wrong."
"You think quickly. You dare to offer a proposition to an emissary of the Owners."
"It's no proposition, it's a statement of fact."
Cragin could feel the sweat behind his ears start to roll down his neck, and his clothes were beginning to stick to his back again. But he had been in jams before. When you couldn't shoot, you had to talk. About anything that came into your head, but you had to talk.
"Servants of the second rank do not err, Earthman. Upon reexamining my logic, I find it sound. Yet in the process of carrying it to its ultimate, I conclude that inasmuch as the mathematical possibility exists that you are capable of being tested successfully for a servant of the menial ranks, a final decision warrants the deferment of your destruction pending administration of such examination."
"You mean we live."
"Failure to qualify as a servant will mean your destruction."
There was near hysteria in Lin Griffin's voice as it broke the spell Cragin's argument had created.
"Cragin, you can't realize what you're doing! You're selling us into sl—"
"Service, Lin Griffin," he cut her off. He knew he was bruising her arm with the quick pressure of his fingers. "Service to the Owners."