V
The panels to two adjacent chambers were open.
"Guess they don't trust us together," Cragin said. The dark blue plastiglass of his Patrol tunic dully reflected the subdued half-light that emanated into the tube-like corridor from beyond the panels. Like a nightmare, he kept telling himself, like a nightmare. Impossible impossible impossible....
Her face was the color of white sand, and it was the only indication that she understood.
"Please try, Cragin."
"Sure."
"You want to try...."
"It's a cinch I can't arrest 'em, princess. And I know you want out. You want to sink 'em all and so do I. If there's any way, believe me—"
Cragin knew he would not forget the look etched in the thin white lines of her face as she was led into the testing place; there was something in it that he had never seen before in the face of an Earthman. Not an expression caused purely by reflex in time of danger or pain; not one carefully controlled after finding an unpleasant solution to an inescapable problem. Neither of those. But what others....