He didn't know what she was talking about and his face showed it.
"It was a clever scheme," she continued bitterly. "To win a planet, you first cut off its head—you eliminate the scientists!" She leveled her hand weapon at him. "But that's not all you've had in mind. What other schemes has the renegade earthman thought of?"
The world slipped into a haze of red and his hand darted for the pocket where he kept his heat gun—to pause, uncertainly, when he remembered it lay on the concrete fifteen feet away.
"I'm no ape!"
She laughed. "They've made you into a Pavlovian dog that drools whenever they ring a bell—and you don't even realize what they've done to you! They pull the strings and their marionette jerks and dances and does their dirty work for them!"
Stan stared at her coldly. "What are you going to do?"
"Kill you. Now."
She raised the weapon and Stan knew she was perfectly capable of doing it. A moment more and the small pellets would burrow into his body, to explode deep in the flesh. He tensed himself for a final effort to escape, knowing it would be next to useless.
"You poor fool," she said slowly. "You'll be better off dead."
Her finger tightened on the trigger.