"You say 'we' so blithely. Tell me how you managed to turn up like the proverbial bad penny."
"I outguessed 'em, finally. I was right, for once—" He explained how it had been done in a few rapid sentences.
"We saw them catch the Lancaster, and wondered why you suddenly went dead at the board after dodging them so well. Damn it, Farra—er—Charles, you've done it."
"Done what?"
"Convinced me. You aren't here to play the friend-in-need act to get more information out of me, after loading me to the gills with stuff out of a needle that makes me babble like a marmoset. So you're here for what you say."
"Why did they bring you back here?" he asked. "It seems to me they'd toss you in the locker."
"That's for later. Right now they're comparing my story with Howard's, and after that we'll both be taken to their 'Detention Planet' in some other stellar system and kept as last-ditch hostages in this war. There seem to be a lot of people who got too bright for the enemy and they're all there, too."
Farradyne swore. "The stinking bastards—!"
Norma shook her head coolly. "That's emotion, Charles. I don't know exactly what their purpose is, but I do understand that this is a conflict for eventual survival, and for the rule of an economic empire."
"But—"