"When I found the police had picked him up," she said, "I took an espine pill and became en rapport with him."
She pressed her slender fingers against her temples. "I'm tired ... espine isn't as bad as neoin, of course, but it has a strong reaction. They found out some things from George that I'd never been able to find out.
"This instrument reaches deeper into the subconscious than anything ever used before. Even so, everything was vague. But George had been on Pluto. Somehow he'd followed the neoin trail there; how, I don't know.
"But on Pluto, they did something to him. They took his mind and made him like a new-born child. His brain was perfectly blank. I've been teaching him as I'd teach an infant—but he was so slow learning."
"Pluto—" Barnard stared. "Then neoin comes from Pluto. Lansfer knows this—"
He looked at the girl and damned his conscience again. There was a first aid box set into the wall, and he found a bottle of brandy in it. A small black bottle was there. He noted the label—Espine, another outlawed drug the authorities tolerated for emergency purposes. Not habit-forming, but continued use of it would soften the brain and wreck the nerve centers.
He slammed the cabinet door on the black bottle. She had reason to be tired.
He made her drink the brandy. She spoke softly, between sips. "When I heard that, I determined to go to Pluto. If something there could take my brother's intelligence away, we might be able to reverse the process."
"Or lose your own," Barnard murmured.
"When Quong Kee told me about the—George, it changed all that, of course. There was no need to go to Pluto."