Falken raised the blaster, forgotten in his hand. Miner Hilton, who had been Paul Avery, looked at it and then at Falken's face, a shield of dark iron over cold, terrible flame.
He shivered, but he didn't move, nor speak.
"You know a way to fight that thing," said Falken, very softly, in his throat. "I want to kill you. But you know a way."
"I—I don't know. I can't...." Golden tortured eyes went to Sheila Moore and stayed there, with a dreadful lost intensity.
Falken's white teeth showed. "You want to tell, Miner Hilton. You want to help us, don't you? Because of Sheila!"
Young Hilton's face flamed red, and then went white. Sheila cried sharply,
"Eric, don't! Can't you see he's suffering?"
But Falken remembered Kitty, and the babies who were born and died on freezing rock, without sun or shelter. He said,
"She'd never have you, Hilton. And I'll tell you this. Perhaps I can't force out of you what you know. But if I can't, I swear to God I'll kill you with my own hands."
He threw back his head and laughed suddenly. "Gantry Hilton's son—in love with an Unregenerate!"