"Wait, Eric." Sheila Moore put a hand on his arm to stop him, and went forward. She took Miner Hilton by the shoulders and looked up at him, and said,
"It isn't so impossible, Miner Hilton. Not if what I think is true."
Falken stared at her in stunned amazement, beyond speech or movement. Then his heart was torn with sudden pain, and he knew, with the clarity of utter truth, that he loved Sheila Moore.
She said to Miner Hilton, "Why did you do this? And how?"
Young Hilton's voice was flat and strained. He made a move as though to take her hands from his shoulders, but he didn't. He stared across her red-gold head, at Falken.
"Something had to be done to stamp out the Unregenerates. They're a barrier to complete peace, a constant trouble. Eric Falken is their god, as—as Sheila said. If we could trap him, the rest would be easy. We could cure his people.
"My father couldn't do it himself. He's old, and too well-known. He sent me, because mine is the only other brain that could stand what I had to do. My father has trained me well.
"To get me by the psycho-search, my father gave me a temporary brain pattern. After I was accepted as a refugee, I established mental contact with him...."
"Mental contact," breathed Falken. "That was it. That's why you were always so tired, why I couldn't shake pursuit."
"Go on," said Sheila, with a queer gentleness.