"Self protection, my dear," murmured the old man, reading her face and catching some of the words. "Self preservation and security for the qualitatively higher civilization of Mars. Let men from the Blue Planet continue to settle here, and in a hundred years we will be extinct. The Universe needs our wisdom. Those primitives must die, as you would kill your pet animals in a famine, or send sons to fight in one of your mad wars."
"You can have your—I mean my legs back," growled Jake, "gimme my pegs again." His pantomime may have been understood. Senegar smiled, faintly.
"Think it over carefully. Do not let your simple emotions confuse you. I will see you again tomorrow. We need your help."
The screen faded slowly into a blur, and in a moment they were alone in the plain, blue lighted room—five human beings, terror stricken in a place of comfort.
"My head aches," grunted Jake, "that machine they used on me first left a sore spot."
"What kind of a machine was it?"
"I dunno—some kind of a thing. They kept asking me questions and wrote down the answers even before I spoke—That was funny! And sometimes when I lied to them—about some of the things I did, on shore leave and so on, they laughed. It was almost like they partly read my mind."
"Perhaps they did," remarked Doctor Smithson, who had been very quiet during all the excitement. His eyes gleamed with an almost impersonal interest. "Our psychoanalysis is very clumsy. I have always wished there were some kind of mechanical means of intuitively reaching to the under experiences of the subconscious." Suddenly he got to his feet from the low mattress bed where he had been sitting alone since the stunning proposal. He began to pace the floor, clasping and unclasping his thin arms. "I wonder—" He seemed to have forgotten their presence, "I wonder if they can stimulate brain tissue with pinealin. I'll wager half of those mental cases back underground could be cured by these men in a week! If I could only persuade them to talk to me."
"Look who's here," remarked Jake quietly, as if nothing in this strange room could surprise him.
A slight young man, with brown hair and keen blue eyes, stood in a flowing white robe marked by silver trimmings and a red diagonal stripe running from his shoulder to the floor. There was no sign of a door where he had entered.