He struggled to get his mind functioning again. All he could think of was the way his head hurt.
Gendron had hit him from behind. That seemed to be the rule, on this planet. After denying everything about the SOS, Gendron had clubbed him when he wasn't looking. It didn't figure.
And there was that faint tickling in his skull, beside the raw pain of the bruise. He didn't understand that either.
Carter sat up against the cold wall of the dark room, and yanked at his bonds. They didn't give. He was trussed like a Christmas turkey—for what?
Suddenly, he stopped moving, and listened.
Voices.
They were speaking in the same cold, metallic tones the spaceman Sherman had used when Carter first landed.
"I don't understand it," someone said. "He walked right through the control."
"It was peculiar, all right. He came within the sphere of radiation and it didn't have any effect at all. Gendron had to club him or he would have gotten away."
"We couldn't have that," the first voice said. "We need all the men we can get for The Project."