But his insanity was stronger than they suspected. The barriers he built were harder, more opaque, and more impenetrable than any they had ever seen. The five pushed on, anyway, but their advance slowed tremendously.

Then, mentally, there was a sudden silence.

_Sager?_ they thought.

No answer.

"That"s finished it," said Houston. "He"s retreated so far behind those mental barriers that he"s cut himself off completely."

"He"s not dead, is he?" Dorrine asked.

"Dead?" said Juan Pedro. "Not in the sense you mean. But I think he is catatonic now; he has lost all touch with the outside. He is as though he were still drugged; he is physically helpless, and mentally blanked out."

"There"s one difference," Matsukuo said a.n.a.lytically. "And that is that, although he has cut himself off from us and from the rest of the universe, he is still conscious in some little, walled-in compartment of his mind. He has no one there but himself--and that, I think, is d.a.m.ned poor company."

They waited then. When Pederson awoke, they were ready for him. His hatred took a slightly different form from Sager"s, but the effect was the same.

And so were the results when the five bore down on him.

Again they waited. La.s.ser was next.

At first, it looked as though La.s.ser would go the way of Sager and Pederson, ending up as a hopelessly insane catatonic. Like his cohorts before him, La.s.ser retreated under the full pressure of the thought-probes of the five, building stronger and stronger walls.

But, quite suddenly, all his defenses crumbled. The mental barriers went down, shattered and dissolving. La.s.ser"s whole mind lay bare. Instead of fighting and hating, La.s.ser was begging, pleading for help.

La.s.ser was not basically insane. His mind was twisted and warped, but beneath the outer sh.e.l.l was a personality that had enough internal strength to be able to admit that it was wrong and ask for help instead of retreating into oblivion.

"This one--I think we can do something with," Matsukuo"s thought whispered.

Eight bodies, uncomfortable and pain-wracked, floated in s.p.a.ce, chained to tiny asteroids that drifted slowly in their orbits under the constant pull of the sun. Two of them contained minds that were locked irrevocably within prisons of their own building, sealed off forever from external stimuli, but their suffering was the greater for all that.

The other six, chained though their limbs might be, had minds that were free--free, even, of any but the most necessary of internal limitations.

Eight bodies, chained to eight lumps of pitted rock, spun endlessly in endless s.p.a.ce.

And then the ship came.

The flare of its atomic rocket could be seen for over an hour before it reached the Penal Cl.u.s.ter. The six eyed it speculatively. Although only two of them were facing the proper direction to see it with their physical eyes, the impressions of those two were easily transmitted to the other four.

"Another load of captives," whispered Juan Pedro de Cadiz. "How many this time, I wonder?"

"How long have we been here?" asked Houston, not expecting any answer.

"Who knows?" It was La.s.ser. "What we need out here is a clock to tell us when we"ll die."

"Our oxygen tanks are our clocks," said Sonali. "And they"ll notify us when the time comes."

"I do believe you morbid-minded people are developing a sense of humor,"

said Matsukuo, "but I"m not sure I care for the style too much."

The flare of the rocket grew brighter as the decelerating ship approached the small cl.u.s.ter of rocks. At last the ship itself took form, shining in the eternal blaze of the sun. When the whiteness of the rocket blaze died suddenly, the ship was only a few dozen yards from Houston"s own asteroid.

And then a mental voice came into the minds of the six prisoners.

"How do you feel, Controllers?"

Only Houston recognized that thought-pattern, but his recognition was transmitted instantly to the others.

"_Reinhardt!_"

Hermann Reinhardt, Division Chief of the Psychodeviant Police, the one man most hated and feared by Controllers, was himself a telepath!

"Naturally," said Reinhardt. "Someone had to take control of the situation. I was the only one who was in a position to do it."

His thoughts were neither hard nor cold; it was almost as if he were one of them--except for one thing. Only the words of his thoughts came through; there were none of the fringe thoughts that the six were used to in each other.

"That"s true," thought Reinhardt. "You see, we have been at this a good deal longer than you." Then he directed his thoughts at members of the crew of the s.p.a.ceship, but they could still be heard by the six prisoners. "All right, men, get those people off those rocks. We have to make room for another batch."

The airlock in the side of the ship opened, and a dozen s.p.a.cesuited men leaped out. The propulsion units in their hands guided them toward the prison asteroids.

"Give them all anaesthetic except Sager and Pederson," Reinhardt ordered. "They won"t need it." Then, with a note of apology, "I"m sorry we"ll have to anaesthetize you, but you"ve been in one position so long that moving you will be rather painful. We have to get you to a hospital quickly."

The minds of the six prisoners were frantically pounding questions at the PD chief, but he gave them no answer. "No; wait until you"re better."

The s.p.a.cesuited rescuers went to the "back" of each asteroid and injected sleep-gas into the oxygen line that ran from the tank to the s.p.a.cesuit of the prisoner.

Houston could smell the sweetish, pungent odor in his helmet. Just before he blacked out, he hurled one last accusing thought at Reinhardt.

"_You"re_ the one who"s been framing Controllers!"

"Naturally, Houston," came the answer. "How else could I get you out here?"

Houston woke up in a hospital bed. He was weak and hungry, but he felt no pain. As he came up from unconsciousness, he felt a fully awake mind guiding him out of the darkness.

It was Reinhardt.

"You"re a tough man, Houston," he said mentally. "The others won"t wake up for a while yet."

He was sitting on a chair next to the bed, holding a smouldering cigarette in one hand. He looked strange, somehow, and it took Houston a moment to realize that there was a smile on that broad, normally expressionless face.

Houston focussed his eyes on the man"s face. "I want an explanation, Reinhardt," he said aloud. "And it better be a d.a.m.ned good one."