ommanded. _No, not with your eyes! With your
mind. Learn to use your talents._

Hyrst tried. The blurred image in his mind came clearer, and clearer
still, and it was a young man with a vicious mouth and flat uncaring
eyes. Hyrst shivered. "Who is he?"

_He works for the men who have been waiting for you, Hyrst. Bring him
this way._

"This--way?"

_Look ahead. With your mind. Can't you learn?_

Stung to sudden anger, Hyrst flung out a mental probe with a power he
hadn't known he possessed. In a place of total darkness between two
warehouses ahead, he saw a tall man lounging at his ease. Shearing
laughed.

_Yes, it's me. Just walk past me. Don't hurry._

Hyrst glanced backward, mentally at the man following him through the
shadows. He was closer now, and quite silent. His face was tight and
secret. Hyrst thought, How do I know this Shearing isn't in it with him,
taking me into a place where they can both get at me--

He went past the two warehouses and he did not turn his head but his
mind saw Shearing waiting in the darkness. Then there was a soft,
shapeless sound, and he turned and saw Shearing bending over a huddled
form.

"That was unkind of you," said Shearing, speaking aloud but not loudly.

Hyrst, still shaking, said, "But not exactly strange. I've never seen
you before. And I still don't know what this is all about."

Shearing smiled, as he knelt beside the prone, unmoving body. Even here
in the shadows, Hyrst could see him with these new eyes of the mind.
Shearing was a big man. His hair was grizzled along the sides of his
head, and his eyes were dark and very keen. He reached out one hand and
turned the head of the prone young man, and they looked at the lax,
loose face.

"He's not dead?" said Hyrst.

"Of course not. But it will be a while before he wakes."

"But who is he?"

Shearing stood up. "I never saw him before. But I know who he's working
for."

* * * * *

Hyrst flung a sudden question at Shearing, and almost without thinking
he followed it to surprise the answer in Shearing's mind. The question
was, _Who are you working for_? And the answer was a woman, a tall and
handsome woman with angry eyes, standing against a drift of stars. There
was a ship, all lonely on a dark plain, and she was pointing to it, and
somehow Hyrst knew that it was vitally important to her, and to
Shearing, and perhaps even to himself. But before he could do more than
register