esting enough under different
circumstances. Gefty broke in as soon as he could.

"Look," he said quietly, "I'm trying to help you. I ..."

Maulbow interrupted him in turn, not at all quietly. Gefty listened a
moment longer, then shrugged. So Maulbow didn't like him. He couldn't
say honestly that he'd ever liked Maulbow much, and what he was hearing
made him like Maulbow considerably less. But he would keep the man from
the future alive if he could.

He positioned the autosurgeon behind the head of the bed to allow the
device to begin its analysis, stood back at its controls where he could
both follow the progress it made and watch Maulbow without exciting him
further by remaining within his range of vision. After a moment, the
surgeon shut off the first-aid instruments and made unobtrusive use of a
heavy tranquilizing drug. Then it waited.

Maulbow should have lapsed into passive somnolence thirty seconds
afterwards. But the drug seemed to produce no more effect on him
mentally than the preceding anesthetic. He raged and screeched on. Gefty
watched him uneasily, knowing now that he was looking at insanity. There
was nothing more he could do at the moment--the autosurgeon's decisions
were safer than any nonprofessional's guesswork. And the surgeon
continued to wait.

Then, abruptly, Maulbow died. The taut body slumped against the bed and
the contorted features relaxed. The eyes remained half open; and when
Gefty came around to the side of the bed, they still seemed to be
looking up at him, but they no longer moved. A thin trickle of blood
started from the side of the slack mouth and stopped again.

* * *

The control compartment was still darkened and without power when Gefty
returned to it. He told Kerim briefly what had happened, added, "I'm not
at all sure now he was even human. I'd rather believe he wasn't."

"Why that, Gefty?" She was studying his expression soberly.

Gefty hesitated, said, "I thought at first he was furious because we'd
upset his plans. But they weren't his plans ... they were the
janandra's. He wasn't exactly its servant. I suppose you'd have to say
he was something like a pet animal."

Kerim said incredulously, "But that isn't possible! Think of how
intelligently Mr. Maulbow ..."

"He was following instructions," Gefty said. "The janandra let him know
whatever it wanted done. He was following instructions again when he
tried to kill me after I'd got away from the