for me to drag you into my room by force."

He put his left arm around her and applied a tiny pressure against her
side; under which she began to move slowly toward his door.

"You admit that you're using force?" she asked. Her face was unreadable;
her mental block was at its fullest force. "That I'm being coerced?
Definitely?"

"Definitely," he agreed. "At least ten dynes of sheer brute force. Not
enough to affect a tape, but enough, I hope, to affect you. If it isn't,
I'll use more."

"Oh, ten dynes is enough. Just so it's force."

She raised her face toward his and threw both arms around his neck. His
right arm went into action with his left, and Cleander Garlock forgot
all about dynes and tapes.

After a time she disengaged one arm; reached out; opened his door. He
gathered her up and, lips still locked to lips, carried her over the
threshold.

* * *

A few jumps later they met their first really old Arpalone. This
Inspector was so old that his skin, instead of the usual bright, clear
cobalt blue, was dull and tending toward gray. The old fellow was
strangely garrulous, for a Guardian; he wanted them to pause a while and
gossip.

"Yes, I am lonesome," he admitted. "It has been a long time since I
exchanged thoughts with anyone. You see, nobody has visited this
planet--Groobe, its name is--since almost all our humanity was killed, a
few periods ago...."

"Killed? How?" Garlock asked sharply. "Not Dilipic?"

"Oh, you have seen them? I never have, myself. No, nothing nearly that
bad. Merely the Ozobes. The world itself was scarcely harmed at all.
Rehabilitation will be a simple matter, so there's no real reason why
some of those Engineers...."

"The beast!" Lola shot a tight-beam thought at her husband. "Who cares
anything about the rock and dirt of a _planet_? It's the people that
count and his are dead and he's perfectly _complaisant_ about it--just
_lonesome_!"

"Don't let it throw you, pet," James soothed. "He's an Arpalone, you
know; not a sociological anthropologist."

"... shouldn't come out here and spend a few hours once in a while, but
they don't. Too busy with their own business, they say. But while you
are physically human, mentally you are not. You're all too ... too ... I
can't put my thought exactly on it, but ... more as though you were
human fighters, if such a thing could be possible."

"We are fighters. Where we come from, most human beings are fighter