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only the fearful legend and a few wretches who slunk through the night seeking the helpless. No, that couldn’t be right. Men were becoming more brave, not less, as their minds grew progressively integrated with the structure of the universe around them. Somewhere violence was being planned or performed. Somewhere? Perhaps here.
    Gosseyn looked at the girl. Then very softly he began to talk. He described his plight-the way he had been kicked out of the hotel, the amnesia that hid his memory, the curious delusion that he had been married to Patricia Hardie. “And then,” he finished ruefully, “she turned out to be the daughter of the president and very much alive.”
    Patricia Hardie said, “These psychologists, such as the one you’re going to-is it true that they’re all people who have won the trip to Venus in the games, and have come back to Earth to practice their profession? And that actually no one else can go in for psychiatry and the related sciences?”
    Gosseyn hadn’t thought of that. “Why, yes,” he said. “Others can train for it of course, but-“
    He was conscious of a sudden eagerness, a desire for the moment of the interview with Doctor Enright to arrive. How much he might learn from such a man! Caution came then, wonder as to why she had asked that question instead of commenting on his story as a whole. In the dark he stared at her searchingly. But her face, her expression, was nightwrapped. Her voice came again.
    “You mean, you haven’t the faintest idea who you are? How did you get to the hotel in the first place?”
    Gosseyn said soberly, “I have a memory of taking a bus from Cress Village to the airport at Nolendia. And I distinctly remember being on the plane.”
    “Did you have any meals aboard?”
    Gosseyn took his time remembering. It was an intensional world into which he strove to penetrate and as nonexistent as all such worlds. Memory never was the thing remembered, but at least with most people, when there was a memory, there normally had been a fact of similar structure. His mind held nothing that could be related to physical structure. He hadn’t eaten, definitely and unequivocally.
    The girl was speaking. “You really haven’t the faintest idea what this is all about? You have no purpose, no plan for dealing with it? You’re just moving along in a great dark?”
    Gosseyn said, “That’s right.” And waited.
    The silence was long. Too long. And the answer, when it came, did not come from the girl. Somebody jumped on him and held him down. Other figures swarmed out of the brush and grabbed at him. He was on his feet, shoving at the first man. A tight horror made him fight even after a tangle of strong hands held him beyond his capacity to escape.
    A man said, “O.K. Put ‘em in the cars and let’s get out of here.”
    As he was bundled into the back seat of a roomy sedan, Gosseyn thought, Had these people come in response to a signal from the girl? Or were they a gang?
    A violent forward jerk of the car ended temporarily his tense speculation.

IV
     
Science is nothing but good sense and sound reasoning.
    Stanislaus Leszcynski,
    King of Poland, 1763
     
    As the cars raced north along deserted streets, Gosseyn saw that there were two ahead of him and three behind. He could see their black, moving shapes through the windshield and in the rear-view mirror. Patricia Hardie was in one of them, but in spite of straining his eyes he could not make her out. Not that it mattered. He had looked over his captors and the suspicion that this was not a street gang was sharper now.
    He spoke to the man who sat at his right. No answer. He turned to the man at his left. Before Gosseyn could speak, the man said, “We are not authorized to talk to you.”
    “Authorized!” Street gangsters didn’t talk like that. Gosseyn sank back into his seat considerably relieved. The cars finally made a great curve and swooped into a tunnel. Minute by minute they raced forward on an upward slant