I LISTENED, NUMBED, somewhat perhaps as though hypnotized. In this Radak ruler’s judgment, Blaine the banker, Mack the derelict, Shorty, myself and Vivian—the sum total of the myriad things that were stacked in our brains—were what now must go into his. Certainly a varied, representative strata of Earth-knowledge.
“You want to learn everything we know?” Blaine suddenly said. “How can you do that? Suppose we don’t want to teach you? And why do you want to learn it? What are your plans? What I want to know is—do you realize who and what I am, on Earth?”
Of us all, undoubtedly the dominating nature of J. Walter Blaine made him best able to resist that weird mental force that was engulfing us. Yet his manner, his querulous, arrogant questions under these strange, unearthly conditions here on
