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“I represent that nonentity called the government, Captain.”

“A nonentity wouldn’t make you what you are, Dawn.”

“My name, Captain–” She drew a long breath. “My name is Dawn Farren. The rest of my family is dying out as the Von Rausches are. Unlimited power has a way of poisoning the human mind. If wealth is our only ethical goal, what do we really have when we possess it all? Madness. Both cartels are shams, Captain Hunter, just as your frontier wars are shams.

“Yes, you may as well know that, too. Neither fleet has actually fought the other for a good many years. The planets you blast are hulks already long dead. It’s all a sham, but we have to keep it alive. We have to make it seem real–until we’re sure we’ve found something better and more workable for all of us.”

The tension in Ann Saymer’s muscles started to relax. Very slowly her body began to slump, in the secondary stage of paralysis.

“What about her?” Hunter asked. “She can still make another Exorciser–“

“The dream of enslaving mankind is always insanity. We’ll put her in a public clinic, of course. We may have to use her own machine once more to erase the memory of its structure from her mind. After that the patent drawings will be destroyed. It’s not a superficial cure for maladjustment that we’re after, Captain Hunter, but the cause. All of Ann’s research was up a blind alley–a brilliant waste.”

Suddenly Dawn screamed a warning and leveled her blaster at Eric Young. Hunter sprang back as Dawn fired. But her timing was a second too late. In a last, blazing agony of life-before-death Young had regained consciousness long enough to hurl the scalpel at Hunter’s back. Ebbing strength distorted his aim. The blade plunged into Ann’s heart as she slumped against the wall.

After a long pause, Max Hunter moved toward Dawn and took her arm. He clenched his jaw tight and drew her quickly into the hall. “I want out, Dawn. There’s no healing here. I won’t feel free again until I can look up at the stars.”

“The stars. Then you’re going back to the service, Captain? You’re running away?”

He didn’t answer her until they stood in Eric Young’s garden.

“Sham battles for shadow cartels,” he said. “That’s a child’s subterfuge for the Tri-D space heroes. No, Dawn, the real war is here in the struggle for information about ourselves so that we can build a new world of freedom and human dignity. You say you need me. All right, Dawn, you’ve enrolled a recruit.”

“It will be a long, slow war, Captain,” she said, her eyes shining. “We may never see a victory, and–we can never make a truce. But at least we’ve learned how to go about solving the problem–after ten millennia of trial and error.”