When consciousness returned, Jason could remember no detail of the nightmare. Just the fear remained. He was soaked with sweat and ached in every muscle. It must have been the massive dose of shots, he finally decided, that and the brutal gravity. That didn’t take the taste of fear out of his mouth, though.

Brucco stuck his head in the door then and looked Jason up and down. “Thought you were dead,” he said. “Slept the clock around. Don’t move, I’ll get something to pick you up.”

The pickup was in the form of another needle and a glassful of evillooking fluid. It settled his thirst, but made him painfully aware of a gnawing hunger.

“Want to eat?” Brucco asked. “I’ll bet you do. I’ve speeded up your metabolism so you’ll build muscle faster. Only way you’ll ever beat the gravity. Give you quite an appetite for awhile though.”

Brucco ate at the same time and Jason had a chance to ask some ques- tions. “When do I get a chance to look around your fascinating planet? So far this trip has been about as interesting as a jail term.” -

“Relax and enjoy your food. Probably be months before you’re able to go outside. If at all.”

Jason felt his jaw hanging and closed it with a snap. “Could you possibly tell me why?”

“Of course. You will have to go through the same training course that our children take. It takes them six years. Of course, it’s their first six years of life. So you might think that you, as an adult, could learn faster. Then again, they have the advantage of heredity. All I can say is you’ll go outside these sealed buildings when you’re ready.”

Brucco had finished eating while he talked, and sat staring at Jason’s bare arms with growing disgust. “The first thing we want to get you is a gun,” he said. “It gives me a sick feeling to see someone without one.”

Of course Brucco wore his own gun continually, even within the sealed buildings.

“Every gun is fitted to its owner and would be useless on anyone else,” Brucco said. “I’ll show you why.” He led Jason to an armory jammed with deadly weapons. “Put your arm in this while I make the adjustments.”

It was a box-like machine with a pistol grip on the side. Jason clutched the grip and rested his elbow on a metal loop. Brucco fixed pointers that touched his arm, then copied the results from the meters. Reading the figures from his list, he selected various components from bins and quickly assembled a power holster and gun. With the holster strapped to his forearm and the gun in his hand, Jason noticed for the first time they were connected by a flexible cable. The gun fitted his hand perfectly.