"So what's the situation?" demanded Saturn.

     He and Seskip Tonn were in the upper guardroom, near the top of the long, twisting flight of steps that led down to the prison cells. Seskip had decided to put the prisoners in the magic proof cells anyway, just as a precaution, just in case the felisian theory should still turn out to be wrong and they were somehow able to cast spells. The Head Proctor wasn't going to take any chance of losing his prisoners. Not after it had taken so long to get them.

     He didn't rise from the chair, merely turned his disturbingly reptilian face to regard the new arrival. "They have amazingly disciplined minds. Our ESP spells have revealed little so far, beyond the fact that there are indeed more of them still out there. They appear to have entered some kind of meditative trance in which they can fix their minds on a single thought to the exclusion of all else. A deeper scan ought to deal with that, however. We'll lay their minds open like rats on a dissecting table."

     "You've tried enchanting them, I take it."

     "Water off a duck's back. No effect whatsoever. Someone'll make a name for themselves figuring out how they do that."

     "I want to see them. See how they react to a good old fashioned interrogation. It works for mundanes. It may work for us."

     "The mundanes don't have access to mindsifters. We have no need for such primitive methods."

     "I still want to see them. I put my faith in my own eyes."

     Seskip shrugged and stood. "As you wish." He muttered a few words that temporarily nullified the sentry spells on the stairwell and led the way down.

     "What did the physical examination reveal?" Saturn asked as they made their way down the steep, slippery stone steps. They had to go slowly or risk slipping and falling down the central shaft, an embarrassing prospect even when one had the security of levitation and autumnleaf spells. The stairs had been made deliberately treacherous to slow down prisoners trying to escape, and even with all their protective spells a wizard could still twist an ankle on them.

     "They're of the same race as our corpse. Completely carnivorous digestive tract, penis barb, etcetera. I don't know if they belong to the same race as Gown's friend Naomi but they have some decidedly feline features to their anatomy. They have excellent night vision, for instance. A high upper hearing range, very good balance..."

     "How did you determine that?"

     "Turned the floor of their cell red hot, except for a raised strip an inch wide. They showed every sign of being able to stay on it indefinitely, like a cat on a fence. Physically, they're superior to us in almost every measurable way."

     "Almost?"

     "They seem to have poor colour vision. I'll need to do more tests to confirm that."

     The sentry spells snapped back into operation automatically as they reached the bottom of the stairs and passed the lower guard post. The proctor on duty looked up briefly as they passed, then returned to his spellbook. A casual visitor might have thought him lax, maybe even incompetent in his complacency for not making sure of their identity, but as soon as they rounded the corner and passed out of sight he triggered a dormant farspeaking spell to inform Seskip that he'd just seen him go past. If he hadn't been the real Seskip, the real one would now be aware that an intruder had broken in, and anyone capable of getting this far wouldn't have been stopped by a single middling good wizard anyway. The intruder would find that getting out was a good deal more difficult than getting in had been.

     Seskip heard the farspoken message in his head and sent the all clear back to the proctor without pausing in his stride. "I've kept them in the same cell so far, in the hope they might say something revealing to each other, but now I think it might be better to separate them. Then we can play them off against each other."

     Saturn nodded. "A tried and tested technique. When we've got everything they know out of them, we might even let them go, with trace spells on them. They might lead us to the others."

     "Here we are." Seskip stopped before a steel door no different from any of the others and spoke a word to turn it transparent from their side. To the felisians, however, it would appear unchanged, and no sounds could pass in from outside. The two wizards could watch them and talk without the prisoners being aware of them.

     They were sitting side by side on one of the cots; their shoulders touching, their hands manacled behind their backs. Thomas's testimony told them that a felisian could not transform into his cat form while bound like that without tearing his arms out of his shoulders and Seskip had seized upon the idea eagerly. They were also wrapped in several layers of clothing, to further impede any transformation they might attempt, although the Head Proctor had made sure that not even the smallest cat could squeeze out of this cell. Even the tiny window in the door had thick iron bars in it. As if realising that escape was hopeless, the two prisoners sat quiet and motionless, their eyes staring glassily ahead, only the slow rising and falling of their chests showing that they were still alive.

     Saturn watched them silently for a few minutes, then told Seskip to lower the anti-magic field permeating the room. He then concentrated on the man and muttered the words of a mind reading spell. Seskip was right, he saw. The male felisian had narrowed his mind onto the current situation, excluding all thought of anything outside, before his arrival or after his departure. The cell was all there was. He had always been in the cell, he would always be in the cell. There was nothing but the cot under him, the stone wall behind him, the discomfort of the manacles on his wrists, the warm, soft pressure of the girl's shoulder against his, the gentle sound of her breathing. That was all there was, the whole universe. Forever and ever. Saturn switched to the girl's mind and found it exactly the same.

     "Gods!" he muttered in amazement. "How long can they keep that up?"

     Until they starve for all I know. We've offered them food but they gave no sign of being aware of it. It's not important. They're both in good physical shape and can easily go without food for a few days."

     "Shouldn't take that long. A deep scan will only take a few minutes. They're not clay men, with all the mental protection the Shadowwizards could give them. The only magic they've used so far is what they stole from us. Let's see what talking can accomplish first, though. Open the door."

     Seskip complied, returning the door to its opaque condition and touching it with a small wand hanging from his belt. A brief nimbus of light flickered around the doorframe and then the door swung silently open. Neither of the prisoners stirred and there was nothing in either of their thoughts to show they'd noticed. Saturn stepped in, and the door closed and locked itself behind him.

     He crossed the cell to stand before them, and spent a few moments looking down at them. Neither of them gave any sign of noticing his presence. He bent down to look into the girl's eyes. A person in a normal state of consciousness would have been unable to stop herself from either looking towards him or away from him. There would have been some reaction, totally involuntary, completely beyond her control, but he saw no reaction from her at all. She blinked now and then, and her pupils contracted as he summoned the light down from the ceiling and held it close to her face, but there was no sign of any consciousness behind them. She gave every outward sign of being completely catatonic.

     "Smell her breath," advised Seskip, looking in through the door's tiny window.

     Saturn looked up at him, then sat down on the cot beside the girl. He leaned over, placing his face very close to hers. He waited for her to breathe out and took a long, deep sniff, concentrating deeply. The Head Proctor wouldn't have suggested it unless it was important.

     "There's a spicy smell to it," he said thoughtfully. He pressed his nose and mouth against her neck and took another deep sniff. "Not in her skin," he added as he sat back again. "Just in her breath.".

     "The male is the same," agreed Seskip. "It may be another way to identify them. Did Gown happen to mention whether the black one had spicy breath?"

     "He never got close enough to find out. His loyalty to his wife is absolute."

     "Never mind, we'll catch more of them. Two might just be a coincidence, something they both eat perhaps, but if a third has spicy breath, and a fourth..."

     "By the time we've got enough of them to be sure, there won't be any more still on the loose," pointed out Saturn.

     "Don't be so sure of that. If my suspicions are correct, there's a whole planet full of them out there somewhere, with the means to come to and from our world more or less at will. Maybe this is just the prelude to a full scale invasion. It gives them a good motive for wanting to wreck the Rossem Project."

     "About time we got some firm answers," agreed Saturn. "Let's see if I can snap her out of this trance she's put herself into."

     He put his mouth next to her ear and shouted as loud as he could. "Wake up! Wake up at once!" He repeated the command while shaking her roughly by the shoulders but he might as well have been trying to revive a shop dummy.

     "As I said," said Seskip, "a deep scan is the only way. I was only waiting for your arrival to try it."

     "All right," snapped Saturn, grudgingly acknowledging defeat. "Which one first?"

     "Judging from the few words they exchanged when we captured them, I would guess that the male is the most senior of the two, and therefore the one likely to know the most. We'll start with him."

     Saturn nodded, and both wizards began casting spells.

     Saturn sat down next to the man and placed a bony hand on the top of his head while tracing an intricate shape on his chest with a finger of his other hand. He muttered words under his breath, and as he did so the man gave the first sign of animation either of them had yet shown, tilting his head back and uttering a low moan. Saturn ignored it and continued with the spell, his eyes glazing over as the cell faded from his awareness and a new reality took over. Images from the world from which the felisians had come. Seskip's spell, meanwhile, created a lesser link with the man's mind that allowed him to share the vision produced by Saturn's spell.