Adventures in the Far Future & Tales of Outer Space — page 284: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

brain structure couldn't hold the reasoning powers he had once had. His thinking was dull and sluggish. He made blunders the old Daryesh would never have committed. And this young woman was quick to see them, and he was a prisoner of John Laird’s deadly enemies, and the mind of Laird himself was tangled in thought and will and memory, ready to fight him if he gave the least sign of— The Solarian’s ego chuckled nastily. Easy, Daryesh, easy! Shut up! his mind snapped back, and he knew drearily that his own trained nervous system would not have been guilty of such a childishly emotional response. “I may as well tell you the truth, Captain Rostov,” he Said aloud. “I am not Laird at all. Not any more.” She made no response, merely drooped the lids over her eyes and leaned back in her chair. He noticed abstractedly how long her lashes were—or was that Laird’s appreciative mind, unhindered by too much remembrance of lIloma? They sat alone, the two of them, in her small cabin aboard the Janyard cruiser. A guard stood outside the door, but it was closed. From time to time they would hear a dull thump or clang as the heavy machines of Vwyrdda were dragged aboard —otherwise they might have been the last two alive on the scarred old planet. The room was austerely furnished, but there were touches of the feminine here and there: curtains, a small pot of flowers, a formal dress hung in a half-open closet. And the woman who sat across the desk from him was very beautiful, with the loosened ruddy hair streaming to her shoulders and the brilliant eyes never wavering from his. But one slender hand rested on a pistol. He took a cigarette from the box on her desk—Laird’s habits again—and lit it and took a slow drag of smoke into his lungs. CORniclooo SS (SO)