back on for four, then sixteen off. Why?"

"Well, a few of us are getting up a friendly little game before we go back on watch. I thought you might want to join us.""I know, but that's not what I'm after. I fly because I love flying. I use the flying pay just to keep up the extra premiums the insurance companies keep insisting on so long as I indulge my passion for fighter planes."

"I guess about the only way you could get any regular flying on this job would be for a war to come along."

"That's about it. We'd fly just as often as they could recover our ships and send us back up here for another launch. And that would go on until the economy on both sides broke down so far they couldn't make any more missiles for us to chase, or boosters to send us up after them. No thanks. I don't want to fly that badly. I like civilization."

"In the meantime, then, you ought to try to enjoy it here. Where else can you spend most of your working hours lying flat on your back on the most comfortable couch science can devise?"

"That's the trouble. Just lying there, where you can't read, write, talk, or listen. It might be O.K. for a hermit, but I'd rather fly fighter planes. Here's the trainer building. I've got to get out." 

Seven o'clock. Harry Lightfoot licked the flap on the envelope, sealed it shut, stuck some stamps on the front, and scrawled "AIR MAIL" under the stamps. He dropped the letter into the "STATESIDE" slot. The exam hadn't been so bad. What did they think he was, anyway? A city slicker who had never seen a live cow in his life? He ambled into the off-duty pilots' lounge. He had an hour to kill before going on watch, and this was as good a place as any to kill it. The lounge was almost empty. Most of the pilots must have been asleep. They couldn't all be in Mike's game. He leaned over a low table in the center of the room and started sorting through the stack of magazines.

Looking for anything in particular, Harry?"

He turned to face the speaker. "No, just going through these fugitives from a dentist's office to see if there's anything I haven't read yet. I can't figure out where all the new magazines go. The ones in here always seem to be exactly two months old."

"Here's this month's _Western Stories_. I just finished it. It had some pretty good stories in it."

"No, thanks, the 

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