"But none of those who had any strength agreed to work with us," Tallis went on. "With one exception. You." 

 "Am I weak, then?" MacMaine asked. 

 General Tallis shook his head in a peculiarly humanlike gesture. "No. No, you are not. And that is what has made us pause for three years." His grass-green eyes looked candidly into MacMaine's own. "You aren't the type of person who betrays his own kind. It looks like a trap. After a whole year, the Board of Strategy still isn't sure that there is no trap." 

 Tallis stopped, leaned forward, and ground out the stub of his cigarette in the blue ashtray. Then his eyes again sought MacMaine's. 

 "If it were not for what I, personally, know about you, the Board of Strategy would not even consider your proposition." 

 "I take it, then, that they have considered it?" MacMaine asked with a grin. 

 "As I said, Sepastian," Tallis said, "you have won your case. After almost a year of your time, your decision has been justified." 

 MacMaine lost his grin. "I am grateful, Tallis," he said gravely. "I think you must realize that it was a difficult decision to make." 

 His thoughts went back, across long months of time and longer light-years of space, to the day when that decision had been made. 

  The Decision  

 Colonel Sebastian MacMaine didn't feel, that morning, as though this day were different from any other. The sun, faintly veiled by a few wisps of cloud, shone as it always had; the guards at the doors of the Space Force Administration Building saluted him as usual; his brother officers nodded politely, as they always did; his aide greeted him with the usual "Good morning, sir." 

 The duty list lay on his desk, as it had every morning for years. Sebastian MacMaine felt tense and a little irritated with himself, but he felt nothing that could be called a premonition. 

 When he read the first item on the duty list, his irritation became a little stronger. 

 "Interrogate Kerothi general." 

 The interrogation duty had swung round to him again. He didn't want to talk to General Tallis. There was something about the alien that bothered him, and he couldn't 

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