"You don't understand," Harding insisted. "Maybe the guessing games and tests they run back on Earth do give the sickmen one chance in three of being right by blind guessing. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about us—on our ship in combat and not in a laboratory back on Earth. We had a captain who ran the ship well, ran it in eighty-seven separate forays with the aliens and brought us back each time. He got killed himself on the eighty-eighth. That's the sort of captain we want, Maise. A man who can use his head and who can bring the ship through eighty-odd runs safely. And that is going to take something besides guesswork. Don't forget—if you like to believe in mathematical probability statistics—our chances should be getting slender after all our combat experience. Yours, too, for that matter."

"Maybe," I hedged, "your previous captain was a Psi Corps man in disguise."

"No, he wasn't," Spender cut in calmly. "I knew him for years. We went through the same service training and served together every minute of the war. And they didn't start this sick-business until three years or so ago."

"Well, they say there are natural Psi men who don't need the training so much."

"Fairy tales," snorted Harding. "That stuff doesn't go. I don't believe it."

That was clear. And no argument would convince him otherwise, even if I had felt inclined to give him one, which I didn't.

Korsakov, the silent Russian, thoughtfully rubbed his thick hands together, and then punched the button calling for another drink. "Once in three times," he said. "It's all been proved. Out of the next three missions we go out on, we come back only once." His homely face broke into a tired grin.

I laughed with him, but Harding did not like the joke. "It isn't funny," he growled. "If they can't find a decent captain to send us, why can't they move up one of us that has at least served with a good commander in combat, and maybe learned some of his tricks from him. Not that I would want the job. But it would be better than Frendon. Anything would."

I raised my eyebrows at him skeptically. He got the idea and swore. "You know I didn't mean that I want the job, so don't go goggling your righteous eyes at me, Maise. I know my limitations, but I also know a good captain when I see one. And what do they send us? A kid who not only is a nut, but he's already so scared he—"

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