they mete out to everyone else for being so dumb.”

“Well, one thing for sure,” Hansen said, “if Bullard and Quemos are the cream of the crop, I’m on the side of the Gypsies.”

“Ah, youth!” the navigator said, “I, too, once had such dreams—”

“We’ll see about the dreams,” Hansen said, almost menacingly, “I didn’t spend six years in that damn school just to sit around in a pretty uniform for the rest of my life.”

[Pg 18]

[Pg 18]

“Oh, you’ll get used to it. In fact, you’ll like it after a while. The home leaves. The fuss your friends will make over you when you step off the ship. The regular and automatic promotions in grade with the extra gold band added to your sleeve; the move from one outpost to an always larger installation. You’ll never do much, of course, but why should you? After all, there aren’t any moving parts.”

Hansen cut the communicator off. He stood there for a moment, feeling depressed and betrayed. Automatically he reached down and flicked imaginary dust from his blue sleeve with its narrow solitary gold band. Ten minutes later the Gypsy’s ship signaled for landing.

The man who walked into Hansen’s control room was hardly the ogre he had been prepared for. He looked, Hansen was later to reflect, like Santa Claus with muscles in place of the fat. Wearing an almost unheard of beard and dressed in rough clothes, he walked across the room and made short work of the usual formalities. “Name’s Candle,” said the man. “Where’s those two phonies I’m supposed to replace?”

“You’ll have to go suit up and go back through the airlock,” Hansen said, motioning to the door. “They’re in their ship. It’s the one next to yours. Want me to tell them you’re on your way over?”

“Hell, no,” said Candle, grinning, “I’ll surprise ’em. Now, suppose you and me sit down and have a little chat.”

They sat and Candle pumped Hansen of everything he knew about the entire situation. An hour later, Hansen felt almost as if he had been had. “Is that all?” he asked, wearily.

“I got the facts,” Candle said. “Now let’s go throw those experts out.” It wasn’t quite that simple. Neither Bullard nor Quemos had any intention of simply clearing out. “Who the hell you think 

 Prev. P 12/19 next