"Am I?"

"Major, we're offering you a chance to get adjusted and assimilated. Take it or leave it. We can hold you in the brig until you see reason. But you're a good man. We need you."

"For what? More flights through that hyperspace muck?"

"If you can pass our mental stability tests, yes."

"And if not?"

"You'll be grounded."

Lance made a sudden decision.

"I want to go up right now."

"What?"

"You heard me. I want to go up in the Cosmos XII right now, tests or no tests. Ground me—and I'll never have a chance again. Don't you think I'm hep to that?"

"We'll see that you're not grounded," broke in Colonel Sagen, from behind his desk.

But Lance didn't believe him.

"Don't try to kid me, colonel," he snapped out. "You write me out flight orders for the Cosmos XII, or I'll blab everything I know. You can't hang me, you can't tear my tongue out—and I know I'll bust out of your guardhouse one way or another! You'll see! And then, how will you fill up your precious training classes? Then, how will you get new chumps to pilot your ships to the stars? The stars! Ha, ha! That's the biggest joke of all!"

Colonel Sagen began to splutter. Lance, watching him carefully, decided there wasn't much resemblance between the old boy and the fine Colonel Sagen he'd known in his own world. Maybe it'd been having the softening influence of normal family life and a growing daughter that had made old Hard-Head human.

"You'll never get away with this," Sagen warned. "We're three against one."

"Won't I?" Lance's hand darted inside his shirt. "Maybe this'll equalize us." He brought out the pistol he'd taken off the captain in the guardhouse. Sagen, Nordsen, and Carmody backed off from it.

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