covers--when he had first learned of them, and he had learned all about them. He had firm opinions on all these.He yearned for someone to challenge him--to say that Dime Sports had been nothing but a cheap yellow rag and, why, Sewanee Review, there had been a magazine for you.
Manet's only consolidation was that Ronald's tastes were lower than his own. He patriotically insisted that the American Sabre Jet was superior to the Mig. He maintained with a straight face that Tommy Dorsey was a better band man than Benny Goodman. Ronald was a terrific jerk.

"Ronald," Manet said, "you are a terrific jerk."

Ronald leaped up immediately and led with his right. Manet blocked it deftly and threw a right cross. Ronald blocked it deftly and drove in a right to the navel. The two men separated and, puffing like steam locomotives passing the diesel works, closed again. Ronald leaped forward and led with his right. Manet stepped inside the swing and lifted an uppercut to the ledge of Ronald's jaw. Ronald pinwheeled to the floor. He lifted his bruised head from the deck and worked his reddened mouth. "Had enough?" he asked Manet. Manet dropped his fists to his sides and turned away. "Yes." Ronald hopped up lightly. "Another checkers, Billy Boy?" "No." "Okay. Anything you want, William, old conquerer." Manet scrunched up inside himself in impotent fury. Ronald was maddeningly co-operative and peaceful. He would even get in a fist fight to avoid trouble between them. He would do anything Manet wanted him to do. He was so utterly damned stupid. Manet's eyes orbited towards the checkerboard. But if he were so much more stupid than he, Manet, why was it that their checker games always ended in a tie?

The calendar said it was Spring on Earth when the radio was activated for a high-speed information and entertainment transmission. The buzzer-flasher activated in the solarium at the same time. Manet lay stretched out on his back, naked, in front of the transparent wall. By rolling his eyes back in his head, Manet could see over a hedge of eyebrows for several hundred flat miles of white sand. And several hundred miles of desert could see him. For a moment he gloried in the blatant display of his flabby muscles and patchy sunburn. Then he sighed, rolled over to his feet and started trudging toward Communication. He padded down the rib-ridged matted corridor, taking his usual small pleasure in the kaleidoscopic effect of the spiraling reflections on the walls of the tubeway. As he passed the File Room, he caught the sound of the pounding vibrations against the stoppered plug of the hatch. "Come on, Billy Buddy, let me out of this place!" 

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