Paris showed excellent judgment. Aphrodite was so grateful she contrived to get that lovely Helen for Paris and—"

"Enough of this private feud," snapped the Director. "Apollo, I told you once to hand me the Script."

Achilles at midnight paced back and forth before his tent. Finally, in the agony of his spirit, he called to Thetis. The radio which had been installed in his shield, unknown to him, transmitted his voice to a cabin in the great spaceship hanging over the Trojan plain.

Thetis, hearing it, said to Apollo, "Get out of my cabin, you heel, or I'll have you thrown out."

"Leave?" he said. "Why? So you can be with your barbarian lover?"

"He is not my lover," she said angrily. "But I'd take even a barbarian as a lover before I'd have anything to do with you. Now, get out. And don't speak to me again unless it's in the line of business."

"Any time I speak to you, I mean business," he said, grinning.

"Get out or I'll tell my father!"

"I hear and obey. But I'll have you, one way or another."

Thetis shoved him out. Then she quickly put on the suit that could bend light around her to make her invisible and transport her through the air and do many other things. Out of a port she shot, straight toward the tent of her protégé. She did not decelerate until she saw him standing tall in the moonlight, his hands still raised in entreaty. She landed and cut the power off so he could see her.

"Mother, Mother!" cried Achilles. "How long must I put up with Agamemnon's high-handedness?"

Thetis took him by the hand and led him into the tent. "Is Patroclos around?" she asked.

"No, he is having some fun with Iphis, that buxom beauty I gave him after I conquered the city of Scyros."

"There's a sensible fellow," said Thetis. "Why don't you forget this fuss with King Agamemnon and have fun with some rosy-cheeked darling?" But a painful expression crossed her face as she said it.

Achilles did not notice the look. "I am too sick with humiliation and disgust to take pleasure in anything. I am full up to here with being a lion in the fighting and 

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