slept the clock around.

When I woke, I found that all of the men were very anxious to know the secret of my success, especially Carter, who knew very well that I had no skill at Mental Control.

I was glad to oblige them, as a reward for Carter's courtesy in giving me his stylish green kilt, which fitted me very well. Obadiah gave Carter another of his horrors—and it was the worst we had seen to date, as I let that young worthy know with a simple cock of an eyebrow.

It was all very simple, as I explained to my admiring audience. The reports we'd had back at the headquarters of the Interstellar Insurance Company indicated that it was useless to try to compete with the Aliens on the mental level, where they were strongest. This was the mistake that Jones and his so-called experts had made.

I decided, when I was given the assignment to straighten things out, that the best way to compete was where we Earthmen are strongest: with mechanical "gadgets." So I had our scientists implant a power source in my body. It made use of short half-life radioactive isotopes for the energy source—not too well shielded, but what the hell, I've already fathered my family—and gave me more power than I could ever need.

In order to be able to use that power, I'd had the scientists set up a closed-cycle system in my body. The combustion products created by the "burning" of food by my body cells, as in all humans, were carbon dioxide and water. These were broken down, in another gadget implanted in my body, into oxygen, carbon and hydrogen.

The oxygen I used directly; another compact machine synthesized carbohydrates to complete the closed-loop cycle. I neither breathed nor ate during the entire time I was on Sunder's Pride, except for the purpose of talking, and that breathing never went past the larynx.

It was lucky I didn't need to breathe, too. Otherwise I'd have drowned in imaginary water while wading in that river the Aliens had created in my mind.

"Also," I explained, "I had a sort of supersonic sonar device set into me, with the transponder in my chest. That's why I had to avoid wearing a protective suit; unless my chest was bare, I squelched the signals. I used this sonar to judge what was going on around me, no matter what I seemed to see."

"Now don't feed us that," said Jones belligerently. "We aren't that dumb. Don't you think we tried using sonar and radar to fool the Aliens? They 

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