"Stupid!" Drusilla spat. "Can't you see what Captain Flim is? Don't you remember that tridie we saw on Mars about Jean Lafitte? Daun TA1924 was Jean, and he rode his Model T-Ford into New Orleans to help Olehickory Jackson. He was a pirate, and that's what Captain Flim is."

Flim murmured, "True, fair lady. I follow a great tradition! Jean Lafitte, Robert Kidd, Mary Ree, Henry Morgan, and Long John Ag! The old Brotherhood of the Coast shall become the brotherhood of the space between worlds ripe for plunder. Among the cosmic motes--"

"You need a psycodoc," Jak said, proud to create an interruption himself for once. "How can you be a pirate? No one is. The Space Patrol would put you in Corrective School for twenty semesters if you were. That's a worse negative action than falsehood in advertising!"

"I am a pirate," Flim said in defiance of Jak's logic. "The Space Patrol! Avast! The Space Patrol is fit for nothing but rescue and exploration. No pirates? What of the Crime War? The noble cause of Organized Crime put planes into the void. They sent one of the first to Luna in the old days."

Jak could see no other course but to believe the man, whose brain had obviously deteriorated. He said, "Check. You're a pirate. Why? Why is he wrecking my equipment, and why are you armed?"

"Because there is nothing exciting!" Flim declaimed. "The whole Solar System is a humble drum. I would have ridden the star-plane to new adventure, but they refused me. On Earth, they made me a microcataloger maintainer. Me! Its sole benefit was to acquaint me with the great piratical traditions of the past by revealing records available only to qualified scholars. No, there is nothing both legitimate and exciting to do anymore."

Jak said, "Why don't you find a quick cure for dementia praecox? That hasn't been done."

"I dislike your tone," Flim rasped. "Looge! Silence him!"

The scarred man, who had stood without moving, blinked his visible eye and grunted, "Yer, uh, what?"

"Silence him!"

"Oh. Er, how?"

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