"Yes. We're learning better and faster ways to make men out of kids. And the numbers in the crews are being cut down. The ships are better. One man now can perform all the operations three did a few years ago."

"The training? Is it very hard?"

"No. It's just necessary. We know we have to learn and develop in order to survive. It's just like growing up."

Sue hesitated. "Is it true—" She paused again, cheeks coloring. "It is true that you can read a girl's thoughts?"

Wilson grinned. "Don't worry about it. Those things have been exaggerated. We get flashes under certain conditions. If your emotions were in perfect accord with your thoughts, as ours are supposed to be, we'd know what you're thinking. It's our one superiority over the—" He halted, clamped his lips tight. Sue knew he had been about to say, "Zeehites."

"We don't really read your thoughts," he went on. "If it was necessary, and we concentrated very hard, we probably could do it."

"Try just once to get the picture I've got in my mind."

"That's easy, but you shouldn't have thoughts like that."

She blushed crimson. Now she was positive. She had held an image in mind of his features, and he had known, known especially that her thoughts were of him. Confusion and discomfort settled over her. She tried to get her mind on work, but the thought wouldn't come. Darth Brady's image, as in the locket, appeared before her. And she was certain that that, too, was known to Wilson. She was hardly aware of what he said from then until the car landed.

Other girls watched her enviously, and yet with trepidation, as she returned to her machine. At every pause in the work they asked questions. "How did you get out?" "Where did you go?" "Will you have to appear before the Council?"

She hated to be cattish, but she couldn't confide in them. She invented a story which was reluctantly accepted. She said she had suddenly become ill and gone to the dorm.

The day wore on. After supper she visited her mother in the older women's dorm. She didn't stay long because Mrs. Wilson studied her with too much interest.

But she had asked, "What do two ribbons and three stars mean," and her mother had replied, "The first ribbon is for courage and conduct beyond 

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