r. But it's the waste of a good
ship. You know as well as I do that it stands to reason combat can't be
run as a game of blind man's bluff. And that's just what Frendon will
make it. If you're going to make proper use of your military potential
it takes brains, like our old skipper had."

"They say the Psi Corps training brings out the most sensitive
intellectual capacities of a man," I replied, quoting from the old
publicity releases on it and keeping my voice level and dispassionate.
"The Central Command Authority believes that it will raise the
possibility of survival from twelve to thirty-two per cent in actual
combat."

Korsakov giggled, belched, hiccupped and finished his drink. "Thirty-two
per cent," he said. "That is one chance in three."

"You don't understand," Harding insisted. "Maybe the guessing games and
tests they run back on Earth do give the sickmen one chance in three of
being right by blind guessing. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking
about us--on our ship in combat and not in a laboratory back on Earth.
We had a captain who ran the ship well, ran it in eighty-seven separate
forays with the aliens and brought us back each time. He got killed
himself on the eighty-eighth. That's the sort of captain we want, Maise.
A man who can use his head and who can bring the ship through eighty-odd
runs safely. And that is going to take something besides guesswork.
Don't forget--if you like to believe in mathematical probability
statistics--our chances should be getting slender after all our combat
experience. Yours, too, for that matter."

"Maybe," I hedged, "your previous captain was a Psi Corps man in
disguise."

"No, he wasn't," Spender cut in calmly. "I knew him for years. We went
through the same service training and served together every minute of
the war. And they didn't start this sick-business until three years or
so ago."

"Well, they say there are natural Psi men who don't need the training so
much."

"Fairy tales," snorted Harding. "That stuff doesn't go. I don't believe
it."

* * * * *

That was clear. And no argument would convince him otherwise, even if I
had felt inclined to give him one, which I didn't.

Korsakov, the silent Russian, thoughtfully rubbed his thick hands
together, and then punched the button calling for another drink. "Once
in three times," he said. "It's all been proved. Out of the next three
missions we go out on, we come back only