s anything," I retorted angrily. "I don't think
the question is whether or not Frendon is a sick--now you've got me
saying it--a Psi Corps man. The question is whether we're going to
settle down and stop whining just because we got a new CO we don't like,
and that we can't do anything about. We're not running this war. They're
running it back on Earth."

"We're fighting it," Spender commented, chewing on a big, raw knuckle.

Harding looked at me skeptically. "How much space-combat have you seen,
Maise?"

"Six years, more or less," I told him. "I've seen plenty of the stuff.
I'd just as soon let somebody else do it from now on in, but nobody
asked me."

Harding grunted: "Well, tell me, have you ever served under a sick
skipper?"

"No."

"Do you want to?"

"Why not? Besides--what can I do about it?"

* * * * *

Harding leaned back and sipped away on the straight whiskey he was
drinking, watching me over the top of the glass and talking directly
into it, making his voice sound muffled and sinister. "You know, Maise,
sometimes you make me tired. Frankly, when they first sent us you, I
didn't like it. None of us did. You were CO then, and we thought maybe
you were a sickman even if you didn't look like it, and you kept sort of
sticking up for the sick corps whenever it was mentioned. Well, that's
all right. New officer in charge, trying to stiffen up discipline, et
cetera and so forth. But now we've got Frendon for CO. You're in the
same boat as the rest of us, and you still keep insisting that the
sickmen are O.K. But you're a liar and you know it."

"Well, what do you want me to do?" I shouted angrily. "Poison the guy?"

There was a sudden sharp hush. Even Korsakov lifted his head from the
table, and looked around with bleary, bloodshot eyes. "Poison?" he said.
Then, as if the effort of thinking was too much, he lay down again and
muttered. "Once in three times. It's a puzzle question, men. Figure it
out."

"Of course, entirely aside from the present argument," Spender stated in
his cold, emotionless voice, staring into his empty glass, "but I do
seem to recall an incident like that. Seems there was a ship just about
like ours. About three months ago. A mechanic told me about it. Seems
they got a new CO assigned to it who was obviously a sickman, just like
us. Somebody managed to sneak a few of the dormant spores lying around
outside the dome into him. Then the sickman really