ife had
been barren. The life of a mindless automaton, moving from place to
place, never thinking, never daring to think or speak, hoping only to
work without pain each day, and sleep without nightmares.

And then, he thought of the nights in his childhood, when he had lain
awake, sweating with fear, as the airships screamed across the dark sky
above, bound he never knew where; and then, hearing in the far distance
the booming explosion, he had played that horrible little game with
himself, seeing how high he could count before he heard the weary,
plodding footsteps of the people on the road, moving on to another
place. He had known, even as a little boy, that the only safe place was
in those bombers, that the place for survival was in the striking
armies, and his life had followed the hard-learned pattern, twisting him
into the cynical mold of the mercenary soldier, dulling the quick and
clever mind, drilling into him the ways and responses of order and obey,
stripping him of his heritage of love and humanity. Others less
thoughtful had been happier; they had succeeded in forgetting the life
they had known before, they had been able to learn easily and well the
lessons of the repudiation of the rights of men which had crept like a
blight through the world. But Sabo, too, was a misfit, wrenched into a
mold he could not fit. He had sensed it vaguely, never really knowing
when or how he had built the shell of toughness and cynicism, but also
sensing vaguely that it was built, and that in it he could hide,
somehow, and laugh at himself, and his leaders, and the whole world
through which he plodded. He had laughed, but there had been long
nights, in the narrow darkness of spaceship bunks, when his mind pounded
at the shell, screaming out in nightmare, and he had wondered if he had
really lost his mind.

His gray eyes narrowed as he looked at Brownie, and he felt his heart
pounding in his chest, pounding with a fury that he could no longer
deny. "It would have to be fast," he said softly. "Like lightning,
tonight, tomorrow--very soon."

"Oh, yes, I know that. But we _can_ do it--"

"Yes," said Sabo, with a hard, bitter glint in his eyes. "Maybe we can."

* * * * *

The preparation was tense. For the first time in his life, Sabo knew the
meaning of real fear, felt the clinging aura of sudden death in every
glance, every word of the men around him. It seemed incredible that the
captain did