"Because I have a stake in this, too! I want to see the problem solved
just as much as the General does. And I think it _can_ be solved. But
not this way!

"There's only one way to produce men of superior abilities. The method
of adequate training. Hard, brutal discipline and training of oneself.
I'm going to convince Oglethorpe of it after he's seen the failure you
intend to produce for him."

"That shouldn't be hard," said Paul. "It's the General's own view. The
Project is simply to implement that view.

"But let's not have any misunderstanding about my intentions. I expect
to give honest value in research for every dollar spent. I expect to
turn up data that will go a long way toward providing better spacemen
for the Command--and to give Captain West the monument he asked for!"

* * * * *

Alone in his hotel room that night, Paul stood at the window overlooking
the desert. Beyond the distant hills a faint glow in the sky marked the
location of Space Command Base. He regarded it, and considered the
enormity of the thing that was being brewed for the world in that
isolated outpost. Now the chance was his to prove that manhood was a
quality to be proud of, that machines could be built and junked and
built again, but that a man's life was unique in the universe and could
never be replaced once it was crushed.

For years he'd struggled to probe the basic nature of Man and find out
what divorces him from the merely mechanical. He'd known there would
probably never be enough money to reach his goal. And then Oglethorpe
had come, offering him all the money in the world to reach a nebulous
objective that Space Command did not know was unobtainable.

_Somebody_ was going to spend that money. With clear conscience, Paul
rationalized that it might as well be him. He'd see that the country got
value for what it spent, even if this was not quite what the Space
Command expected.

Nat Holt was going to be a most difficult obstacle. Paul wished the
General had let him pick his own technical director, but obviously the
two men understood each other. In their separate fields, they were alike
in their approach to human performance. Whip a man into line, make him
come to heel like a reluctant hound. Beat him, shape him, twist him to
the form you want him to bear.

_Discipline_ him. That was the magic word, the answer to all things.

Paul turned from the window in revulsion, drawing the curtai