rgarten shooting gallery?"

"You're not being 'kept' here," Brucco told him in his usual irritated
tone. "You will be here until you qualify for the outside."

[Illustration]

"Which I have a funny feeling will be never. I can now field strip and
reassemble every one of your blasted gadgets in the dark. I am a dead
shot with this cannon. At this present moment, if I had to, I could
write a book on the Complete Flora and Fauna of Pyrrus, and How to Kill
It. Perhaps I don't do as well as my six-year-old companions, but I have
a hunch I do about as good a job now as I ever will. Is that true?"

Brucco squirmed with the effort to be evasive, yet didn't succeed. "I
think, that is, you know you weren't born here, and--"

"Come, come," Jason said with glee, "a straight-faced old Pyrran like
you shouldn't try to lie to one of the weaker races that specialize in
that sort of thing. It goes without saying that I'll always be sluggish
with this gravity, as well as having other inborn handicaps. I admit
that. We're not talking about that now. The question is--will I improve
with more training, or have I reached a peak of my own _development_
now?"

Brucco sweated. "With the passage of time there will be improvement of
course--"

"Sly devil!" Jason waggled a finger at him. "Yes or no, now. Will I
improve _now_ by more training _now_?"

"No," Brucco said, and still looked troubled. Jason sized him up like a
poker hand.

"Now let's think about that. I won't improve--yet I'm still stuck here.
That's no accident. So you must have been ordered to keep me here. And
from what I have seen of this planet, admittedly very little, I would
say that Kerk ordered you to keep me here. Is that right?"

"He was only doing it for your own sake," Brucco explained, "trying to
keep you alive."

"The truth is out," Jason said, "so let us now forget about it. I didn't
come here to shoot robots with your offspring. So please show me the
street door. Or is there a graduating ceremony first? Speeches, handing
out school pins, sabers overhead--"

"Nothing like that," Brucco snapped. "I don't see how a grown man like
you can talk such nonsense all the time. There is none of that, of
course. Only some final work in the partial survival chamber. That is a
compound that connects with the outside--really is a part of the
outside--except the most violent life forms are excluded. And even some
of those manage to find their way in once in a while."