is
matted hair, awaiting the inevitable sticks and slops. He heard the
children's voices fade as they scattered throughout the village of
haphazard lean-tos in search of especially sickening things to throw.
For a few minutes, then, he'd have a breather. But not for long--they
wouldn't forget....

No. But the fellows hadn't forgotten him, either. He could stand this
for a day or two more. A week or a month, even. It didn't matter. This
would end--soon.

His turn would come! He'd make these devils suffer as he had suffered.
He swore it!

He was glad he'd stayed alive for this. It had been a fight to live, a
struggle he'd often thought futile while he made it. Learning to eat
whatever he could get, training himself to breathe the local atmosphere
in the special rhythm its composition required, accepting degradations
too cruel for a captive animal, avoiding the resistance that would have
brought merciful murder.... All that, yet it felt strange, now, to be so
glad he was alive.

He heard the children returning, and crouched lower. A few clots of
garbage spattered against the post--teasers, to make him angry, so he'd
turn to howl his rage, and offer his face as a target.

Good memories, these little beasts had. It was almost a year since he'd
last done that....

Well, he had a memory, too. And while they pelted him--from fairly close
range, now, with sharp rocks among the wads of filth--he could take
refuge in the memory of those last glorious days on Earth.

* * * * *

Remembrance was itself a change brought by the roaring ship; usually he
moped in a vegetative daze. But now he recalled how he'd looked in the
tight white uniform: six feet of well-fed muscle accentuated by the
garment's lines, the blue stars on each lapel just matching his eyes,
the peak of his cap harmonizing with the straight line of his jaw.

He remembered how he'd sounded, speaking words of nonchalant and unfelt
modesty in the soft Southern voice the girls had liked so well. He could
have had his pick of girls. He'd been a picked man himself.

Highly selected--that was the phrase. He was highly selected, Chet
reminded himself, shrinking as the children came closer and their
missiles began to really hurt.

He'd been highly selected since his eighteenth year. At 25 he'd had
seven years of pre-flight training--seven years of indoctrination
specifically designed to give him self-confidence enough to face the
voi