re, sir."

The woman's face shifted to one side and a man's appeared--a face to
justify in full the nickname "Fatso."

"'Fatso', eh?" Chancellor Ferber snarled. Pale eyes glared from the fat
face. "That costs you exactly one thousand credits, James."

"How much will this cost me, Fatso?" Garlock asked.

"Five thousand--and, since nobody can call me that deliberately,
demotion three grades and probation for three years. Make a note, Miss
Foster."

"Noted, sir."

"Still sure we aren't going anywhere," Garlock said. "_What_ a brain!"

"Sure I'm sure!" Ferber gloated. "In a couple of hours I'm going to buy
your precious starship in as junk. In the meantime, whether you like it
or not, I'm going to watch your expression while you push all those
pretty buttons and nothing happens."

"The trouble with you, Fatso," Garlock said dispassionately, as he
opened a drawer and took out a pair of cutting pliers, "is that all your
strength is in your glands and none in your alleged brain. There are a
lot of things--including a lot of tests--you know nothing about. How
much will you see after I've cut one wire?"

"You wouldn't dare!" the fat man shouted. "I'd fire you--blacklist you
all over the sys...."

Voice and images died away and Garlock turned to the two women in the
Main. He began to smile, but his mental shield did not weaken.

"You've got a point there, Lola," he said, going on as though Ferber's
interruption had not occurred. "Not that I blame either Belle or myself.
If anything was ever calculated to drive a man nuts, this farce was. As
the only female Prime in the system, Belle should have been in
automatically--she had no competition. And to anybody with three brain
cells working the other place lay between you, Lola, and the other three
female Ops in the age group.

"But no. Ferber and the rest of the Board--stupidity _uber
alles_!--think all us Ops and Primes are psycho and that the ship will
never even lift. So they made a Grand Circus of it. But they succeeded
in one thing--with such abysmal stupidity so rampant I'm getting more
and more reconciled to the idea of our not getting back--at least, for a
long, long time."

"Why, they said we had a very good chance...." Lola began.

"Yeah, and they said a lot of even bigger damn lies than that one. Have
you read any of my papers?"

"I'm sorry. I'm not a mathematician."

"Our motion will be purely at random. If it isn't, I'll eat this whole
ship. We won't