rphan himself.

"Tom?"

Tom hesitated. "They deserve the rock, sir. I don't have any feeling for
them. But if they go to the rock, that doesn't do any more than punish
them. If they go to the mines, they'll be punished and help someone else
too. I'd send them to Titan and exile them from Earth forever."

Connel studied the cadets a moment. He turned to Shinny.

"Think they made a good decision, Nick?"

"I like what young Tommy, here, had to say, Lou," answered Shinny. "Best
part about justice is when the man himself suffers from his own guilty
feelings, rather than what you do to him as punishment. I think they did
all right!"

"All right," said Connel. "I'll make the recommendation as you have
suggested." Suddenly he turned to Shinny. "What about you in all this,
Nick? I don't mean that you were hooked up with Loring and Mason. I know
you were just prospecting and you've proved yourself to be a true
spaceman. But what will happen to you now?"

"I'll tell you what's going to happen to me," snapped Shinny. "You're
going to re-enlist me in the Solar Guard, right here! Right now!"

"What?" exploded Connel.

"And then you're going to retire me, right here, right now, with a full
pension!"

"Why you old space-crawling--" Suddenly he looked around the table and
saw the laughing faces of Tom, Roger, Astro, and Alfie.

"All right," he said, "but between your enlistment and your retirement,
I'm going to make you polish every bit of brass on this space wagon,
from the radar mast to the exhaust tubes!"

Shinny smiled his toothless smile and looked at Tom.

"Get the logbook, Tommy," he said. "This is official. I'm going to do
something no other man in the entire history of the Solar Guard ever did
before!"

"What's that, Mr. Shinny?" asked Tom with a smile.

"Enlist, serve time, and retire with a full pension, all on the same
blasted spaceship, the _Polaris_!"

[Illustration]

+--------------------------------------------------------------+
| Transcriber's Note |
| |
| Typographical errors corrected: |
| |
| 1) familarity changed to familiarity |
| 2) but's changed to buts |
| 3) word changed to work |
|