nt in
articulate form, the other pinlighters and the Chiefs of the
Instrumentality left him alone.

Underhill was still full of the wonder of their job. Happily he
babbled on, "What does happen to us when we planoform? Do you think
it's sort of like dying? Did you ever see anybody who had his soul
pulled out?"

"Pulling souls is just a way of talking about it," said Woodley.
"After all these years, nobody knows whether we have souls or not."

"But I saw one once. I saw what Dogwood looked like when he came
apart. There was something funny. It looked wet and sort of sticky as
if it were bleeding and it went out of him--and you know what they did
to Dogwood? They took him away, up in that part of the hospital where
you and I never go--way up at the top part where the others are, where
the others always have to go if they are alive after the Rats of the
Up-and-Out have gotten them."

Woodley sat down and lit an ancient pipe. He was burning something
called tobacco in it. It was a dirty sort of habit, but it made him
look very dashing and adventurous.

"Look here, youngster. You don't have to worry about that stuff.
Pinlighting is getting better all the time. The Partners are getting
better. I've seen them pinlight two Rats forty-six million miles apart
in one and a half milliseconds. As long as people had to try to work
the pin-sets themselves, there was always the chance that with a
minimum of four hundred milliseconds for the human mind to set a
pinlight, we wouldn't light the Rats up fast enough to protect our
planoforming ships. The Partners have changed all that. Once they get
going, they're faster than Rats. And they always will be. I know it's
not easy, letting a Partner share your mind--"

"It's not easy for them, either," said Underhill.

"Don't worry about them. They're not human. Let them take care of
themselves. I've seen more pinlighters go crazy from monkeying around
with Partners than I have ever seen caught by the Rats. How many do
you actually know of them that got grabbed by Rats?"

* * * * *

Underhill looked down at his fingers, which shone green and purple in
the vivid light thrown by the tuned-in pin-set, and counted ships.
The thumb for the _Andromeda_, lost with crew and passengers, the
index finger and the middle finger for _Release Ships_ 43 and 56,
found with their pin-sets burned out and every man, woman, and child
on board dead or insane. The ring fing