here on Earth, that they ignored what went on most of
the time. Still, it would seem that they would recognize the actions of
one of their own kind and take steps to investigate.

He was still not absolutely certain about Colonel Walther Mannheim. Was
he a Real Person or merely an underling? The information on the man was
pitifully small. It would, of course, be possible to wait, to see how
Colonel Walther Mannheim behaved if and when he discovered the Nipe's
nest. But if he had not discovered it after all these years--and the
information indicated that he had been looking almost since the
first--then it was unlikely that he was a Real Person. In which case, it
would be dangerous to allow him to find the nest.

No, the best plan of action would be to go to Colonel Walther Mannheim
first.

_[15]_

_Pok! Pok! Ping!_

_Pok! Pok! Ping!_

_Pok! Pok! Ping!_

_Pok! Pok! Ping!_

The action around the handball court was beautiful to watch. The robot
mechanism behind Bart Stanton would fire out a ball at random intervals
ranging from a tenth to a quarter of a second, bouncing them off the
wall in a random pattern. Stanton would retrieve the ball before it hit
the ground and bounce it off the wall again to strike the target on the
moving robot. Stanton had to work against a machine; no ordinary human
being could have given him any competition.

_Pok! Pok! Ping!_

_Pok! Pok! Ping!_

_Pok! Pok!_ PLUNK.

"One miss," Stanton said to himself. But he fielded the next one nicely
and slammed it home.

_Pok! Pok! Ping!_

The physical therapist who was standing to one side, well out of the way
of those hard-slammed, fast-moving drives, glanced at his watch. It was
almost time.

_Pok! Pok! Ping!_

The machine, having delivered its last ball, shut itself off with a smug
click. Stanton turned away from the handball court and walked toward the
physical therapist, who was holding out a robe for him.

"That was good, Bart," he said. "Real good."

"One miss," Stanton said as he shrugged into the robe.

"Yeah. Your timing was off a shade there, I guess. It's hard for me to
tell till I look at the slow-motion photographs. Your arms and hands are
just blurs to me when they're moving that fast. But you managed to chop
another ten seconds off your previous record, anyway."

Stanton looked at him. "You reset the timer again," he said accusingly.
But there was a grin on his face.

The P.T. man grinned back. "Yup. Co