s like that in my
time. You know what I mean? They're not cut out for the Corps."

"He talked to you quite a bit?"

The corporal turned to face Mr. Ryan. "He was always talking, sir. He
was a regular nut. I thought for a while he was queer. He had all those
crazy ideas."

"Like what, Corporal?"

"Oh, like--well, you know." The corporal hesitated and rummaged his
memory without conspicuous success. "Sunsets," he said rather
emphatically. "Talked about sunsets. Talked about just _anything_.
Called me out back on Earth to look at a sunset once, I remember."

"What did he think about killing the natives?" Mr. Wallace asked.

The question alerted the mechanism which produced the almost-Pavlovian
loyalty response.

"We didn't kill no natives," the corporal said. "They just died when we
changed the air. Tough."

He looked at Mr. Wallace and then into the silence around him.

"Well ... well, let's see. I guess you'd say that sort of got to him. I
mean, you know, he thought it was--" the voice became distant, as though
describing a fantastic event which he could not relate to anything in a
rational environment--"he thought it was _his_ fault. You know how some
of these guys are. I used to have a platoon once, you know. And they
say--" He twisted his mouth and changed his voice to a childish whine.
"What _for_?" The voice reverted to normal. "They don't ask for any
reason. They just ask. I say to them, I say, 'God damn it'--excuse me,
sir--'I told you to do it, ain't that enough?' Well, this Schuster, sir,
he worried all the time. He got so he cut himself shaving. Damnedest
thing. Oh, hell, maybe for the last week, every morning, he came out a
bloody mess. Patches of toilet paper all over his face. 'I can't shave,'
he'd say. 'My God, I can't shave.' He wasn't nervous, either. His hands
were okay. They didn't shake. It's just that he couldn't shave. Like I
say, he was a nut."

No one spoke for a moment, and the corporal twisted uncomfortably.

Then Mr. Tucker said, "Well, Corporal, tell me this, please."

"Yes, sir."

"What's your own personal impression of General Shorter?"

"The old man?" the corporal asked in surprise. "He's okay."

"Feel free to discuss this," Mr. Flison said. "We'd like to know,
really, what your opinion is."

"Like I say, he's okay. He's got a job to do. You know, he busted me
once. General Shorter personally, I mean. Hell, I don't hold it against
him, though. He's got his job to do, I go