"Certainly they've made us economically dependent," I said, "and their standard of living is undoubtedly higher than ours. But ours has, on the whole, gone up since the conquest. We eat better, we're healthier, we aren't burdened with the cost of past and present and future wars. Our natural resources aren't being squandered. The forests and watersheds and farmlands we ruined are coming back under Eridanian supervision." She gave me an odd look. "I thought you didn't like the Empire." "I don't," I growled. "I don't want to be held back just because I'm white-skinned. But I've known enough reddies personally so that I try to be fair." "It's all right with me," she said. "I can see your point, intellectually, though I can't really _feel_ it. But not many of the people will out at Main Base." "Free men," I muttered sardonically. We went fishing, and swam in the tumbling surf, and stretched lazily on the beach with the sun pouring over us. Or we might go tramping off into the woods on a picnic, to run laughing back when a sudden rain rushed out of the sky, and afterward sit with beer and cheese sandwiches listening to a wire of Beethoven or Mozart or Tchaikovsky--the old Earthlings could write music, if they did nothing else!--and to the rain shouting on the roof. We might have a little highly illegal target practice, or a game of chess, or long conversations which wandered off every which way. I began to have a sneaking hope that the spaceship would be delayed. We went out one day in Barbara's little catboat. The waves danced around us, chuckling against the hull, glittering with sunlight, and the sail was like a snow mountain against the sky. For a while we chatted dreamily, ate our lunch, threw the scraps to the hovering gulls. Then Barbara fell silent. "What's the matter?" I asked. "Oh, nothing. Touch of _Weltschmerz_, maybe." She smiled at me. "You know, Con, you don't really belong in the Legion." "How so?" I raised my eyebrows. "You--well, you're so darned honest, so really decent under that carefully rough surface, so--reasonable. You'll never make a good fanatic." _Honest!_ I looked away from her. The bright day seemed suddenly to darken. IV Spaceships from Main Base had little trouble coming to Earth with their cargoes of guns, propaganda, instructors, and whatever else the rebels on the planet needed. They would take up an orbit just beyond the atmosphere and send boats to the surface after dark. There was little danger of their being detected if they took the usual precautions; a world is simply too big to blockade completely. Ours dropped on noiseless gravitic beams into the nighted island woods. We had been watching for it the last few days, and now Eb came running to tell us it was here. The pilot followed after him. "Harry Kane, Conrad Haugen," Barbara introduced us.