Reaching his apartment, he flicked on the lights and went in. It was a single room, two walls covered with floor-to-ceiling bookcases; there was a desk, one overstuffed chair. Automatically his eyes swept the room with the questioning glance of a man returning home; they lingered apprehensively on the neat stack of unopened mail the cleaning woman had put on the exact corner of the desk. He sighed. No matter how preoccupied a man got, the rest of the world went on just the same. He went into the little kitchenette and made himself a cup of instant coffee, returned to the main room stirring it absently. He seated himself heavily in the overstuffed chair. Struck by a sudden thought, he put the coffee down on the edge of his desk and went over to one book-wall. He scanned the multi-colored spines until he found the thin paperback he was looking for. He took it down and went back to the chair. "Nature," the cover said, "by Ralph Waldo Emerson." Laying the little pamphlet open in his lap, he pulled pipe and tobacco out of his jacket pocket, tamped the bowl full and lit it. He shifted himself easily in the chair, settling himself. _Our Age is retrospective_, the introduction began. _It builds the sepulchers of the fathers...._ He read on, gliding over the familiar words with a pleasant sense of acquaintanceship, the sense of sharing an idea with a respected friend. _To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me._ The next line of the essay made him sit up straight in the chair. He read it over twice, then closed the pamphlet and carefully put it back in the bookcase with a vague feeling of having been either betrayed or helped, he couldn't tell which. As he was turning out the lights to go to bed, his com buzzed. Answering it, he recognized the voice of Banning's secretary. "Mr. Meany, can you get back to the base right away? Something's happened." "What is it?" Colin snapped. "The Colonel has gotten back into _Phoenix I_." * * * * * "... understand exactly _how_ it happened," Banning said. "He seemed to be sleeping peacefully, and one of the men went in the room to take out his garbage, for Christ's sake. When the door opened, he made a dash for it." The two men stood in the control room before the wide window-wall looking out on the landing pad. _Phoenix I_, still surrounded by scaffolding, was brightly lit in the glaring beams of a dozen searchlights playing from the Gila Base buildings and trucks on the field. "Can he take it off?" Colin asked. "I don't think so," Banning said. "Sergeant, is there fuel in those tanks?" "Yes, sir," said one of the men in the group that crowded in front of the window. "But the feed valve is off. It can't get into the firing chambers." "What would happen if he tried?" Colin asked.