"You're an astrogator, they tell me. We can use you if you're not lying." "Dave ..." Frank began. "That's enough. We don't use last names up here. And you!" His one good eye examined Sadie as if she were a bug. "Nurse, eh? Know anything about radiation burns?" "I was in the uranium mines, sir." "Good. Your job's to help the doctors keep me on my feet a few months longer. Haven't time to die just yet." "How the _Champ_?" Mike changed the unpleasant subject. "Just back from a swing beyond Jupiter." The big man's face lighted up for the first time. "What a ship! Had her up to three quarters light speed. She ran like a dream." "Three quarters light speed," Frank gasped. "That's around one hundred and forty thousand miles per second." "She'd have done better, except that we started having some kind of eye trouble ... sort of like seeing double. A damned queer feeling, I tell you. Gives you the screaming meemies.... Well," he came back to normal, "thanks for bringing me an astrogator, Mike. When do we move?" "As soon as the Boss sets a date with New Washington." "I'll be ready." Hans escorted Mike to the door, then growled at the recruits: "Come along. I'll show you your quarters. You won't need them much; we work sixteen hour shifts here ... and I mean work!" * * * * * Frank spent the next month in a fever of toil. Hans was a slavedriver who enforced discipline on Shots and Incors alike, even though he had to break heads to do so. All life in the spacious undersea laboratory revolved around the thousand-foot-long, comb-shaped vessel which rested on its cradle beneath a dome reaching almost to the surface of the ocean. Within her silver skin lay the crooked aspirations of Wildoatia. "Look at her," the leader crooned on one occasion. (Frank had been given a clean bill by Security and was being taken on an inspection trip.) "She'll reach Far Centaurus some day ... but I won't be on her." He caressed the bulging stern plates. "In here is a standard set of peroxide jets to take her through atmosphere. I hate the clumsy things. Wish I had time left to solve that problem of radiating heat from a compact pile when it's not operating in space.... Look up there!" They craned their necks, as at a skyscraper. "That battery of rockets projecting from what is now her side uses the new fuel. She travels broadside on after blast-off." They took an elevator to the control room amidships. "Designed the equipment myself." Hans beamed at the banks of quadrants, verniers and sky-encompassing viewplates. "Five years of hard work it took ... to pay off United Stars for this burn!" They toured the engine room where a compact, heavily shielded pile stood ready to change tall stacks of pig iron ingots into unlimited power. Then they inspected the comfortable crew's quarters. "What about armament, sir," Frank probed at last.