"All right, I get your point, Sam," Joel said. Sam quit talking, and for a moment there was silence in the limited confines of the fore-waist bridge. Then Joel put the bottle and the flagon down on the desk, turned his back to it and faced them. "From the way you boys talk this thing up, it all must be just jim-dandy. Maybe better than on that rock back in Aldeberan, or even better than we did in Altair, or Fomalhaut, or Procyon Seven, or any of the rest of 'em...." He paused again, watched their faces. They remembered--all except Southard, who hadn't been with them on any of the old strikes. But his youthful enthusiasm just about made up for the fierce pride that shone in the eyes of the others. * * * * * Back home, the _White Whale_, of all of Earth's great fleet of Explorer-class ships, had hung up the most enviable record. She had brought back rare elements known to men but unobtainable by them within the confines of their own tiny Solar System, or rare life-forms, impossible to study effectively in their native habitats, or precious new data which were beyond the reach of the astronomer's observatory. It meant progress. It meant a living force in the universe, a force of learning and of knowing, which would tolerate no barrier, which would broach neither defeat nor ultimate conclusion. In short, it meant Man. Nicholas Joel knew it, and he still hated space. Since that first indoctrination blast out to the moon and back when he'd been a plebe--since that day that he'd realized for the first time how _big_ it was. And how big men ought to be, but weren't. Big muscles, but little minds.... He still wondered just how the hell they'd sucked him in. They'd hit him somewhere inside, in a place he'd forgotten to guard--his instructors, his Commandant, the Secretary of Science himself. They'd sweet-talked him into staying those twelve years. Young man, they had told him, yours is a body and a brain with an adaptability to space exploration the like of which has never been duplicated in our records. You hate to fly, yet you are the best cadet pilot ever to enter the Academy. You dislike technical and scientific study, yet your grades in this field are the highest on record. You despise the regimen of the military necessary to survival in Space, yet, unaccountably, your cadet commands have been the most efficient and best handled of any in our knowledge. Young man, they had said, here's the works on a silver platter--be a pilot--you owe it to yourself, to the world, to humanity! Say you'll take our ships where no other man would dare, and you can write your own ticket for the rest of your life! _But you simply have to be a Pilot, young man...._