And he remembered how it had been with Sam, who would have moved the Earth with arms and legs tied behind him to have qualified. Sam, who had hungered for it, but had taken a lesser assignment cheerfully, just so, at least, he could be a part of some other pilot's team in space. Sam, who had that look in his eyes. But since his assignment to the _White Whale_ fifteen years ago, there had never been a sign--not the slightest, that Joel had been able to detect, that he was doing anything but what he most wanted. That took guts, and guts. Joel understood. And so now they'd hit it again. Mneurium-4, the "wonder-element" that science had discovered would put a host of Earth's most dreaded diseases to rout, but which it had not been able to obtain or synthesize despite years of exhaustive effort. Captain Joel, they had told him, the radio-astronomers say there could be mneurium-4 somewhere out in Boötis. Get some. And in spite of them and their damned passion for onward-and-upward, if they insisted he pilot space to bring them back one new gew-gaw after another to play with, then he'd bring them back gew-gaws until they choked! _Choked!_ And the world he wanted--the world he'd always wanted, would just have to be for somebody else. Then he looked at their faces, and they were waiting. "All right, I get your point! Don't just stand there--Southard, get your 'copters going! I want a fully plotted area of operation for the next six months, including jump-off point as of tomorrow at 0600 hours, and on this desk by 2200 tonight! Dobermann, you won't have anything to do for awhile, so you can get Southard's servodrillers going for him; get 'em all out, form 'em on the port flank in details of five. I want to see it by 2100. Sam, has Dobermann given you any practice in their lingo? Good--all right, it's time I met 'em--you'll take me to their capital city or wherever it is their top people are and we'll get things down in black and white. I'll be ready for you in twenty minutes. Any questions?" There weren't. Joel's three officers turned and left, each scrambling to his new assignment, glad to actually get started before something happened to upset the unexpected simplicity of the whole thing. There'd never been a mission that had come off as smoothly as this one was beginning. It promised to make them feel guilty to draw their pay checks for it. For once, it looked as though Joel was going to get what he came after without having to fight down to raw nerve and bone to get it. Good. The Captain had an easy one coming. When they'd gone, Joel dropped his great frame into the ancient chair behind his big desk and got to work with the ship's intercom, flipping it to main circuit. He did ten minutes' talking in six, and Phase One was organized, down to the last ship's guard, down to the last assistant servomech. Then he had fourteen minutes until Carruthers was due, ready to drive him to meet these people in their cultivated forest.