Steve was still fuming about his foster father's suggestion when he returned to Base One. He sat over his desk, writing the reports of his inspections, and constantly repeated the original question: _Was he being overly hard on Wrightwood because he disliked him?_ Once or twice the urge to lighten a report came, then once or twice the desire to make one more damning came; and the result of this was to leave Steve in a quandary. He wanted to be fair. But no man can be honestly fair when his emotions are involved; he gave up, filled in the report statements in a mechanical manner, transcribing them from his notes as though he had no opinion other than the notes, and when he finished that, he felt at least that he had not been inclined to color the data. Finishing the paper work, Steve headed for the mess hall and met Lois on the way. "Coffee?" he asked. She nodded, looking at him carefully. "What's wrong, Steve?" "Inspection is not a pleasant job." "What happened?" Steve stopped short and looked at her. Lois stopped too, to face him seriously. "Bribery?" she asked. Steve said nothing. Lois stamped her foot. "What kind of man is Wrightwood?" she stormed. "You'd think we were doing this for spite instead of for his own protection." * * * * * Steve nodded. "William Wrightwood is a power-hungry man," he said. "Nothing but being an absolute dictator of the universe would satisfy him, and that would only partially sate him because it is not so much the wielding of power that pleases Wrightwood. It is the gaining of more and more power." "I hadn't considered that." Steve nodded and turned; they started towards the mess again. "What makes a man that way?" she asked idly. "Frustration of one sort or another," he said. "And what is Wrightwood's particular frustration?" Steve snorted angrily. "Something in his psyche insists that the inability to father a son means that the man is less than a man." "That's ridiculous!" "Sure it's ridiculous. But it is that sort of ridiculous thing that has caused more war and suffering than perhaps any other single thing. William Wrightwood lacks a son. He has--like Napoleon--married and divorced three women because they could not give him a son. He married the fourth because she already had a son. Then he killed her because she could not produce a duplicate for him." "Oh Steve--that's hard to believe!" Steve grunted. "It was not murder--legally," he said bitterly. "But bitterness and recrimination are just as deadly as the knife or the bullet." "But how about his foster son?" "Wrightwood tried everything he could to make a real son of him." "Well, that's an admirable trait."