The nine minds released contact and moved apart. Fred felt Pat's mind slip into his. They rose off the dome and increased speed, soaring into the sky and out, above the ring of planets. "Why didn't we borrow a couple of bodies?" Fred asked. He could picture himself strutting elegantly in the body of a Greek god, with Pat to match beside him. "Please stop that--we're zigzagging about. You're new, Fred. Every Diver goes through the same routine--a pep-talk from the President, Doctor Sprinnell's little tricks, your first Dive all over the universe, and then routine patrols. What you don't know is that whenever we Divers come into contact with another race or another form of life, we are invariably offered gifts of some sort. Primitives sense the presence of a Diver and put on a show, lay out food and their treasures. The more advanced, using trained telepaths, try to bribe us. And so on, without exception." "Okay, so I'm new, Pat. So I don't know the pattern. A few days ago I was a slob in an automation-parts supply house and now I'm here with you at the back end of the Milky Way, or the center, whichever way you look at it. But Doc Spinner made some pretty odd cracks to me about security and I don't like the idea of being spied on all the time back on Earth." "No Diver does. The Defense Council put us in business, but now they are afraid of us, in a way. We can go anywhere and see anything. We might have a look at their secret installations or their private files. Then we _would_ be in trouble." "Well, I didn't ask to come into this. But now that I'm in and a Diver, just one fancy move by Security and I'm off to get another body. That sounds odd, doesn't it? But I mean it." "I'm glad." "Eh?" "I'm very glad, Fred. I wanted to see how you'd take it. I feel the same way. It's true we're always offered presents, but immortality is something larger than a present. And to get out from under the thumb of the Psis and their spying is something all of us have been longing for." "And I'll tell you something else, Pat. From now on, if the other Divers agree, we'll do what we want. Oh, the Solar System can have its patrolling. I'll have to learn how that's done from you. We'll tell them what they want to know. But one sign of interference and we're off, and they can keep the bodies. We won't tell them they are a backward colony that has forgotten how to Dive. But we know it. We won't tell them the rest of the Galaxy is run from the center back in Sagittarius by humans who can Dive. But we know that too. If I thought at all about it, I thought we were freaks, useful nuisances. And I didn't mind being ordered about. But we're not freaks, Pat. We're the _normal_ human beings that the Senate back there meant to create. It's the Solar System that is lop-sided, not us." "I'm not--overinfluencing you, Fred?"