"Hell, of course you are. I can hardly think of you without looping around a star. But the facts are the same. And from today, we're not Divers. We're the _Free_ Divers, housing where we wish to, seeing what we want...." "And protecting the Solar System, Fred." "Well--they're entitled to that. And we'll keep to their security regulations for our bodies on Earth, if it makes them happy. We can afford to give a little here and there." They shot together through the nearest T-Tauri variable arch and zoomed happily. After a while, they returned to the rendezvous off the American coast on Earth. The other Divers were waiting for them. "It's a custom," Pat told him as they approached the nine Divers, hovering in space, "to greet you as a new Diver." They closed together as they met, within Fred's larger shell. He told them. There were no doubts among their minds. "Sooner or later," Fred finished, "one of us was bound to meet the true Galactics we've just met. It happened to be Pat and myself. I'm new and don't know much about Diving, but I've seen enough to know that from now on I'm a Free Diver." "So are we all," they answered. * * * * * Returning across America in the one shell, they scattered confusion and headache throughout the psi-watching stations in their path by the scramble of eleven sets of thoughts. Then they separated and left Fred to go down to his body while they returned to theirs in the different places Security had put them. Pat followed him down as a precaution. This time, Fred Williams' body fitted his mind with a greater feeling of strangeness but less muddling. The smaller consciousnesses of his body did not obscure his perceptions; he was aware of it as a housing for his mind. He looked at Dr. Howard Sprinnell, who had listened to him so far in silence, uncommenting and unmoved, a mild, friendly face in the small medical room. "So, Fred. I warned you, Pat warned you. You go out on two Dives, a few days after discovering that such things exist, and you come back to give me an ultimatum for the Solar Government. A lifetime here in the drabbest, almost medieval surroundings of the city and, after a few days, you come back announcing you're a Free Diver, owing nothing to anyone. Is that right? Do you still stick to that?" Fred nodded. "You realize what we can do to you, Fred? Dammit, on your first Dive you almost went out of space-time altogether, only you didn't know what you were doing. Do you know what you're doing now? Do you think I've spent twenty years searching for negative Psis for government service so that you can turn them against the Solar System?" "Hold on, Doc. No one said anything about being against the Solar System. If there's work to be done, we'll do it. But in our own way and without being spied on." "Just give me one reason why the government should trust you, with the entire Security system."