"I took my bearings, reversed, and went back. Eventually I found the fleet again. The Galactics had matched course and velocity with them and they were just beginning to tow them off, one ship to one with plenty of theirs left over, in the general direction of Altair. "They hadn't got into overdrive yet. I slipped in--there were a hundred of their little scouts nosing around, about the same mass as my lifeboat--and berthed in the same port I'd come out of. I got out and walked into the control room. "The crew was still there, still alive. But not men. They were lying on the deck, looking at nothing. Their mouths were open, and they were drooling." Rack's head moved stiffly, and his sharp profile turned from one side of the crowd to the other. "Mindless idiots," he said. "They couldn't feed themselves, or stand up, or sit. But they had saved me. "I built up the charge and took my time about it. When the Galactics went into overdrive, I took off in another direction. I was a good seventy light years away before they knew I was gone. "I had a ship, an undamaged ship. But I had no crew to man her. I can astrogate, and when I have to, I can man the engines on top of that. But I can't fight her as well. "I came here, put the _Armageddon_ into a one-day orbit and came down in a lifeboat. I want to go back and find out what those slime-eaters did to us, and give them a taste of the same. _I want twenty men._" There was a silence. Rack said, in the same even, low voice, "Will you fight for the human race?" Someone called, "What did you do with your other crew?" Rack said, "I gave them military burial, in space." For the first time, the crowd as a whole broke its silence. A low murmur rose. Rack said sharply, "I would have given my life for those men, as they did for me, gladly. But they were already dead. If there's a way to restore a man's mind after that has been done to it, only the vermin know how. I would rather be buried in space, and so would they." A deep voice called, "Are you God, Rack?" "I'm not God," he said promptly. "Are you a man?" * * * * * There was another murmur, dying as a pulsing movement began near the back of the room: someone was forcing his way toward Rack. In the stillness, another voice said thinly, "My Demetrios ... my Alexander ..." It was Moulios, wailing for his two lost sons. Red-faced, with a lock of black hair hanging over his forehead, the painter Vekshin squeezed through to the edge of the table on which Rack stood. He shouted, "I'm a man, all right. What do you call yourself, you assassin? You come here with blood dripping from your jaws like a weasel fresh from a poultry yard, and we're supposed to feel sorry for you because they wouldn't let you go on killing! The great god Rack! _Ptui!_" Rack did not move. He said quietly, "I killed your enemies, while you sat at home and drank tea."