and men turned around in their seats to look at the author of this defiance. “I don’t know, sir,” he said again, in a loud but calm voice. “I don’t know what my first consideration would be in making a space table like that. I’m an infantry officer. I got an 0302.” The colonel’s forehead went pink under the glare of the lights. “I stated earlier, Captain, that I wanted some sort of answer. None of you gentlemen is expected to know this subject pat, but you can essay _some kind of an answer_.” Mannix just stood there, solid and huge, blinking at the colonel. “I just have to repeat, sir,” he said finally, “that I don’t have the faintest idea what my first consideration would be. I never went to cargo-loading school. I’m an 0302. And I’d like to respectfully add, sir, if I might, that there’s hardly anybody in this room who knows that answer, either. They’ve forgotten everything they ever learned seven years ago. Most of them don’t even know how to take an M-1 apart. They’re too old. They should be home with their family.” There was passion in his tone but it was controlled and straightforward--he had managed to keep out of his voice either anger or insolence--and then he fell silent. His words had the quality, the sternness, of an absolute and unequivocal fact, as if they had been some intercession for grace spoken across the heads of a courtroom by a lawyer so quietly convinced of his man’s innocence that there was no need for gesticulations or frenzy. The colonel’s eyes bulged incredulously at Mannix from across the rows of seats, but in the complete, astounded hush that had followed he was apparently at a loss for words. A bit unsteadily, he called out another name and Mannix sat down, staring stonily ahead. It had been perhaps a court-martial offense, at least worthy of some reprimand, but that was all there was to it. Nothing happened, no repercussions, nothing. The thing had been forgotten; either that, or it had been stored away in the universal memory of colonels, where all such incidents are sorted out for retribution, or are forgotten. Whatever effect it had on the colonel, or whatever higher, even more important sources got wind of it, it had its effect on Mannix. And the result was odd. Far from giving the impression that he had been purged, that he had blown off excess pressure, he seemed instead more tense, more embittered, more in need to scourge something--his own boiling spirit, authority, anything.