"That is fortunate, then. You know, at least, that we thought we could make a technician out of you! Report to the NIC room in one hour, Master Kane! Your little show will be all ready by then. You're dismissed!" * * * * * Director Gentech Starn himself, flanked by three of his closest aides, entered the NIC room. They took standing positions behind Kane. And behind them, at the prescribed distance of respect, were grouped the ship's full complement of Section Overseers and instructors. Kane stood before the central nav-screen and its compact banks of controls. Suddenly a red blinker flashed, dully reflected from the myriad tiers of sensitive mechanism which lined the room's curving bulkheads. He pressed a stud, and the screen before him came alive. Blackness, studded with the tiny white-hot sparks that were the suns of the Milky Way. And then suddenly a larger one which moved swiftly. And then he was no longer aware of the electric silence that engulfed him, and there was no sensation, no thought but the singular sensation and thought which co-ordinated nerve and sensitively disciplined muscle; which directed his fingers unerringly across the studded control-banks and guided the streaking spacetender as surely as though they reached into Space and touched it, holding it by their own strength to its wide, curving course. Relay gauges hummed and clicked softly; velocity and power readings registered, and nav-grid traced the fleet craft's path through the void. Then Kane spoke. "Sires, as you can see, the spacetender in which my drive unit has been installed is now proceeding at what is usually considered to be topmost velocity and with what would normally be maximum power output for such a craft." He could feel his voice waver at first, and then with the sound of it and the reassuring feeling of the control studs beneath his fingertips, it strengthened, became firm. And he knew they were listening. Listening as though it were the Gentech himself who spoke. Then he summoned up all his courage. "I will now," he said, "accelerate the tender to treble its present speed, while increasing power output by approximately six-fold. If you will watch the central group of gauges carefully, please." He jammed his finger down on a white, diamond shaped stud, and his breath clogged in his throat. The screen followed the tender's course faithfully. The gauges chuckled and hummed. And then the blackness was torn open with a coruscating, soundless flash, and the tender was in an instant nothing but a white cloud of rapidly dissipating atoms! No!... No!... No! There was no sound from behind him, but he knew that the huge chamber was quickly and silently emptying. He did not turn from the screen. It was black again, now, relieved only by the tiny sparks that were the stars.