"_You're to be brought down by landing-grid, sir. Rocket landings have been ruled non-permitted by the Sector Chief himself, sir. But we are already landing one boat, sir. Senior Officer Werner is being brought in now, sir. His boat is still two diameters out, sir, and it will take us nearly an hour to get him down without extreme discomfort, sir._" "Then we'll wait," said Hardwick. "Hm-m-m. Call us again before you start hunting us with the landing-beam. My pilot has a rather promising idea. And will you call us on the proper frequency then, please?" The voice aground said unhappily: "_Yes, sir. Certainly, sir._" The carrier-wave hum stopped. Young Barnes said gratefully: "Thank you, sir! Hell hath no fury like a ranking officer caught in a blunder! He'd have twisted my tail for his mistake, sir, and it could have been bad!" Then he paused. He said uneasily, "But ... beg pardon, sir! I haven't any promising ideas. Not that I know of!" "You have an hour to develop one," Hardwick told him. * * * * * Internally, Hardwick was disturbed. There were few occasions on which even one Senior Officer was called in to Sector Headquarters. Interstellar distances being what they were, and thirty light-speeds being practically the best available, Senior Officers necessarily acted pretty much as independent authorities. To call one man in meant all his other work had to go by the board for a matter of months. But two--And Werner? Werner was getting to ground first. If there were something serious ashore, Werner would make a great point of arriving first, even if only by hours. A keen sort of person in giving the right impression, he'd risen in the Service faster than Hardwick. That other Lawlor field would have been his ship getting out of the way. The young officer at his elbow fidgeted. "Beg pardon, sir. What sort of idea should I develop, sir? I'm not sure I understand--" "It's rather annoying to have to stay parked in free fall," said Hardwick patiently. "And it's always a good practice to review annoying situations and see if they can be bettered." Barnes' forehead wrinkled. "We could land much quicker on rockets, sir. And ... even when the landing-grid reaches out for us, since we've no gravity-coils, they'll have to handle us very cautiously or they'd break our necks!" Hardwick nodded. Barnes was thinking straight enough, but it takes young officers a long time to think of thinking straight. They have to obey so many orders unquestioningly that they tend to stop doing anything else. Yet at each rise in grade some slight trace of increased capacity to think is required. In order to reach really high rank, an officer has to be capable of thinking which simply isn't possible unless he's kept in practice on the way up. Young Barnes looked up, startled.