thing.

"How could I have missed it?" Boswellister moaned. "I should have sold
them with sex, right from the beginning."

"What do you do, handsome? Sing?" A bundle-clutching housewife breathed
into his face, stepping on the commander's foot as she shoved in close
to Boswellister.

"Take me home!" Boswellister beseeched the commander.

The officers and crew, tattered, demedaled, bruised and completely
defeated in morale, formed a flying wedge and drove for the safety of
the ship.

The ramp retracted. The port closed, then opened briefly to eject a
nosey boy, closing finally on the demands and the mocking laughter and
the clangor of arriving police cars.

"Raise ship!" the commander ordered. He sopped at the blood from his
gashed arm and said to his first officer, "Somebody in that mob used a
knife to go after those service stripes."

The first shuddered. "Ugly brutes."

Boswellister leaned against the corridor bulkhead and sighed as the
Ipplinger starship rose from the ground. How could he explain to his
poppa? All his brothers had won their worlds. He _would_ do it. He
squared his shoulders. After all, he was a Boswellister. Boswellister
XIV, no less. A son of Gaphroldshan IX himself, the Prince of Ippling
World LXIV, a Royal Prince of the Central Ippling.

He walked resolutely to the control room, riding the crest of his
refurbished dignity.

"Put me down on that planet we spotted last year," he ordered. "What was
that star map number?"

"G.S.R. 285139-F. R. A. 592-105-R.U. 13," his alert assistant
astronomical officer answered, reading the number from a prepared
memorandum.

Boswellister hesitated. Should he reprimand the officer for anticipating
his failure or compliment him for his efficiency? Boswellister backed
water and went to his room to learn the language he'd need, while the
officers pulled their own demoralized spirits together so they could go
to work on the crew when the news broke that they weren't going home.

* * * * *

They made a quick passage to their destination, and Boswellister--well
rested, well fed, hypnotically tutored, supplied with communicators, a
synthesizer for his food and a portable equation writer strapped to his
back, and his irrepressible, dauntless belief in himself in triumphant
operation--stepped from the ramp onto this newest world of his Princely
destiny.

"Circle in orbit," he ordered. "I'll call you when I need you."

Boswel