hip with a
gimlet-eyed attitude of hoping to find some flaw, just one tiny flub, so
they could turn some luckless mechanic inside out. The Inspection
Department, traditionally an enemy of Maintenance, took over from there
and inspected every part as if it had been slapped together by a bunch
of army goof-offs who knew that pilots were expendable in peace or war
and, unconsciously at least, aided in expending them.

Both departments had certified, with formal preflight papers, that the
ship was in readiness for deep space. But Lynwood considered such papers
as so much garbage, and went over the entire ship himself. This might
have had something to do with his so-called luck.

He wondered if Frank and Louie had checked into the ship this morning.
Probably had; last night's outing wasn't much to hang over about. A
steak at the Eagle Cafe down in Yellow Sands, a couple of drinks at
Smitty's, a game of pool at Smiley's, a few dances at the Stars and
Moons. Big night out for his crew before they left for deep space.
Yellow Sands was strictly for young families, where bright-boy hubby
worked up on the hill at E.H.Q., and wifey raised super-bright kids who
already considered Dad to be behind the times. Their idea of sin in that
town was to snub the wrong matron at a cocktail party; or not snub, as
the case might be. Not that it mattered much, neither Frank nor Louie
was dedicated to hell-raising.

When he at last opened the door to the generator room, he saw his flight
engineer, Frank Norton, had a couple of student E's on his hands.

It was one of the nuisances of being stationed here at E.H.Q. that you'd
have swarms of these super-bright youngsters hanging around, asking
questions, disputing your answers, arguing with each other, and, if you
didn't watch them carefully, taking things apart and putting them back
together in different hookups to see what would happen.

The first thing these kids were taught was to disregard everything
everybody had ever said; to start out from scratch as if nobody had ever
had the sense to think about the problem before; to doubt most of all
the opinions of experts, for, obviously, if the experts were right then
there would be no problem. Most of them didn't have to be taught it,
they seemed to have been born with it. Time was you batted a young smart
aleck down, told him to go get dry behind the ears before he shot off
his mouth. But not these days. These days you looked at him hopefully,