is
meal.

"What'd he say?" MacMaine asked, just to keep his oar in.

"Ahhh, nothing serious, I guess," said VanDeusen, around a mouthful of
steak. "Said we were all clogged up with paper work, makin' reports on
tests, things like that. Said, why don't we figure out something to pop
those Carrot-skins outa the sky. So I said to him, 'Look, Lootenant,' I
said, 'you got your job to do, I got mine. If the paper work's pilin'
up,' I said, 'it's because somebody isn't pulling his share. And it
better not be you,' I said." He chuckled and speared another cube of
steak with his fork. "That settled him down. He's all right, though.
Young yet, you know. Soon's he gets the hang of how the Space Force
operates, he'll be O.K."

Since VanDeusen was the senior officer at the table, the others
listened respectfully as he talked, only inserting a word now and then
to show that they were listening.

MacMaine was thinking deeply about something else entirely, but
VanDeusen's influence intruded a little. MacMaine was wondering what it
was that bothered him about General Tallis, the Kerothi prisoner.

The alien was pleasant enough, in spite of his position. He seemed to
accept his imprisonment as one of the fortunes of war. He didn't
threaten or bluster, although he tended to maintain an air of
superiority that would have been unbearable in an Earthman.

Was that the reason for his uneasiness in the general's presence? No.
MacMaine could accept the reason for that attitude; the general's
background was different from that of an Earthman, and therefore he
could not be judged by Terrestrial standards. Besides, MacMaine could
acknowledge to himself that Tallis was superior to the norm--not only
the norm of Keroth, but that of Earth. MacMaine wasn't sure he could
have acknowledged superiority in another Earthman, in spite of the fact
that he knew that there must be men who were his superiors in one way
or another.

Because of his social background, he knew that he would probably form
an intense and instant dislike for any Earthman who talked the way
Tallis did, but he found that he actually _liked_ the alien officer.

It came as a slight shock when the realization hit MacMaine that his
liking for the general was exactly why he was uncomfortable around him.
Dammit, a man isn't supposed to like his enemy--and most especially
when that enemy does and says things that one would despise in a
friend.

Come to think of it, though, did he,