d to
hell and back, aren't they? I wonder what's really going on behind all
this?"

He leaned forward, suddenly roaring and ferocious. "Why are Williams and
I followed everywhere we go when we leave here? To see who we talk to?
Is that the way of it? Why do quite a few of the ships you and I and
Williams have rescued in the past few years never show up again? Just
where are they? I don't see them reported missing in the newspapers,
either."

He leaned back in exhausted satisfaction at the look on the little
doctor's face. "Yeah, Doc, the only way to get anything out of you is to
blast it out, isn't it?"

Pale and frightened, Williams hurried across the room to the table and,
with shaky hands, took out three containers of coffee from the paper bag
and passed them out.

Nobody bothered to thank him.

The hidden tension in the room had begun to mount steadily, so Donnelly
helped it out a little.

"Is this the first time you've ever been on the defensive, Doc?" he
asked.

Williams jumped in before the explosion. "When will the rocket get to
the kid's ship, Doctor?" he asked.

"In about thirty days," the little man answered, coldly and
deliberately.

Williams blinked in surprise. "Good Lord," he said. "I thought it was
supposed to be in twelve hours or so?"

"That's the whole point," snapped Donnelly. "That's what I'm so fighting
mad about. Think of it yourself, Williams. Suppose you had a son or a
brother up there, how would you feel about this whole infernal, lying
business?

"I don't get it," he went on. "I just don't get the big central idea
behind it. Don't all these tugs we send out ever get there? First they
tell the kid he'll have his life saved in twelve hours or so. Then they
get him to take a shot so his mind won't crack up while he's waiting.

"Now they know very well the shot won't last for thirty days. If it did
he'd starve to death. So what have they accomplished? Nothing. As a
matter of fact they've made things worse instead of better. What's going
to happen to that poor kid when he wakes up in twelve hours and finds
out he still has to wait for thirty more days? What's going to happen to
him then, Doc? Don't you think that kid will really go off his rocker
for sure?"

Donnelly and Williams both looked at the little psychiatrist. He sat
again at his former place at the table, white and shaken. His face was
once again buried in one hand.

"Come on, Doc," whispered Williams, quietly. "What'