Sako."

"Do I have a word in this?" asked Kieran, between his teeth.

"What?" asked Vaillant.

"This. The hell with you all. I'll go no place with you or for you."

* * * * *

He got a savage satisfaction from saying it, he was tired of sitting
there like a booby while they discussed him, but he did not get the
reaction from them he had expected. The two men merely continued to look
thoughtfully at him. The woman sighed,

"You see? There wasn't time enough to explain it to him. It's natural
for him to react with hostility."

"Put him out, and take him along," said Webber.

"No," said Paula sharply. "If he goes out right now he's liable to stay
out. I won't answer for it."

"Meanwhile," said Vaillant with an edge to his voice, "the pattern is
forming up. Have you any suggestions, Paula?"

She nodded. "This."

She suddenly squeezed something under Kieran's nose, a small thing that
she had produced from her pocket without his noticing it, in his angry
preoccupation with the two men. He smelled a sweet, refreshing odor and
he struck her arm away.

"Oh, no, you're not giving me any more dopes--" Then he stopped, for
suddenly it all seemed wryly humorous to him. "A bunch of bloody
incompetents," he said, and laughed. "This is the one thing I would
never have dreamed--that a man could sleep, and wake up in a starship,
and find the starship manned by blunderers."

"Euphoric," said Paula, to the two men.

"At that," said Webber sourly, "there may be something in what he says
about us."

Vaillant turned on him and said fiercely, "If that's what you think--"
Then he controlled himself and said tightly, "Quarrelling's no good.
We're in a box but we can maybe still put it over if we get this man to
Sako. Webber, you and Paula take him in the flitter."

Kieran rose to his feet. "Fine," he said gaily. "Let us go in the
flitter, whatever that is. I am already bored with starships."

He felt good, very good. He felt a little drunk, not enough to impede
his mental processes but enough to give him a fine devil-may-care
indifference to what happened next. So it was only the spray Paula had
given him--it still made his body feel better and removed his shock and
worry and made everything seem suddenly rather amusing.

"Let us to Sako in the flitter," he said. "After all, I'm living on
velvet, I might as well see the whole show. I'm sure that Sako, wherever
it is, will be just as full of