rength--and his weakness as well.
Characters like that never think it possible for someone else to
outthink them. Which is what _I'm_ going to do."

"Modest, aren't you," Steng said.

"I try not to be," I told him. "False modesty is the refuge of the
incompetent. I'm going to catch this thug and I'll tell you how I'll do
it. He's going to hit again soon, and wherever he hits there will be
some kind of a periodical with my plant in it. Whatever else he is
after, he is going to take all of the magazines and papers he can find.
Partly to satisfy his own ego, but mostly to keep track of the things he
is interested in. Such as ship sailings."

"You're just guessing--you don't know all this."

His automatic assumption of my incompetence was beginning to get me
annoyed. I bridled my temper and tried one last time.

"Yes, I'm guessing--an informed guess--but I do know some facts as well.
_Ogget's Dream_ was cleaned out of all reading matter, that was one of
the first things I checked. We can't stop the battleship from attacking
again, but we can see to it that the time after that she sails into a
trap."

"I don't know," the captain said, "it sounds to me like...."

I never heard what it sounded like, which is all right since he was
getting under my skin and might have been tempted to pull my
pseudo-rank. The alarm sirens cut his sentence off and we foot-raced to
the communications room.

Captain Steng won by a nose, it was his ship and he knew all the
shortcuts. The psiman was holding out a transcription, but he summed it
up in one sentence. He looked at me while he talked and his face was
hard and cold.

"They hit again, knocked out a Navy supply satellite, thirty-four men
dead."

"If your plan doesn't work, _admiral_," the captain whispered hoarsely
in my ear, "I'll personally see that you're flayed alive!"

"If my plan doesn't work, _captain_--there won't be enough of my skin
left to pick up with a tweezer. Now if you please, I'd like to get to
Udrydde and pick up my ship as soon as possible."

The easy-going hatred and contempt of all my associates had annoyed me,
thrown me off balance. I was thinking with anger now, not with logic.
Forcing a bit of control, I ordered my thoughts, checking off a mental
list.

"Belay that last command," I shouted, getting back into my old space-dog
mood. "Get a call through first and find out if any of our plants were
picked up during the raid."

While the psiman unfocused