l now had been seated facing the desk, got up, and
after glaring at Hawks, turned and walked toward the door. Tom gasped,
and grabbing Roger by the arm, involuntarily pointed at the two men.

"Look, Roger--those men--" he whispered.

"Yeah," said Roger. "Those are the wise-guy space crawlers we met on the
monorail, the ones who called us punks!"

"How'd they get here so fast?" asked Astro.

"Must have taken a jetliner from Atom City, I guess."

Strong, who sat near Tom, heard the exchange between the cadets.

"You know those men?" he asked.

"Well--uh--not exactly, sir. We just had a little run-in with them on
the monorail returning from leave, that's all," said Tom. "Nothing
serious. They don't think much of the Solar Guard, though."

"I gathered as much," said Hawks dryly. He walked over from his desk. "I
hated to give them the license to operate, but I had to, since I had no
valid reason to turn them down. They have a good idea, too."

"That so? What is it?" asked Strong.

"They have an old chemical-burning space freighter in which they're
going to take fair visitors up for a short ride. You see, the big one,
Gus Wallace, is an old deep-space merchantman. The smaller one is Luther
Simms, a rocketman."

"Hm. Not a bad idea at all," mused Strong. "They should make out all
right."

With that, the two Solar Guard officers dropped the incident of Wallace
and Simms and turned to exchanging news of mutual friends and of what
each had been doing since their last meeting. Finally, as the
conversation was brought around to the exposition, Hawks got up and sat
on the side of the desk, facing Strong and the cadets. His eyes glowed
as he spoke.

"Steve," he said, "this is going to be the greatest gathering of minds,
thoughts, and ideas in the knowledgeable history of mankind! There are
going to be lectures from the greatest minds in the system on any and
all subjects you can think of. In one building we're going to build a
whole spaceship--a rocket cruiser--piece by piece, right in front of the
eyes of fair visitors. In another building we're going to have the
greatest collection of musicians in the universe, continuously playing
the most beautiful music, in a hall built to seat a half million people.
Industry, science, medicine, art, literature, astrophysics, space
flight, to say nothing of a comparative history exhibit designed to show
the people where our forefathers went off the track by warring against
each o