and tons of rock and earth had fallen
on the hangar side, blocking delivery of vital equipment.

With powerful earth-moving machinery, the tunnel was cleared of the
heavy rocks and dirt, and all that remained was a general cleaning up,
and the enlisted man's work gangs had been assigned to that job.

Nearly a hundred tough, battle-scarred spacemen from the enlisted ranks
of the Solar Guard worked in the area, stripped to the waist, their
bodies burned brown from the sun. Sent to the work gang for petty
offenses, rather than for criminal acts, the enlisted men as a whole did
not mind the work. They were under guard, watched by a squad of Space
Marines armed with paralo-ray guns, but there was no attempt to make the
men feel as if they were criminals. Most of the sentences were short,
usually running from five to thirty days, with some extreme cases
serving as long as three months. But no one had ever remembered a Space
Cadet working on the squad, and particularly for six months! It was an
extraordinary situation and the guards, as well as the men on the work
details, sympathized with Roger and Astro. They realized that nothing
really serious had been done, or the boys would have been sent to the
prison asteroid, where all true criminals were sent. So a true spirit of
comradeship developed between the cadets and the enlisted men.

When Captain Strong arrived to speak to Roger and Astro, he found them
in the tunnel, working as a team of a shoveler and a sweeper. Roger
would sweep up a little pile of dirt and Astro would shovel it into a
handcart nearby.

"All right, you Venusian pug!" bawled Roger. "Police the joint!"

Astro scooped up the little pile of dirt neatly and deposited it in the
truck.

"Manning, what made the spaceship cross to Pluto?" he asked.

"To get to the other side of the universe," said Roger.

"All right," interrupted Strong. "If you two will cut out the comedy,
I'd like to talk to you."

"Captain Strong!" yelled Roger. "Hey, fellas! Look!" He turned to the
other men on the work gang. "We're special characters! See? We have
visitors during working hours!"

Strong laughed with the others, and then motioning for Roger and Astro
to follow him, walked to an isolated corner of the tunnel.

"How is it going?" he asked.

"Fine, sir," said Roger. "We have no complaints."

"Yeah," chimed in Astro with a grin. "The food is better here than at
the Academy!"

"Give this Venusian bum a good kitchen