val against Lukania. Someday maybe I'll find out
how to see a Lukan, Rajay-Ben has worked with me a long time to help,
but when the attack came this time all I could do was eat ice and beam a
help call to Rajay-Ben. That Centaurian trading unit was a cheap outfit,
they had hired only one battalion of Arjay-Ben's Ninth Lukanian Free
Patrol, and Rajay-Ben flanked them right off that planet. I got my boys
on their feet and we chased Arjay's men half way back to Salaman with
Rajay-Ben laughing like a hyena the whole way.

"Dip me in mud, Red boy, I'd give a prime contract for one gander at old
Arjay-Ben's face. He's blowing a gasket!"

I said, "Nice flank job."

Rajay-Ben laughed so hard I could see his pattern of colored light
shaking like a dancing rainbow. "I took two Sub-Commanders, wait'll I
hit that bullet-head for ransom!"

* * * * *

Then we stopped laughing. We had won the battle, but Arjay-Ben was a
crafty old soldier and his sabotage squad had wrecked our engines and
our heating units. We were stuck on a frozen planet without heat.

Young Colenso turned white. "What do we do?"

I said, "Beam for help and pray we don't freeze first."

They had missed our small communications reactor unit. We sent out our
call, and we all huddled around the small reactor. There might be enough
heat out of it to let us live five hours. If we were lucky. It was the
third hour when Yuan Saltario began to talk. Maybe it was the nearness
of death.

"I was twenty-two. Portario was the leader on our planet. He found the
error when we had one ship ready. We had three days. No time to get the
other ships ready. He said we were lucky, the other planets didn't have
even one ship ready. Not even time for United Galaxies to help. Portario
chose a thousand of us to go. I was one. At first I felt very good, you
know? I was really happy. Until I found out that my wife couldn't go.
Not fit enough. United Galaxies had beamed the standards to us. Funny
how you don't think about other people until something hurts you. I'd
been married a year. I told them it was both of us or neither of us. I
told Portario to tell United Galaxies they couldn't break up a family
and to hell with their standards. They laughed at me. Not Portario, the
Council. What did they care, they would just take another man. My wife
begged me to go. She cried so much I had to agree to go. I loved her too
much to be able to stay and see the loo