was the reply, "or I'll turn
you inside out!"

"Yeah? You and what fleet of spaceships?"

"Just me, buster, with my bare hands!"

The Solar Guard officer on the control deck smiled at the young cadet
beside him as the good-natured argument crackled over the intercom
speaker overhead. "Looks like those two will never stop battling,
Corbett," he commented dryly.

"Guess they'll never learn, sir," sighed the cadet.

"That's all right. It's when they stop battling that I'll start getting
worried," answered the officer. He turned back to the controls. "One
hundred thousand feet from Earth's surface! Begin landing procedure!"

As Cadet Tom Corbett snapped orders into the intercom and his unit-mates
responded by smooth co-ordinated action, the giant rocket cruiser
_Polaris_ slowly arched through Earth's atmosphere, first nosing up to
lose speed and then settling tailfirst toward its destination--the
spaceport at Space Academy, U.S.A.

Far below, on the grounds of the Academy, cadets wearing the green
uniforms of first-year Earthworms and the blue of the upper-classmen
stopped all activity as they heard the blasting of the braking rockets
high in the heavens. They stared enviously into the sky, watching the
smooth steel-hulled spaceship drop toward the concrete ramp area of the
spaceport, three miles away.

[Illustration: SPACE ACADEMY U.S.A.]

In his office at the top of the gleaming Tower of Galileo, Commander
Walters, commandant of Space Academy, paused for a moment from his
duties and turned from his desk to watch the touchdown of the great
spaceship. And on the grassy quadrangle, Warrant Officer Mike McKenny,
short and stubby in his scarlet uniform of the enlisted Solar Guard,
stopped his frustrating task of drilling newly arrived cadets to watch
the mighty ship come to Earth.

Young and old, the feeling of belonging to the great fleet that
patrolled the space lanes across the millions of miles of the solar
system was something that never died in a true spaceman. The green-clad
cadets dreamed of the future when they would feel the bucking rockets in
their backs. And the older men smiled faintly as memories of their own
first space flight came to mind.

Aboard the _Polaris_, the young cadet crew worked swiftly and smoothly
to bring their ship to a safe landing. There was Tom Corbett, an average
young man in this age of science, who had been selected as the
control-deck and command cadet of the _Polaris_ unit a