alf to himself.

Cassel yawned and licked his lips. "Anyone want to play some gin?" he
asked, stroking his beard. The beard was a memento of his undergraduate
days. Cassel maintained he could store almost fifteen minutes worth of
oxygen in its follicles. He had never stepped into space unhelmeted to
prove it.

Morse looked away, and Edwardson automatically watched the indicator.
This routine had been drilled into them, branded into their
subconscious. They would as soon have cut their throats as leave the
indicator unguarded.

"Do you think they'll come soon?" Edwardson asked, his brown rodent's
eyes on the indicator. The men didn't answer him. After two months
together in space their conversational powers were exhausted. They
weren't interested in Cassel's undergraduate days, or in Morse's
conquests.

They were bored to death even with their own thoughts and dreams, bored
with the attack they expected momentarily.

"Just one thing _I'd_ like to know," Edwardson said, slipping with ease
into an old conversational gambit. "How far can they do it?"

They had talked for weeks about the enemy's telepathic range, but they
always returned to it.

As professional soldiers, they couldn't help but speculate on the enemy
and his weapons. It was their shop talk.

"Well," Morse said wearily, "Our Detector network covers the system out
beyond Mars' orbit."

"Where we sit," Cassel said, watching the indicators now that the others
were talking.

"They might not even know we have a detection unit working," Morse said,
as he had said a thousand times.

"Oh, stop," Edwardson said, his thin face twisted in scorn. "They're
telepathic. They must have read every bit of stuff in Everset's mind."

"Everset didn't know we had a detection unit," Morse said, his eyes
returning to the dial. "He was captured before we had it."

"Look," Edwardson said, "They ask him, 'Boy, what would you do if you
knew a telepathic race was coming to take over Earth? How would you
guard the planet?'"

"Idle speculation," Cassel said. "Maybe Everset didn't think of this."

"He thinks like a man, doesn't he? Everyone agreed on this defense.
Everset would, too."

"Syllogistic," Cassel murmured. "Very shaky."

"I sure wish he hadn't been captured," Edwardson said.

"It could have been worse," Morse put in, his face sadder than ever.
"What if they'd captured _both_ of them?"

"I wish they'd come," Edwardson said.

* * *