"I'll admit the kidnapping looked like a mistake but really, it fits beautifully." He was getting into his tunic.

He went to the door and beckoned. "Come along and watch a master handle things." So I followed to begin planning Mission Earth, the mission that was carefully designed to fail.

I felt horrible.

Descending into the bowels of Spiteos was, to some, like taking a trip to the infernal regions that some religions promise to the damned.

But I had always regarded it on a par with entering a monstrous den of wild animals. So I lagged behind Lombar long enough to draw a blastick from the armory. The guards are themselves criminals; I was dressed in the common gray uniform of the General Services, without rank badges; I had no status in this place: one could not only be attacked by desperate inmates, one could also be struck down and robbed by guards.

We plummeted down the tubes, the noisome stench of the place already gagging me. We exited at negative level 501. The smell was awful: they sometimes do not dispose of the remains of prisoners who have died, leaving them in the cell until it is needed for someone else – or just pitching the newcomer in with them.

A long hall with moldy wire walls stretched out before us. Behind the highly charged mesh, a few sunken eyes peered at us. In the higher levels there were the secret laboratories of the Apparatus, but here, in some of the cages, were evidences of scientific work: deformed, distorted shapes of abandoned experiments, still alive, hideous, forgotten.

Lombar, black garbed in the uniform of a general, strode along, twitching his stinger, looking neither to right nor left, deaf to the moans and pleas which marked our passage.

We turned a corner and came into a small room, dimly lit with a green light-plate. At the far end of it was an even stronger cage, not tall enough to stand in. Lombar threw a switch and the door swung open.

Jettero Heller was stretched at length upon a cold stone ledge. In the dim light I could see that he still wore the once white sport pants but someone had taken his sweater and shoes. The stab wound of the paralysis dagger had not been tended and dried blood caked his shoulder. His wrists were bound together with a pair of electric cuffs, the kind that continually sting. There were no eating dishes about so he probably had not been fed – and how long had he been here? Four days?

My Gods, I thought, how could one ever expect him to forgive such treatment?

One would have expected him to look degraded. But not so. He was simply lying calmly on the stone ledge, very relaxed and composed.

"Well, well," said Jettero Heller calmly. "The 'drunks' arrive at last." It was the Fleet's contemptuous name for the Apparatus: our insignia was supposed to be a club, a fat paddle with a handle upside-down. But the Fleet chooses to believe it is a bottle. Therefore, they call us "drunks," and this infuriates the Apparatus.

Lombar ordinarily would have struck out with an insult. And I did see his eyes flash for a brief instant.

But Lombar had other things to do. He stood at the bottom of the ledge, bent over. He managed a cheerful smile.

"So far, so good," said Lombar.

Heller just lay there, looking at him coldly.

"This has been," said Lombar, "the beginning of a test." Heller said nothing. He just looked at Lombar. It made one very uncomfortable. Too calm.

"It is necessary to see if you are up to passing standards," said Lombar, smiling. "You may find it uncomfortable, but we find it vital to pretest candidates for important jobs." The gall of him, I thought. But it was a clever approach.

"Now, Soltan here," said Lombar, with a gesture toward me, "is going to complete the tests and we will know if you have the qualifications." With that, he had the nerve to actually pat Heller on the ankle. For an instant, having seen Heller use his feet, I thought it might be a foolhardy thing to do. And then I saw that the ankles were electric cuffed to the stone.

With a reassuring smile, Lombar left the cage. He beckoned to me and, when we were out of earshot, said, "The rest is up to you. Invent something mild, tell him he passed and then give him this." Lombar took from his pocket an official copy of the Grand Council order that authorized Mission Earth. He handed it to me. The place smelled horrible, the light was ghastly; the realization that he was dumping this on me and more, leaving me alone with Heller in the depths of Spiteos, made me feel very ill.

The Chief Executive of the Apparatus now began to revert to type. He didn't seize my lapels or hit me with the stinger. But he put his face very close to mine and his voice was deadly. "Do not arouse his suspicions! Do not let him escape!" Oh, fine! Two contrary orders in one breath! The real order would be to somehow accomplish the impossible and get Heller's cooperation. But Lombar was gone.

I went back into the cage. My Gods, the place stank. I tried to smile as I knelt beside the ledge. Heller was just looking at me calmly, too calmly.

"First," I said, "could you tell me how you spotted that the orderly was a fake?" He didn't answer. He just coolly looked at me. He must have been half-dead from hunger and thirst. The electric cuffs on his wrists and ankles must have been very painful.

"Come, come," I said, feeling like an idiot schoolmaster, "it is to your advantage to answer my questions. Then we will see if you have passed and things can be much more comfortable." For a while he just continued to look at me. Then, with his words a trifle thick from the swelling of the tongue that goes along with thirst, he said, "From your accent, you're an Academy officer, aren't you?" He shook his head a little. "What sad route brought you to the 'drunks'?" An unaccountable surge of rage hit me. Who was the prisoner here? Or wait, was he trying to forge and exploit a bond? Was he being arrogant and disdainful like Fleet officers do in the face of defeat?

My hand gripped the blastick hard enough to crush it. How dare he pity me?

My wits had been dispersed in all directions. This fellow was dangerous even to talk to. I carefully calmed myself. Indeed, who wasthe prisoner here? I looked at him very carefully and what I finally saw amazed me. He really wasn't thinking about himself. He wasn't thinking about the pain of electric cuffs or hunger or thirst. He actually felt sad that another being could fall as low as I. His question had nothing to do with himself at all! Only me.

I could have talked about myself. I could have said, "Sometimes one follows the wrong chart." I could have laid it all out for him and come to an honest understanding. How different it all might have been had I done so.

But there was Lombar like a black cloud in my sky. I wasn't courageous enough to be honest. In that moment I sealed the doom of an awful lot of people. A complete coward, I put a false smile on it. I repeated, "Come, come. Just tell me about the orderly." He was silent for a bit. Then he said, "Why should I? You'll just improve your techniques on the next kidnapping."

"No, no," I said. "This is just a test of perceptions and reactions. Purely scholastic." He shrugged. "When I came out the door and caught a whiff of him, I knew he was no Fleet orderly. In the close confines of a spaceship, a crew has been known to kill someone who never bathes or who uses scented powder. There are no smelly Fleet orderlies." I had gotten out a notebook and was making silly notes to add to the illusion. "Very good. Keen sense of smell. Anything else?" He looked at me, faintly amused. "His belt was upside-down, he had his spats on backwards and there was the bulge of a forbidden knife at the back of his neck."

"Ah, excellent," I said, pretending to write. And indeed it was excellent. I hadn't seen the knife bulge.