“Well,” Williams grinned, “we have a certain amount of rule-of-thumb knowledge about the workings of the uncivilized mind. You see-we come from a world where most people, in a manner of speaking, are still uncivilized. So we have to know!”

Forase nodded slowly. “You screwball Earthmen! At least, this little episode has taught us all one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Never,” said Forase, dipping a second time into Earth slang, “get tough with a bunch of nuts. They may be nuttier than you think!”

 In going through my stories while preparing this book, I found “The Hazing” to be the only published story concerning which I could remember nothing from the title alone. Even as I reread it, nothing clicked. If I had been given the story without my name on it and had been asked to read it and guess the author, I would probably have been stumped. Maybe that means something.

 It does seem to me, though, that the story is set against a “Homo Sol” background.

 I had better luck with Fred Pohl with another story, “Super-Neutron,” which I wrote at the end of the same February in which I did “Masks” and “The Hazing.” I submitted it to him on March 3, 1941, and he accepted it on March 5.

 By that time, less than three years after my first submission, I was clearly becoming rather impatient with rejections. At least, the news of the acceptance of “Super-Neutron” is greeted in my diary with an “It’s about time I made a sale-five and a half weeks since the last one.”