Ker guffawed!

“Is it that plain?” said Jonnie, a little cross and smoothing his hair out of his eyes.

“Not to an unobservant idiot,” said Ker. “But to one who had sweated on as many driver's seats and in as many shafts with you as me, I know you, Jonnie!"

He swatted his paw into Jonnie's palm. “Welcome to the deep pit, Jonnie...l mean Jonnie logged in as Stormalong! May the ore fly and the carts roll!”

Jonnie had to grin at him. Ker was always such a clown. And in a way he was fond of him. Ker stepped very close. He whispered, “You know you could get yourself squash killed around here. The word trickles out through the cracks in the bunkroom doors– top, high-level bunkrooms. You and me, too, if they trip the latch on us. Caution is the word. You ever have a criminal background? No? Well, you will have when they get through with you. Good thing you're in the hands of a real criminal, me! Who came with you? Who's Darf now?"

“Angus MacTavish," said Jonnie.

“Oho! That's the best news of the day next to your being here. Angus has a way with the nuts and bolts. I keep track of things. What's first?”

“First,” said Jonnie, “I get dressed and eat some breakfast. I’m not showing my face in that dining room. Stormalong trained most of these flying cadets.”

“That he did, while I trained the machine operators. You know I’ve been doing a great job on that, Jonnie." Jonnie was dressing but Ker the chatterbox rattled on.

“This Academy is the most fun I ever had, Jonnie. These cadets...l tell them stories about teaching you and things you did– mostly lies of course and made up to make them do better-and they love it. They know they're lies. Nobody could blade-scrape thirty nine tons of ore an hour. But you understand. You know me. I love this job. You know, it's the first time I’ve been really glad I’m a midget. I’m not much taller than they are and I got them– Jonnie, this will kill you unless somebody else does it first– I got them believing I’m half-human.” He had taken a seat on the bed, which sagged under his seven hundred pounds, and now it almost collapsed as he rolled around in laughter. “Ain't that rich, Jonnie? Half-human, get it?

I tell them my mother was a female Psychlo that raped a Swede!”

Jonnie, in spite of the seriousness of their mission, had to smile. He was getting into Stormalong's clothes.

Ker had stopped laughing now. He was just sitting there, looking pensive. “You know, Jonnie,” and he sighed so that his breathe-mask valve fluttered and popped, “I think this is the first time in my life I ever had friends.”

Eating a few bites of breakfast and chasing it down with some water, Jonnie said, “First thing you do is go down to the Academy Commandant and tell him you want Stormalong and Darf assigned at once to your special project. I’m sure they gave you authority from upstairs.”

“Oh, I got authority,” said Ker. “I got authority running out of my furry ears. And upstairs is all over me to finish that breathe-gas circulator. But

I told them I needed help and parts from the Cornwall minesite."

“Good,” said Jonnie. “Tell them Dunneldeen will be over in a couple of days to replace Stormalong in the training schedule. Say you arranged that, too, to keep the school from disruption. Then you get a closed ground car out in front of this building, get 'Darf’ in it, and come back here and knock on my door and we're away.”

“Got it, got it, got it,” said Ker as he went rumbling off.

Jonnie checked his blast gun and put it inside his coat. He would know within an hour or two whether Ker was playing this straight. Until then...?

They got to the car without incident beyond a couple of sly cracks from passing cadets such as, “Had a crash, Stormy?” in reference to the bandage, and “Wipe one out, Stormalong? Or was it that lass in Inverness? Or her daddy?”

There was a big package in the car, making seating tight even in Psychlo seats. Ker swept the car out across the rolling plain with the effortless skill of one with years and tens of thousands of hours on a console behind him. Jonnie had not remembered how well Ker drove. Better than Terl on ground cars and machinery. “I told them,” he said, “that it was you two that had gone to fetch the housing needed from Cornwall. I was even seen to unload it from your plane.”

Nothing like having an experienced criminal along, Jonnie commented. It tickled Ker and he cranked up the ground car to a hundred fifty. On this rough plain? Angus had shut his eyes tight as the shrubs and rocks whooshed by.

“And there's two air masks and bottles I brought,” said Ker. “We'll claim breathe-gas is leaking in the pipes, not enough for me, too much for you. Put them on.”

They deferred it, however, until they were near the compound. Chinko air masks, cut down to fit a human, were a mite uncomfortable at any time.

Jonnie didn't care about the speed. He took an instant to glory in the beautiful day. The plains were a bit brown and the snow a trifle less on the peaks at this season. But it was his country. He was tired of rain and humid heat. It was sort of good to be home.

He snapped out of it suddenly as they screeched to a slow in billowing dust on the plateau near the cage. Ker didn't care where he went in a vehicle. Ker leaned out the window and yelled at the cage, “It came. I don't think it's the right housing but we'll see!”

Terl! There he was, paws on the bars. They had the electricity off.

“Well, speed it up!” roared Terl. "I’m tired of being roasted in this sun. How many days yet, you crap brain?”

“Two, three, no more,” yelled Ker. He shot the vehicle into a perilous reverse and it spun up in the air about seven feet and came down diving toward the other side of the compound to enter the garage doors.

Ker shot in and spun the car down a ramp into a deserted sector and stopped.

“Now we go to his office,” he said.

“Not yet,” said Jonnie, hand on the blast gun inside his coat. “Remember that old closet where they first imprisoned Terl?"

“Yes,” said Ker, doubtfully. “Is it still rigged with breathe-gas?" said Jonnie.

“I guess so,” said Ker.

“First drive by the electronics storeroom and pick up a mineral analysis machine and then drive to that closet.”

Ker was a bit uneasy. “I thought we wanted into his office.”

“We do,” said Jonnie. “But we got a little business first. Don't be alarmed. The last thing in the world I would want to do is hurt you. Relax. Do what I said.”

Ker revved up and shot the car through the mazes of ramps on its way to do as Jonnie said.

The place had not been much cleaned up since the battle, but hundreds of planes were still there, the thousands of vehicles and mining machines, the dozens of shops for various types of work and hundreds of storerooms-the bric-a-brac as well as the valuables of a thousand years of operation. Jonnie looked at them speculatively– they were wealth for this planet in the way they could be used to rebuild it. And every minesite had huge and similar stores of material. These things should be preserved and cared for– they were irreplaceable, since the factories that had made them were universes away. But plentiful as they were, they would run out and wear out eventually. Another reason to join the community of stellar systems. He doubted that much of this was made on Psychlo: the

Psychlos were exploiters of alien races and terrain; hadn't they even borrowed their language and technology? Teleportation seemed to be the key to their power. Well, he was working on that.

They drew up before the old closet and Angus struggled in with the mineral analysis machine. Jonnie fiddled with the breathe-gas circulator. They checked their own air masks and shut the door. They told Ker to take his mask off.