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402 that—cannot be attracted on the mental side as men must be—and are. Your friend Cordy is mentally attracted by mental Bombay ducks and putrid game. I won't add garlic; that's a healthy smell, though I don't like it myself."

Slicker wriggled in his chair, but his manner suggested that he had expected something of this sort and was indifferent to it. Tempest looked at him narrowly.

"How long have you been here, Slicker?" he asked.

"Four months," said Slicker sulkily.

"And Cordy is the only friend you've got?"

"There's no one else."

"No. There's no one else, I suppose. I wonder if you remember anything of what I said that day in Grey Wolf when you asked me if you should join the Force?"

"Yes. But—but I say, Tempest " Slicker forgot his rank and uniform—"a fellow can't stay a kid all his life. I've got to do as men do when I'm with them, you know."

"Do I? But why not make them do as you do?"

This was a new thought to Slicker. He stared.

"I couldn't," he said.

"You mean that you have not enough character; not enough initiative, or brain, or common-sense?"

This was not pretty, put into words. Slicker reddened, standing still.

"Poor old fellow," said Tempest. "It isn't easy, is it? But you didn't expect ease when you gave yourself to us."

"I don't want ease," burst out Slicker. "I want work, and there's nothing to do here. That's the—the damnable part of it all. There's nothing to do and nothing to drink, and so I fool around with Cordy. I can't help it."

"Well," said Tempest, "you remember our motto, don't you? We maintain the right over a fairly big jurisdiction—several million square miles. But that's not so much to be proud of if we can't maintain it over ourselves. I don't know if there are many men fit to preach to other men on that exact point. I'm not. We all have some special place where we fail most, Slicker, and it will probably trip us more or less all our lives. But because a fellow has fallen over a stone he is not debarred from shouting a warning to the fellow behind. I have no right