want to make heroes of you. First space travelers, and so on. They'd
want you on television--all of you--telling about your adventures and
your return. Inevitably, what happened to your ship would leak out. And
if the public knew you'd been waylaid and shot down there'd be demands
that the government take violent action to avenge the attack. It'd be
something like the tumult over the sinking of the _Maine_, or the
_Lusitania_--or even Pearl Harbor. It's much better for your return to
be a secret for now."

Joe said wrily: "I don't think any of us want to be ridden around to
have ticker-tape dumped on us. That part's all right. I'm sure the
others will agree."

"Good! One more difficulty. We had two space ships. Now we have none.
Our most likely enemies haven't only been building rockets, they've got
a space fleet coming along. Intelligence just found out they're nearly
ready for trial trips. They've been yelling to high heaven that we were
building a space fleet to conquer the world. We weren't. They were. And
it looks very much as if they may have beaten us."

The lieutenant got out the dreary mass of papers, intended to call for
every conscious or unconscious observation Joe might have made in space.
It was the equivalent of the interviews extracted from fliers after a
bombing raid, and it was necessary, but Joe was very tired.

Wearily, he said, "Start your questions. I'll try to answer them."

They arrived in Bootstrap some forty-six hours after the crashing of
their ship. Joe, at least, had slept nearly thirty of those hours. So
while he was still wobbly on his feet and would be for days to come,