Jim said nothing. Howe said sharply, "Come! Speak up, lad-admit your fault and make your apology. Be a man!"

Jim still said nothing. Howe drummed on the desk top;

finally he said, "Very well, go to your room and think it over. You have the weekend to think about it."

When Jim got back to his room Frank looked him over and shook his head admiringly. "Boy, oh boy!" he said, "aint you the reckless one."

"Well, he needed to be told."

"He sure did. But what are your plans now? Are you going to cut your throat, or just enter a monastery? Old Howie will be gunning for you every minute from here on out. Matter of fact, it won't be any too safe to be your roommate."

"Confound it, Frank, if that's the way you feel, you're welcome to find another roommate!"

"Easy, easy! I won't run out on you. I'm with you to the end. 'Smiling, the boy fell dead.' I'm glad you told him off. I wouldn't have had the courage to do it myself."

Jim threw himself across the bunk. "I don't think I can stand this place. I'm not used to being pushed around and sneered at, just for nothing. And now I'm going to get it double. What can I do?"

"Demed if I know."

'This was a nice place under old Stoobie. I thought I was going to like it just fine."

"Stoobie was all right. And Howe is a prime stinker. But what can you do, Jim, except shut up, take it, and hope he will forget it?"

"Look, nobody else likes it either. Maybe if we stood together we could make him slow up."

"Not likely. You were the only one who had the guts to speak up. Shucks, / didn't even back you up-and I agreed with you a hundred per cent."

"Well, suppose we all sent letters to our parents?"

Frank shook his head. "You couldn't get them all to-and some pipsqueak would snitch. Then you would be in the soup, for inciting to riot or some such nonsense. Anyhow," he went on, "just what could you say in a letter that you could put your finger on and prove that Mr. Howe was doing something he had no right to? I know what my old man would say."

"What would he say?"

"Many's the time he's told me stories about the school he went to back Earthside and what a rough place it was. I think he's a little bit proud of it. If I tell him that Howie won't let us keep cookies in our room, he'll just laugh at me. He'd say-"

"Dawggone it, Frank, it's not the rule about food in our rooms; it's the whole picture."

"Sure, sure. / know it. But try to tell my old man. All we can tell is little things like that. It'll have to get a lot worse before you could get our parents to do anything."

Frank's views were confirmed as the day wore on. As the news spread student after student dropped in on them, some to pump Jim's hand for having bearded the Headmaster, some merely curious to see the odd character who had had the temerity to buck vested authority. But one two-pronged fact became apparent: while no one liked the new school head and all resented some or all of his new "disciplinary" measures, no one was anxious to join up in what was assumed to be a foregone lost cause.

One of the senior boys summed it up. "Get wise to yourself, kid. A man wouldn't go into school teaching if he didn't enjoy exercising cheap authority. It's the natural profession of little Napoleons."

"Stoobie wasn't like that!"

"Stoobie was an exception. Most of them like rules just for the sake of rules. It's a fact of nature, like frost at sundown. You have to get used to it."

On Sunday Frank went out into Syrtis Minor-the terrestrial settlement, not the nearby Martian city. Jim, under what amounted to room arrest, stayed in their room, pretended to study and talked to Willis. Frank came back at supper time and announced, "I brought you a present." He chucked Jim a tiny package.

"You're a pal! What is it?"

"Open it and see."

It was a new tango recording, made in Rio and direct from Earth via the Albert Einstein, titled iQuien Es La Senorita? Jim was inordinately fond of Latin music; Frank had remembered it.

"Oh, boy!" Jim went to the study desk, threaded the tape into the speaker, and got ready to enjoy it. Frank stopped him.

"There's the supper bell. Better wait."

Reluctantly Jim complied, but he came back and played it several times during the evening until Frank insisted that they study. He played it once more just before lights-out.

The dormitory corridor had been dark and quiet for perhaps fifteen minutes when ^Quien Es La Senorita? started up again. Frank sat up with a start. "What the deuce? Jim-don't play that now!"

-"I'm not," protested Jim. "It must be Willis. It has to be Willis."

"Well, shut him up. Choke him. Put a pillow over his head."

Jim switched on the light. "Willis boy-hey, Willis! Shut up that racket!" Willis probably did not even hear him. He was standing the middle of the floor, beating time with his eye stalks, and barrelling on down the groove. His rendition was excellent, complete with marimbas and vocal chorus.

Jim picked him up. "Willis! Shut up, fellow."

Willis kept on beating it out.

The door bust open and framed Headmaster Howe. "Just as I thought," he said triumphantly, "no consideration for other people's rights and comforts. Shut off that speaker. And consider yourself restricted to your room for the next month."

Willis kept on playing; Jim tried to hide him with his body. "Didn't you hear my order?" demanded Howe. "I said to shut off that music." He strode over to the study desk and twisted the speaker switch. Since it was already shut off full, all he accomplished was breaking a fingernail. He suppressed an unschoolmasterly expression and stuck the finger in his mouth. Willis worked into the third chorus.

Howe turned around. "How do you have this thing wired?" he snapped. Getting no answer, he stepped up to Jim and said, "What are you hiding?" He shoved Jim aside, looked at Willis with evident disbelief and distaste. "What is thatT

"Uh, that's Willis," Jim answered miserably, raising his voice to be heard.

Howe was not entirely stupid; it gradually penetrated that me music he had been hearing came out of the curious-looking, fuzzy sphere in front of him.

"And what is 'Willis', may I ask?"

"Well, he's a... a bouncer. A sort of a Martian." Willis picked this moment to finish the selection, breathe a liquid contralto buenas noches, and shut up-for the moment.

"A bouncer? I've never heard of one."

"Well, not very many have seen one, even among the colonists. They're scarce."

"Not scarce enough. Sort of a Martian parrot, I assume."

"Oh, no!"

"What do you mean, 'Oh, no'?"

"He's not a bit like a parrot. He talks, he thinks-he's my friend!"

Howe was over his surprise and recalling the purpose of his visit. "All that is beside the point. You saw my order about pets?"

"Yes, but Willis is not a pet."

"What is he, then?"

"Well, he can't be a pet. Pets are animals; they're property. Willis isn't property; he's... well, he's just Willis."

Willis picked this time to continue with the next thing he had heard after the last playing of the tango. "Boy, when I hear that music," he remarked in Jim's voice, "I don't even remember that old stinker Howe."

"I can't forget him," Willis went on in Frank's voice. "I wish I had had the nerve to tell him off the same time you did, Jim. You know what? I think Howe is nuts, I mean really nuts. I'll bet he was a coward when he was a kid and it's twisted him inside."

Howe turned white. Frank's arm-chair psychoanalyzing had hit dead center. He raised his hand as if to strike, then dropped it again, uncertain what to strike. Willis hastily withdrew all protuberances and became a smooth ball.

"I say it's a pet," he said savagely, when he regained his voice. He scooped Willis up and headed for the door.