“News to me,” Johnson answered. People were gliding out of the chamber to change and sponge off in the two adjoining smaller rooms, one for men, the other for women. In five minutes, another shift of exercisers would mount the bikes.

Lucy looked worried. “How are we supposed to do what we came out here to do if the Race keeps spying on us?”

She’d asked the same question when she and Johnson discovered the first Lizard spy craft. He shrugged. “We’ve got to do it. If we don’t, we might as well pack up and go home.”

She shook her head. “No, that would be worse than not trying at all. It would be giving up. It would tell the Lizards they’re stronger than we are.”

“Well, they are stronger than we are,” Johnson said. “If they weren’t, we wouldn’t have to worry about any of this folderol.” Reluctantly, he pushed off toward his changing room, adding, “See you,” over his shoulder.

“See you,” Lucy said. Johnson sighed. He hadn’t seen as much of her as he would have liked. She kept him thinking she was, or could be, interested, but things had gone no further than that. She didn’t tease; that wasn’t her style. But she was cautious. As a pilot, Johnson approved of caution-in moderate doses. As a man, he wished Lucy’d never heard of it. But, by the rules that had shaped up aboard the Lewis and Clark, the choice was all hers.

A damp sponge made a poor substitute for a hot shower, but it was what he had. After he’d cleaned up and put on a fresh pair of coveralls, he was about to go to his cubicle and either read or grab a little sack time when the intercom blared to life: “Lieutenant Colonel Johnson, report to the commandant’s office immediately! Lieutenant Colonel Glen Johnson, report to the commandant’s office immediately!”

“Oh, shit,” Johnson muttered under his breath. “What have I done now? Or what does that iron-assed son of a bitch think I’ve done now?”

He got no answer from the intercom. He hadn’t expected one. He wished Brigadier General Healey had yelled for him a couple of minutes earlier. Then, in good conscience, he could have reported to the commandant all sweaty and rank from his exercise period. He wondered if Healey kept close enough tabs on his schedule to know when he’d have sponged off. He wouldn’t have been surprised. Healey seemed to know everything that happened aboard the Lewis and Clark as soon as it happened, sometimes even before it happened.

Alone among the officers on the spaceship, the commandant boasted an adjutant. “Reporting as ordered,” Johnson told him. He half expected the spruce captain to make him cool his heels for half an hour before admitting him to Healey’s august presence. Hurry up and wait had been an old army rule in the days of Julius Caesar. It was older now, but no less true.

But Captain Guilloux said, “Go on in, sir. The commandant is expecting you.”

Since Healey had summoned him, that wasn’t the biggest surprise in the world. But Johnson just nodded, said, “Thanks,” and glided past Guilloux and through the door into the commandant’s office. Saluting, he repeated what he’d told the adjutant: “Reporting as ordered, sir.”

“Yes.” As usual, Healey looked like a bulldog who wanted to take a bite out of somebody. He’d wanted to take a bite out of Johnson when the pilot came aboard-either take a bite out of him or boot him out the air lock, one. He still wasn’t happy with Johnson, not even close. But Johnson wasn’t his biggest worry. His next words showed what was: “How would you like to stick a finger in one of the Lizards’ eye turrets?”

He couldn’t mean it literally-so far as Johnson knew, there were no live Lizards within a couple of a hundred million miles. But what he likely did mean wasn’t hard to figure out: “Have we got permission from Little Rock to blast their spy ship to hell and gone, sir?”

“No.” Healey looked as if having to give that answer made him want to bite, too. “But we have got permission to explore the possibility of covering the damn thing with black-painted plastic sheeting or aluminum foil or anything else we can spare that’ll make it harder for them to monitor us.”

Johnson nodded. “I’ve heard there’s a second ship in the neighborhood, too.”

Before he could say anything else, Brigadier General Healey pounced: “Where did you hear that, and from whom? It’s not supposed to be public news.” Johnson stood-or rather, floated-mute. He wasn’t about to rat on Lucy Vegetti, even if she hadn’t given him a tumble yet. Healey made a sour face. “Never mind, then. What you heard is true. We can only hope there aren’t any others we haven’t found.”

“Yes, sir.” Johnson considered. “Well, if that’s so, how much trouble can we give them? Blind ’em, sure, but can we jam their radar and their radio receivers? If we can’t, is throwing a sack over them worth the trouble we’ll get into for doing it?”

Now Healey turned the full power of that high-wattage glare on him. “If you’re yellow, Lieutenant Colonel, I can find somebody else for the job.”

“Sir, as far as I’m concerned, you can go to the devil,” Johnson said evenly.

Healey looked as if he’d just got a punch in the nose. Unless Johnson missed his guess, nobody’d told the commandant anything like that in a hell of a long time. He wished he’d said something worse. Goddamn military discipline, he thought. Alter a couple of deep, angry breaths, Healey growled, “You are insubordinate.”

“Maybe so, sir,” Johnson replied, “but all I was trying to do was figure the angles, and you went and called me a coward. You’ve got my war record, sir. If that doesn’t tell you different, I don’t know what would.”

Brigadier General Healey kept on glaring. Johnson floated in place, one hand securing him to the chair bolted to the floor in front of the commandant’s desk, the chair in which he’d be sitting if there were gravity or a semblance of it. When he didn’t buckle or beg for mercy, Healey said, “Very well, let it go.” But it wasn’t forgotten; every line of his face declared how unforgotten it was.

Trying to get back to business, Johnson asked, “Sir, is it worth it to do whatever we can to those ships if we don’t destroy them? If it is, send me. I’ll go.”

“As yet, we are still evaluating that,” Healey said gruffly. “Not all the variables are known.”

“Well, of course we can’t know ahead of time what the Lizards will do if…” Johnson’s voice trailed away. Healey’s face had changed. He’d missed something, and the commandant was silently laughing at him on account of it. And, after a moment, he realized what it was. “Oh. Do we know if these ships are armed, sir?”

“That’s one of the things we’re interested in finding out,” the commandant answered, deadpan.

“Yes, sir,” Johnson said, just as deadpan. So Healey was thinking about turning him into a guinea pig, eh? That didn’t surprise him, not even a little bit. “When do you want me to go out, and which one do you want me to visit?”

“We haven’t prepared the covering material yet,” Healey said. “When we do-and if we decide to-you will be informed. Until then, dismissed.”

After saluting, Johnson launched himself out of the commandant’s office. He glided straight past Captain Guilloux, then used the handholds in the corridor to pull himself back to his tiny cubicle. The only thing his bunk and the straps securing him to it did that a stretch of empty air couldn’t was to make sure he didn’t bump up against anything while sleeping.

He kept waiting for the order to climb into a hot rod and go blind one of the Lizards’ spy ships. The order kept on not coming. He didn’t want to ask Brigadier General Healey why it didn’t come. After a week or so, he broached the subject to Walter Stone in an oblique way.

Stone nodded. “I know what you’re talking about. I don’t think you have to worry very much.”

“I wasn’t worried,” Johnson said, which would do for a lie till a better one came along. “I was curious, though; I’ll say that.”