"No, I'm serious, man." Colt jabbed a fork into his pork cutlet, the first real meat he'd had in months. "Suppose they knocked out Moonbase or took it over. How'd our guys in the space stations get supplied?"

"From Earthside, of course."

"Yeah? You know how long it'd take to set that up? And what it'd cost? If they knock off Moonbase, they cripple our space stations and the whole system of ABM satellites. They win the battle, man. They own everything from a hundred klicks off the Earth's surface. Which means they own the Earth."

"It won't happen, Frank."

"It could." Colt attacked the cutlet with vigor. "That's why I've been assigned here. Murdock's worried about just that."

Kinsman suddenly was no longer hungry. "I guess I should've taken a look at your orders after all."

"Wouldn't do you any good. Ain't spelled out in black and white. But Murdock gave me a personal call, scrambled at both ends. He thinks you're a mushmelon and he wants me 340 to make sure this place doesn't get bagged. That's why I'm here."

"Terrific," Kinsman said. He pushed his tray away from him. "And the next step will be to get prepared for taking over Lunagrad."

"Could be."

"That's stupid," Kinsman snapped.

"Is it?"

Hold it, Kinsman told himself. Don't let them start a fight between the two of us! With an effort he forced his temper down.

"Frank, do you remember Cy Calder?"

"Who?"

"Old Cy Calder. Way back in the early days, when we were training. Cy was a newsman ..."

Recognition dawned on Colt's face- "Oh, yeah, the old dude. He was quite a guy."

"He told me a story once," Kinsman said, "about when he flew a bomber in World War One."

"Yeah, and the Mile High Club."

"No, this was a different story. He used to fly bombing runs in the early months of the war. Open cockpit, scarf-in- the-wind kind of stuff."

"No shit."

Kinsman grinned at the memory of Calder's story. "He flew a two-man bomber. Cranked her up to maximum altitude over the trenches—about five thousand feet. All the soldiers in the trenches shot at any airplane. Didn't matter whose plane it was. They all hated the fliers."

Colt laughed.

"Cy flew mostly night missions. Never saw another plane in the sky. Then one night, as they were coming back from a bombing raid on some farmhouse, they passed a big German Gotha bomber coming back from a raid on the Allied side of the lines."

"Yeah?"

"Cy waved at the German pilot and the guy waved back. They were both excited just to see somebody else up there."