"We're safe enough; got four hours worth of oxygen. As long as we don't panic we'll be okay. That's what Howard was trying to tell us/' It was beginning to sound convincing, even to himself.

"But why the hell would they do something like this?" Colt's voice sounded calmer, as if he were trying to believe Kinsman.

Your paranoia's deserted you just when you needed it most. Kinsman thought. He replied, "How many times have they called us hotshots, the Golddust Twins? We're the two top men on the list. They just want to rub our noses in the dirt a little, make us feel foolish . . . just like the upperclassmen do at the Academy."

"You think so?"

It's either that or we're dead. Kinsman glanced at the digital watch set into his wrist keyboard. "They allowed us three hours for our task. They'll be back before that time is up. Less than two hours."

"And if they're not?"

"Then we can panic."

"Lotta good it'll do then."

"It won't do us much good now, either. We're stranded here until they come back for us."

"Bastards." Now Colt was convinced.

With a sudden grin, Kinsman said, "Yeah, but maybe we can turn the tables on them."

"How?"

"Follow me, my man."

Without using his MMU thrusters, Kinsman clambered up the side of "their" propellant tank and then drifted slowly into the nest created by the other huge tanks. Like a pair of skin divers floating in the midst of a pod of whales, Colt and Kinsman hung in emptiness, surrounded by the enormous, curving, hollow tanks.

"Now when they come back they won't be able to see us on radar," Kinsman explained. "And the tanks ought to block our suit-to-suit talk, so they won't hear us, either. We'll throw a scare into them."

"They'll think we panicked and jetted away."

"Right."

"Maybe that's what they want."

Kinsman laughed. Colt's paranoia had returned. "No," he said. "They want to scare us, not kill us. That would take too much explaining back at Vandenberg. Losing two cadets would ruin the whole afternoon for Pierce and the rest of them. Wouldn't look good on their files."

Colt laughed back. "Almost worth dying for."

"We'll let them know we're here," Kinsman said, "after they've worked up enough of a sweat. I'm not dying for anyone's joke—not even my own."

They waited while the immense panorama of the Earth flowed beneath them and the distant stern stars watched silently. They waited and they talked.

"I thought she split because we were down in Houston and Huntsville and she couldn't take it," Colt was saying. "White woman with a black husband—the pressure was on her a lot more than on me."

"I didn't think Houston was that prejudiced," said Kinsman. "And Huntsville's pretty cosmopolitan ..."

"Yeah, sure. Try it with my color, man. You stuck around the base all the time, or you went into town with some of the other guys. Go try to buy some flesh-colored Band- Aids, you wanna see how cosmopolitan this country is."