Marian began to feel the inner tingle she always got when a puzzle became clear to her.

"But I was wrong," Kinsman went on. His voice was serious now, but not somber. Not morose or wooden. "When I got into a combat situation—hand-to-hand fight, yet—all that military training took over. I wasn't an astronaut any- more. I was a fighting machine. A trained killer. A military automaton. I killed her just the way an infantryman becomes conditioned to sticking a bayonet into another human being's belly."

"And you think that's what's been bothering you?" Marian asked, as softly as she knew how.

"For the past five months I've been trying to figure it out. How could I have done it? How in the hell could I have deliberately ripped out a human being's air line? How could I willingly kill somebody?"

"And now you have the answer."

"Yes." It was an unshakably firm response. "I'm not as smart as I thought I was. The military training got to me. God knows, put me in the same situation and I might even do the 134 same thing all over again."

"Chet, listen to me very carefully," Marian said slowly. "You think you have the answer and you're feeling pretty good about it ..."

"Damned right!"

"But what you have is only the beginning of the answer. There's still a lot more, buried down inside you. A lot that you haven't brought up into the light yet."

He shook his head. "I don't think so."

"Listen to me!" Marian urged. "You've kept a shell around yourself all your life. Your Quaker upbringing. Your conflict with your father. Your Air Force duties. The one time you let go, the one time you let your emotions override your self-control, you kill a person. A woman. A girl. Now you've clamped that self-control down again and made your shell thicker than ever. You've isolated yourself from any real human contact . . ."

As if none of her words had penetrated his awareness, Kinsman said, "If you keep me off-duty, under observation, for much longer, Murdock's going to drum me out. You know that."

"I can protect you."

"You can't keep me proficient. He can drop me from the astronaut corps—for good."

"Yes," she admitted. "That's true."

"What I need now is to get back to active duty. But not with the Air Force. I want to get into NASA's lunar explora- tion program."

"You want to run off to the Moon?"

"It's not running away. I know better now. I know myself better."

"Well enough to risk your life, and the lives of others?"

He grinned at her. She could see his teeth in the faint light from the instrument panel. "You're trusting me with your life right now, aren't you?"

Almost ruefully she admitted, "I suppose I am."

"JusttellittoMurdock."

The next morning Lieutenant Colonel Marian Campbell was back in uniform, back in her office, sitting behind her desk. Colonel Murdock's round, bald face looked distinctly 135 unhappy, even in the small screen of the telephone display.

"Just what are you trying to tell me. Colonel Campbell?" he asked testily.

She took a deep breath, then replied, "In my opinion, Colonel, Captain Kinsman is now fit to resume his duties."