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.Well-fed, smiling faces, with welcomes for the heroes of the universe.Gleaming, apple-cheeked babies.But no women, damn it.We look like prisoners lately released from a medieval dungeon.Sallow, gaunt, filthy, wild of hair and eye, a little tentative and timid.Damn! There really are other people.Right now, the first few minutes, while we're staring at the beacon crew, I feel a fresh wind blowing on our morale.It's a cool gale driving away a poisonous smog.Some of the men grin, shake hands, clap backs.There's a shower! Rumor says there's a shower! These boys must live like maharajahs.Crafty old me, I disguise myself as a great spacedog and con one of the lads into showing me the way.I'm first man there.Hot needles nibble and sting my crusty skin.I bellow tuneless refrains, luxuriate in the warmth, the massagelike effect."Hurry up in there, goddamnit! Sir."Shouldn't be a pig, should I? There's a line out there now."One minute." Grinning, I thunder out the "Outward Bound." Several men threaten to make it a shower I'll remember the rest of a very short life.They have sinks, too.Several of them.Men line up there too, shaving.Don't think I will, though.I'm used to mine now.Completes the spacedog disguise.Tarjan Zntoins, a Missileman, begins hopping about in a parody of an old-time sailor's hornpipe while his compartment mates honk and hoot, using their hands as instrumental accompaniment.Not bad.Not bad at all.The beacon is a one-time Star Line freighter.Big mother.Only the quarters are in use these days.The crew of nine have been out here four months.They're eager for fresh faces, too.Their long vigil is lonely, though never as harrowing as ours.Their tachyon man tells me he's been in beacons since the beginning.He's had only two contacts in all that time.They're overdue for relief.Three months is their usual stint.A converted luxury liner makes regular rounds, changing crews each three months.Something is happening, though.Command has withdrawn the liner.They're hungry for news.What's going on? How come they've been extended? Poor bastards.In continuous contact with Command and kept constantly ignorant.I tell them I don't know a thing.Great guys, these people.They put on a spread.A meal fit for a king.Command didn't skip the luxuries here.The mess decks are small.We wolf our feast in shifts, dallying and stalling while our successors curse us for farting around.One last trip to the can.Isn't this great? No waiting.I take another look at my beard.I look like a real space pirate.Like Eric the Red, or somebody.I give it a big trim, to a nice point beneath my chin.There.Gives me the look of a pale devil.The girls will love it."Attention.Climber personnel.Return to your ship.Please return to your ship."The holiday is over."Up yours, Nicastro," I mutter.On my way I stop by the beacon's vegetable crate of an office, liberate a half ream of clean paper.I'm tired of keeping notes on scraps.Command's intelligence is astonishingly detailed.Tannian has had this raid in his trick bag a long time.The man is a little brighter than his detractors admit.The orbital data for Rathgeber have been redefined to the microsecond and millimeter, finer than we need or can handle.We could make a setdown in null, using the data.The defense intelligence looks just as good.Surface and holo charts, which can be fed to the display tank, detail scores of active and passive systems, revealing their fields of fire and kill ranges.The companion fire control grids look as though they were lifted from Rathgeber's Combat Information Center.Alterations to the original Navy installation are carefully and prominently noted."We must have a guy on the inside," Piniaz chortles.He's delighted with the information."Bastards probably gundecked the whole thing," Yanevich counters."Made it look solid so idiots like us would go in with smiles on our clocks.""I doubt it," I say."I mean, Tannian only looks like a prick of the first water.He'll throw lives around like poker chips, but I don't see him wasting many.""For once we agree," Piniaz says."This was put together right.And saved for the right time."Yanevich won't flee the field."Yeah? Wonder what the big brain had to say about our chances of getting out.Bet you won't find that in there anywhere."I say, "Only thing I question is the need for the raid.And why they're sending a Climber."Sourly, Yanevich says, "Fishing for propaganda points inside Navy.It's a job for the heavies.""Regular units couldn't get past the orbital defenses," Piniaz snaps."And maybe we don't know everything.Could be some other reason, too."The Commander says, "Maybe it's occurred to them that this's a classic way to get rid of an embarrassment
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