Holy shit! Fresh faces! Clean faces. 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 Command has withdrawn the liner.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." He drives one hand into a shirt grown ragged with continuous wear, pauses momentarily. One eye narrows as he looks at me. A what-the-hell crosses his face. "Friend of mine slipped this into the intelligence dispatch." He throws out a piece of flimsy.

Yanevich snatches it. "Shete-it!" He flips it to Piniaz. Ito reads it, gives me an unreadable look, passes it on. It finally meanders around to me.

It's a typical Command press release, describing the Main Battle encounter. That the vessel we destroyed was crippled isn't mentioned. Neither is the loss of Johnson's Climber. The only outright untruths are improbable patriotic quotes attributed to my companions-----

And to me. In fact, the whole damned thing is supposed to be my report from the front! "I'll kick that asshole right in the cocksucker!" My juice squeezie ricochets off a bulkhead. "He can't do that to me!"

"Nice throw," Yanevich observes. "Smooth. No break in your wrist."

According to the release, I filed a report running, themat-ically, "Shoulder to shoulder...

Heedless of the death screaming round them... United in their implacable will to exact retribution from the destroyers of Bronwen and plunderers of Sierra..."

"Shit. 'Shoulder to shoulder' is the only true thing here. Should've said asshole to elbow.

Screaming? In vacuum? Where the hell is Bronwen? I never heard of it. And Sierra is such a nothing we didn't bother defending it."

Grinning, Yanevich intones, "'Driven by the justice of their cause...'"

Piniaz titters. "'Inspired by the memories of the slavery these vermin impose... Every man a hero...' Hey. You're one hell of a writer."

"Sure. When butterflies give milk."

"You saying I ain't a hero? I'll sue, you slanderer. I can prove it. Says so right here. If the Admiral says it, it's got to be true."

I can't take any more. I fling the flimsy at Bradley. "Here, Charlie. More toilet paper."

That goddamned Tannian. Just when I was starting to defend him. Issuing press releases over my name.

It's a kick in the head, that's what. I don't mind having my name spread all over Confederation.

That'll help the book when it comes out. But I want the words by which I'm known to be my own.

I can cut my own wrists just fine, Admiral. Don't give me any help.

Maybe Johnson's fate and Command's failure to acknowledge it are making me a little touchy. I don't know. But these cockamamie reports have got to stop.