"They didn't have to fight very hard. Or should I be thanking you for my life?"
"Up to you. I'm just stalling for what we can get out of it. Who wants to die? Oh, I forgot—"
She turned away from him, and he fiddled with the controls of a small built-in telescreen. It was simple enough and he got it working easily, but it showed nothing. Just blackness. He left it on.
"You're thoroughly convinced of everything he told us, aren't you?" she asked at last.
"From a purely logical standpoint, what else—"
"Purely logical! For a little while I thought there was a chance that—that you weren't like all the rest."
"All what rest? I don't get your range, kid," Cragin answered.
"First you thought they were fakes—"
"At first that was logical, too. But old cloak-and-ray-gun there proved pretty damn conclusively that the crowd he works for are the bosses, the big bosses. That's what gets me."
"And it's the real reason, isn't it, that you wanted to call them fakes? Couldn't bear the idea of the precious culture of Earth taking a back seat to anything."