"Well, I didn't ask to come into this. But now that I'm in and a Diver, just one fancy move by Security and I'm off to get another body. That sounds odd, doesn't it? But I mean it."
"I'm glad."
"Eh?"
"I'm very glad, Fred. I wanted to see how you'd take it. I feel the same way. It's true we're always offered presents, but immortality is something larger than a present. And to get out from under the thumb of the Psis and their spying is something all of us have been longing for."
"And I'll tell you something else, Pat. From now on, if the other Divers agree, we'll do what we want. Oh, the Solar System can have its patrolling. I'll have to learn how that's done from you. We'll tell them what they want to know. But one sign of interference and we're off, and they can keep the bodies. We won't tell them they are a backward colony that has forgotten how to Dive. But we know it. We won't tell them the rest of the Galaxy is run from the center back in Sagittarius by humans who can Dive. But we know that too. If I thought at all about it, I thought we were freaks, useful nuisances. And I didn't mind being ordered about. But we're not freaks, Pat. We're the normal human beings that the Senate back there meant to create. It's the Solar System that is lop-sided, not us."
"I'm not—overinfluencing you, Fred?"
"Hell, of course you are. I can hardly think of you without looping around a star. But the facts are the same. And from today, we're not Divers. We're the Free Divers, housing where we wish to, seeing what we want...."
"And protecting the Solar System, Fred."
"Well—they're entitled to that. And we'll keep to their security regulations for our bodies on Earth, if it makes them happy. We can afford to give a little here and there."
They shot together through the nearest T-Tauri variable arch and zoomed happily. After a while, they returned to the rendezvous off the American coast on Earth. The other Divers were waiting for them.