"Yes. For the last time, I think. It's a shame they had to travel out here, all that distance, to be turned down. They looked on me as their great white hope. They couldn't really believe I would turn them down. Couldn't let themselves believe it, I guess. They're scared, Helen—bright green scared."
"I know. But if it weren't for the fact that I have certain pretensions to being a lady, I would have booted that Gerrol into orbit without a spacesuit."
"Oh?"
"He implied," Helen said angrily, "that you were a coward. That you were afraid to face the Nipe."
The detective chuckled. "I hope you didn't say anything."
"I wanted to," she admitted. "I wanted to tell him that guns were easy to buy, that all he had to do was buy one and go after the Nipe himself. I would like to have seen his face if I'd asked him how scared he was of the beast. But I didn't say a word. They weren't talking to me, anyway; they were talking to each other."
"I'd almost be willing to bet that Nguma disagreed with Gerrol. Nguma didn't think I was a physical coward; he thought I was a moral coward."
"How'd you know?"
"Intuition. Just from the way he talked and acted. He felt the failure more than the others because he felt that there was no hope left at all. He was quite certain that I, myself, did not believe the Nipe could be caught—by me or anyone else. He thinks that I turned down the job because I know I'd fail and I don't want to have a failure on my record. Not that big a failure."
"That's ridiculous, of course," the girl said angrily.