"There'll be one case for psycho. Captain McClelland."
"I'll be damned!" exclaimed the general. "From his record, I thought he'd never break!"
"Let's say he couldn't bend, sir." A pause. "And yet he did keep them from destroying themselves."
"He'll be made well again.... What about the others?"
"I think they, too, are very great and human people."
"Well," said the general, "they're your patients. I'll see you at the ship in five minutes."
"I'll be there, sir." Colonel Halter flipped the switch. The visiophone blanked out. He looked at the television screen.
The six black-clothed figures were quiet on the floor of their ship's control room. They reminded him of sleeping children curled together for warmth.
As he left his office and walked out into the humming city, he felt drained, still shaking with tension, realizing even now how close he had come to failure.
But there was the scarred and pitted needle-nosed old hull, bright with moonlight, standing like a monument against the night sky.