Nearly everyone believed that the purpose of Project Star was to construct "flying saucers" (the inadequate name had stuck through the years) for use in reaching out to the other planets. Only the men who were working there, and a few others in government and in the military forces, knew that the disks were not intended for extra-terrestrial flight—there were rocket projects galore for that—but for journeys in the atmosphere or slightly above it, at speeds incredible even in 1970. The name Project Star had not been chosen to mislead anyone, but it had done so and nobody bothered to correct the impression. Secrecy had become an ingrained national habit in the past thirty-odd years.
Dr. Alan Rackham was one of the scientists who worked on the problem of fuel for the disks. He was not a member of the vastly important handful who headed the colony and came equipped with everything sacred and untouchable except halos, but he was considered of enough consequence to rate a house of his own and an assistant who was also an efficient bodyguard. This was Brave, whose proper name was John Kiwanawatiwa.
Brave sat down in his own chair, a sturdy specially-built job, while Alan called Dr. Getty on the visiphone to report the shooting. Brave never sprawled out or slouched as his superior did. He sat straight, a red-copper-colored man built to the scale of a Greek statue, about half again life size. His arms and legs were tough as cable steel, his chest a brawny barrel. He was a Navajo Indian, but his features were more nearly those of a Sioux: a great finely-formed crag of a nose, thin straight lips over white teeth, dark eyes that a hawk might envy their piercing power, a wolf-trap jaw. His speech was that of an M.S. of Carlisle and Oxford, except when he spoke with people he did not know or like; then it became a parody of the nineteenth-century storybook red man's gutteral discourse. At times, when he went with Alan to meetings of the hierarchy (a few of whom, including Dr. Getty, he cordially detested for their bland self-importance), he even wore a bedraggled chicken feather sticking upright in his black hair, stood behind Alan with folded arms and a fierce expression and confined his remarks to "Ugh" and "Waugh." This gave both Alan and himself a great deal of innocent pleasure.
For Alan Rackham was also a rebel against stuffiness and conceit. He was a perfectly normal-looking man, of slightly more than middle height, thirty-one years old, handsome enough if you liked lean bony features and unruly brown hair; his muscular development was so unobtrusive that no one ever guessed he had been a Marine and won himself a DSC in Argentina. He enjoyed his work at Project Star, for he had a scientist's inquiring mind; but he liked even more the huge Indian with whom he lived, the girl in the metallurgy section who wore his engagement ring, and the book of rather impudent philosophy on which he worked during his free evenings.
He also loved a long drink, a thoughtful pipe, an involved practical joke, and the moody Siamese cat, Unquote.
Now he turned from the visiphone, as the image of Dr. Getty faded out on its screen, and he frowned at Brave. "Son," he said, "why would anybody take a potshot at me?"
"What does Doc Pomposity say about it?" rumbled the Indian.
"Mainly blah, blah, blah."