with all the unity that so many minds could muster on any subject; "He does not bluff when he threatens. When he offers slaughter, he means nothing short of it . . . ."
"The Transit to Erlette was about as smooth as any I'd made," Slade was saying. "It was sure as smooth as anything I'd made in GAC 59. That didn't keep Captain Levine from being concerned, though . . . ."

"This is just asking for disaster, Captain Slade," said Levine. "We'll come out of Transit in an atmosphere! Or we'll wind up in, we'll never be able to figure out where, as tired as my people are going to be."
"They tell me," said Slade calmly, "that everything's spot-on with no problems. And they seem pretty relaxed, too, even if they have been pulling a rotating double."
"Oh, that's fine, surely," said the spacer. His tones of angry sarcasm would not usually have been directed against Slade. "Windward had a ground unit the size of Friesland's, certainly it can preset us across seventeen Transit seconds. What is there on Erlette? Will we find the Transit crewmen we need there? On a place nobody's ever heard of?"
"You know," said the tanker, "I did hear of Erlette. While I was with the Slammers. But I'm hanged if I remember why. Must've been