 Had Wayne actually accomplished his mission given to him by Captain Jack, would he have felt victorious?
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, July 1962. Wayne, unseen, sneered down from the head of the stairs. His slim mother with nervously polite smiles and voice fluttering, assuring the old man by her frailty that he was big in the world. They were squareheads one and all, marking moron time in a gray dream. Squareheads going around either unconscious or with eyes looking dead from the millennium in the office waiting to retire into limbo. One thing—when he was jockeying a rocket to Mars or maybe firing the pants off Asiatic reds in some steamy gone jungle paradise, he'd forget his punkie origins in teeveeland. Anyway there was no doubt about it when every move he made was a restrained explosion. So he'd waited in his room, and it wasn't easy sweating it out alone waiting for the breakout call from HQ. "If you wanta walk. "Hell," Wayne said, grinning straight into the old man. He was still laughing as he whoomed the Olds between the pale dead glow of houses and roared up the ramp onto the Freeway. He strode under a sign reading Public Youth Center No. 947 and walked casually to the reception desk, where a thin man with sergeant's stripes and a pansy haircut looked out of a pile of paperwork. He wrote on a slip of paper, handed the pass to Wayne. "Thanks, sarge dear," Wayne said and took the elevator up to the Armory. A tired fat corporal with a naked head blinked up at tall Wayne. Finally he said, "So make up your mind, bud. "Hold your teeth, pop," Wayne said, coolly and slowly lighting a cigarette. It's a big city and you're starting late. You can get a cat, not a mouse, and some babes are clever hellcats in a dark alley." "A corporal with no hair and still a counterboy. The corporal waddled back with the revolver and the switchblade disguised in a leather comb case. He checked them on a receipt ledger, while Wayne examined the weapons, broke open the revolver, twirled the cylinder and pushed cartridges into the waiting chamber. He slipped the knife from the comb case, flicked open the blade and stared at its gleam in the buttery light as his mouth went dry and the refracted incandescence of it trickled on his brain like melted ice, exciting and scary. He slung the holster under his left armpit and tested the spring clip release several times, feeling the way the serrated butt dropped into his wet palm.
 No, because Wayne would not be able to mentally handle the murders.
 No, because Wayne would know that his parents would be disappointed in him.  No, because Wayne would not be able to mentally handle the murders.  Yes, because Wayne had been excited all along about his draft call.  Yes, because Wayne wanted to make Captain Jack proud no matter what.