The Worlds of Robert A. Heinlein
(1966)*
Robert A. Heinlein

Contents
	Free Men
	Blowups Happen
	Searchlight
	Life-Line
	Solution Unsatisfactory

Free Men

	"That makes three provisional presidents so far," the Leader said. "I wonder how many more there are?" He handed the flimsy sheet back to the runner, who placed it in his mouth and chewed it up like gum. 

	The third man shrugged. "No telling. What worries me —" A mockingbird interrupted. "Doity, doity, doity," he sang. "Terloo, terloo, terloo, purty-purtypurty-purty." 

	The clearing was suddenly empty. 

	"As I was saying," came the voice of the third man in a whisper in the Leader's ear, "it ain't how many worries me, but how you tell a de Gaulle from a Laval. See anything?" 

	"Convoy. Stopped below us." The Leader peered through bushes and down the side of a bluff. The high ground pushed out toward the river here, squeezing the river road between it and the water. The road stretched away to the left, where the valley widened out into farmland, and ran into the outskirts of Barclay ten miles away. 

	The convoy was directly below them, eight trucks preceded and followed by halftracks. The following halftrack was backing, vortex gun cast loose and ready for trouble. Its commander apparently wanted elbow room against a possible trap. 

	At the second truck helmeted figures gathered around its rear end, which was jacked up. As the Leader watched he saw one wheel removed.

	"Trouble?" 

	"I think not. Just a breakdown. They'll be gone soon." He wondered what was in the trucks. Food, probably. His mouth watered. A few weeks ago an opportunity like this would have meant generous rations for all, but the conquerors had smartened up. 

	He put useless thoughts away. "It's not that that worries me, Dad," he added, returning to the subject. "We'll be able to tell quislings from loyal Americans. But how do you tell men from boys?" 

	"Thinking of Joe Benz?" 

	"Maybe. I'd give a lot to know how far we can trust Joe. But I could have been thinking of young Morrie." 

	"You can trust him." 

	"Certainly. At thirteen he doesn't drink — and he wouldn't crack if they burned his feet off. Same with Cathleen. It's not age or sex — but how can you tell? And you've got to be able to tell." 

	There was a flurry below. Guards had slipped down from the trucks and withdrawn from the road when the convoy had stopped, in accordance with an orderly plan for such emergencies. Now two of them returned to the convoy, hustling between them a figure not in uniform. 

	The mockingbird set up a frenetic whistling. 

	"It's the messenger," said the Leader. "The dumb fool! Why didn't he lie quiet? Tell Ted we've seen it." 

	Dad pursed his lips and whistled: "Keewah, keewah, keewah, terloo." 

	The other "mockingbird" answered, "Terloo," and shut up. 

	"We'll need a new post office now," said the Leader. "Take care of it, Dad." 

	"Okay." 

	"There's no real answer to the problem," the Leader said. "You can limit size of units, so that one person can't give away too many — but take a colony like ours. 

	It needs to be a dozen or more to work. That means they all have to be dependable, or they all go down together. So each one has a loaded gun at the head of each other one."

	Dad grinned, wryly. "Sounds like the United Nations before the Blow Off. Cheer up, Ed. Don't burn your bridges before you cross them." 

	"I won't. The convoy is ready to roll." 

	When the convoy had disappeared in the distance, Ed Morgan, the Leader, and his deputy Dad Carter stood up and stretched. The "mockingbird" had announced safety loudly and cheerfully. "Tell Ted to cover us into camp," Morgan ordered. 

	Dad wheepled and chirruped and received acknowledgement. They started back into the hills. Their route was roundabout and included check points from which they could study their back track and receive reports from Ted. Morgan was not worried about Ted being followed — he was confident that Ted could steal baby 'possums from mama's pouch. But the convoy breakdown might have been a trap — there was no way to tell that all of the soldiers had got back into the trucks. The messenger might have been followed; certainly he had been trapped too easily. 

	Morgan wondered how much the messenger would spill. He could not spill much about Morgan's own people, for the "post office" rendezvous was all that he knew about them. 

-

	The base of Morgan's group was neither better nor worse than average of the several thousand other camps of recalcitrant guerrillas throughout the area that once called itself the United States. The Twenty Minute War had not surprised everyone. The mushrooms which had blossomed over Washington, Detroit, and a score of other places had been shocking but expected — by some. 

	Morgan had made no grand preparations. He had simply conceived it as a good period in which to stay 

	footloose and not too close to a target area. He had taken squatter's rights in an abandoned mine and had stocked it with tools, food, and other useful items. He had had the simple intention to survive; it was during the weeks after Final Sunday that he discovered that there was no way for a man with foresight to avoid becoming a leader.

	Morgan and Dad Carter entered the mine by a new shaft and tunnel which appeared on no map, by a dry rock route which was intended to puzzle even a bloodhound. They crawled through the tunnel, were able to raise their heads when they reached the armory, and stepped out into the common room of the colony, the largest chamber, ten by thirty feet and as high as it was wide. 

	Their advent surprised no one, else they might not have lived to enter. A microphone concealed in the tunnel had conveyed their shibboleths before them. The room was unoccupied save for a young woman stirring something over a tiny, hooded fire and a girl who sat at a typewriter table mounted in front of a radio. She was wearing earphones and shoved one back and turned to face them as they came in. 

	"Howdy, Boss!" 

	"Hi, Margie. What's the good word?" Then to the other, "What's for lunch?" 

	"Bark soup and a notch in your belt." 

	"Cathleen, you depress me." 

	"Well ... mushrooms fried in rabbit fat, but darn few of them." 

	"That's better." 

	"You better tell your boys to be more careful what they bring in. One more rabbit with tularemia and we won't have to worry about what to eat." 

	"Hard to avoid, Cathy. You must be sure you handle them the way Doc taught you." He turned to the girl. "Jerry in the upper tunnel?" 

	"Yes." 

	"Get him down here, will you?" 

	"Yes, sir." She pulled a sheet out of her typewriter and handed it to him, along with others, then left the room. 

	Morgan glanced over them. The enemy had abolished soap opera and singing commercials but he could not say that radio had been improved. There was an unnewsy sameness to the propaganda which now came over the air. He checked through while wishing for just one old-fashioned, uncensored newscast. 

	"Here's an item!" he said suddenly. "Get this, Dad —" 

	"Read it to me, Ed." Dad's spectacles had been broken on Final Sunday. He could bring down a deer, or a man, at a thousand yards — but he might never read again. 

	"'New Center, 28 April — It is with deep regret that Continental Coordinating Authority for World Unification, North American District, announces that the former city of St. Joseph, Missouri, has been subjected to sanitary measures. It is ordered that a memorial plaque setting forth the circumstances be erected on the former site of St. Joseph as soon as radioactivity permits. Despite repeated warnings the former inhabitants of this lamented city encouraged and succored marauding bands of outlaws skulking around the outskirts of their community. It is hoped that the sad fate of St. Joseph will encourage the native authorities of all North American communities to take all necessary steps to suppress treasonable intercourse with the few remaining lawless elements in our continental society.

	Dad cocked a brow at Morgan. "How many does that make since they took over?" 

	"Let's see ... Salinas ... Colorado Springs ... uh, six, including St. Joe." 

	"Son, there weren't more than sixty million Americans left after Final Sunday. If they keep up, we'll be kind of thinned out in a few years." 

	"I know." Morgan looked troubled. "We've got to work out ways to operate without calling attention to the towns. Too many hostages." 

	A short, dark man dressed in dirty dungarees entered from a side tunnel, followed by Margie. "You wanted me, boss?" 

	"Yes, Jerry. I want to get word to McCracken to come in for a meeting. Two hours from now, if he can get here." 

	"Boss, you're using radio too much. You'll get him shot and us, too." 

	"I thought that business of bouncing it off the cliff face was foolproof?" 

	"Well ... a dodge I can work up, somebody else can figure out. Besides, I've got the chassis unshipped. I was working on it." 

	"How long to rig it?" 

	"Oh, half an hour — twenty minutes." 

	"Do it. This may be the last time we'll use radio, except as utter last resort." 

	"Okay, boss." 

-

	The meeting was in the common room. Morgan called it to order once all were present or accounted for. McCracken arrived just as he had decided to proceed without him. McCracken had a pass for the countryside, being a veterinarian, and held proxy for the colony's underground associates in Barclay. 

	"The Barclay Free Company, a provisional unit of the United States of America, is now in session." Morgan announced formally. "Does any member have any item to lay before the Company?" 

	He looked around; there was no response. "How about you?" he challenged Joe Benz. "I heard that you had some things you thought the Company ought to hear. 

	Benz started to speak, shook his head. "I'll wait." 

	"Don't wait too long," Morgan said mildly. "Well, I have two points to bring up for discussion —" 

	"Three," corrected Dr. McCracken. "I'm glad you sent for me." He stepped up to Morgan and handed him a large, much folded piece of paper. Morgan looked it over, refolded it, and put it in his pocket. 

	"It fits in," he said to McCracken. "What do the folks in town say?" 

	"They are waiting to hear from you. They'll back you up — so far, anyway." 

	"All right." Morgan turned back to the group. "First item — we got a message today, passed by hand and about three weeks old, setting up another provisional government. The courier was grabbed right under our noses. Maybe he was a stooge; maybe he was careless — that's neither here nor there at the moment. The message was that the Honorable Albert M. Brockman proclaimed himself provisional President of these United States, under derived authority, and appointed Brigadier General Dewey Fenton commander of armed forces including irregular militia — meaning us — and called on all citizens to unite to throw the Invader out. All formal and proper. So what do we do about it?" 

	"And who the devil is the Honorable Albert M. Brockman?" asked someone in the rear. 

	"I've been trying to remember. The message listed government jobs he's held, including some assistant secretary job — I suppose that's the 'derived authority' angle. But I can't place him." 

	"I recall him," Dr. McCracken said suddenly. "I met him when I was in the Bureau of Animal Husbandry. A career civil servant ... and a stuffed shirt." 

	There was a gloomy silence. Ted spoke up. "Then why bother with him?" 

	The Leader shook his head. "It's not that simple, Ted. We can't assume that he's no good. Napoleon might have been a minor clerk under different circumstances. And the Honorable Mr. Brockman may be a revolutionary genius disguised as a bureaucrat. But that's not the point. We need nationwide unification more than anything. It doesn't matter right now who the titular leader is. The theory of derived authority may be shaky but it may be the only way to get everybody to accept one leadership. Little bands like ours can never win back the country. We've got to have unity — and that's why we can't ignore Brockman."

	"The thing that burns me," McCracken said savagely, "is that it need never have happened at all! It could have been prevented." 

	"No use getting in a sweat about it," Morgan told him. "It's easy to see the government's mistakes now, but just the same I think there was an honest effort to prevent war right up to the last. It takes all nations to keep the peace, but it only takes one to start a war." 

	"No, no, no — I don't mean that, Captain," McCracken answered. "I don't mean the War could have been prevented. I suppose it could have been — once. But everybody knew that another war could happen, and everybody — everybody, I say, knew that if it came, it would start with the blasting of American cities. Every congressman, every senator knew that a war would destroy Washington and leave the country with no government, flopping around like a chicken with its head off. They knew — why didn't they do something!" 

	"What could they do? Washington couldn't be protected." 

	"Do? Why, they could have made plans for their own deaths! They could have slapped through a constitutional amendment calling for an alternate president and alternate congressmen and made it illegal for the alternates to be in target areas — or any scheme to provide for orderly succession in case of disaster. They could have set up secret and protected centers of government to use for storm cellars. They could have planned the same way a father takes out life insurance for his kids. Instead they went stumbling along, fat, dumb, and happy, and let themselves get killed, with no provision to carry out their sworn duties after they were dead. Theory of 'derived authority,' pfui! It's not just disastrous; it's ridiculous! We used to be the greatest country in the world — now look at us!"

	"Take it easy, Doc," Morgan suggested. "Hindsight is easier than foresight." 

	"Hummm! I saw it coming. I quit my Washington job and took a country practice, five years ahead of time. Why couldn't a congressman be as bright as I am?" 

	"Hmmm ... well — you're right. But we might just as well worry over the Dred Scott Decision. Let's get on with the problem. How about Brockman? Ideas?" 

	"What do you propose, boss?" 

	"I'd rather have it come from the floor." 

	"Oh, quit scraping your foot, boss," urged Ted. "We elected you to lead." 

	"Okay. I propose to send somebody to backtrack on the message and locate Brockman — smell him out and see what he's got. I'll consult with as many groups as we can reach in this state and across the river, and we'll try to manage unanimous action. I was thinking of sending Dad and Morrie." 

	Cathleen shook her head. "Even with faked registration cards and travel permits they'd be grabbed for the Reconstruction Battalions. I'll go." 

	"In a pig's eye," Morgan answered. "You'd be grabbed for something a danged sight worse. It's got to be a man." 

	"I am afraid Cathleen is right," McCracken commented. "They shipped twelve-year-old boys and old men who could hardly walk for the Detroit project. They don't care how soon the radiation gets them — it's a plan to thin us out." 

	"Are the cities still that bad?" 

	"From what I hear, yes. Detroit is still 'hot' and she was one of the first to get it." 

	"I'm going to go." The voice was high and thin, and rarely heard in conference. 

	"Now, Mother —" said Dad Carter. 

	"You keep out of this, Dad. The men and young women would be grabbed, but they Won't bother with me. All I need is a paper saying I have a permit to rejoin my grandson, or something." 

	McCracken nodded. "I can supply that." 

	Morgan paused, then said suddenly, "Mrs. Carter will contact Brockman. It is so ordered. Next order of business," he went on briskly. "You've all seen the news about St. Joe — this is what they posted in Barclay last night." He hauled out and held up the paper McCracken had given him. It was a printed notice, placing the City of Barclay on probation, subject to the ability of "local authorities" to suppress "bands of roving criminals." 

	There was a stir, but no comment. Most of them had lived in Barclay; all had ties there. 

	"I guess you're waiting for me," McCracken began. "We held a meeting as soon as this was posted. We weren't all there — it's getting harder to cover up even the smallest gathering — but there was no disagreement. We're behind you but we want you to go a little easy. We suggest that you cut out pulling raids within, oh, say twenty miles of Barclay, and that you stop all killing unless absolutely necessary to avoid capture. It's the killings they get excited about — it was killing of the district director that touched off St. Joe." 

	Benz sniffed. "So we don't do anything. We just give up — and stay here in the hills and starve." 

	"Let me finish, Benz. We don't propose to let them scare us out and keep us enslaved forever. But casual raids don't do them any real harm. They're mostly for food for the Underground and for minor retaliations. We've got to conserve our strength and increase it and organize, until we can hit hard enough to make it stick. We won't let you starve. I can do more organizing among the farmers and some animals can be hidden out, unregistered. We can get you meat — some, anyhow. And we'll split our rations with you. They've got us on 1800 calories now, but we can share it. Something can be done through the black market, too. There are ways."

	Benz made a contemptuous sound. Morgan looked at him. 

	"Speak up, Joe. What's on your mind?" 

	"I will. It's not a plan; it's a disorderly retreat. A year from now we'll be twice as hungry and no further along — and they'll be better dug in and stronger. Where does it get us?" 

	Morgan shook his head. "You've got it wrong. Even if we hadn't had it forced on us, we would have been moving into this stage anyhow. The Free Companies have got to quit drawing attention to themselves. Once the food problem is solved we've got to build up our strength and weapons. We've got to have organization and weapons — nationwide organization and guns, knives, and hand grenades. We've got to turn this mine into a factory. There are people down in Barclay who can use the stuff we can make here — but we can't risk letting Barclay be blasted in the meantime. Easy does it." 

	"Ed Morgan, you're kidding yourself and you know it." 

	"How?" 

	"'How?' Look, you sold me the idea of staying on the dodge and joining up —" 

	"You volunteered." 

	"Okay, I volunteered. It was all because you were so filled with fire and vinegar about how we would throw the enemy back into the ocean. You talked about France and Poland and how the Filipinos kept on fighting after they were occupied. You sold me a bill of goods. But there was something you didn't tell me —" 

	"Go on." 

	"There never was an Underground that freed its own country. All of them had to be pulled out of the soup by an invasion from outside. Nobody is going to pull us out." 

	There was silence after this remark. The statement had too much truth in it, but it was truth that no member of the Company could afford to think about. Young Morrie broke it. "Captain?"

	"Yes, Morrie." Being a fighting man, Morrie was therefore a citizen and a voter. 

	"How can Joe be so sure he knows what he's talking about? History doesn't repeat. Anyhow, maybe we will get some help. England, maybe — or even the Russians. 

	Benz snorted. "Listen to the punk! Look, kid, England was smashed like we were, only worse — and Russia, too. Grow up; quit daydreaming." 

	The boy looked at him doggedly. "You don't know that. We only know what they chose to tell us. And there aren't enough of them to hold down the whole world, everybody, everywhere. We never managed to lick the Yaquis, or the Moros. And they can't lick us unless we let them. I've read some history too." 

	Benz shrugged. "Okay, okay. Now we can all sing 'My Country 'Tis of Thee' and recite the Scout oath. That ought to make Morrie happy —" 

	"Take it easy, Joe!" 

	"We have free speech here, don't we? What I want to know is: How long does this go on? I'm getting tired of competing with coyotes for the privilege of eating jackrabbits. You know I've fought with the best of them. I've gone on the raids. Well, haven't I? Haven't I? You can't call me yellow." 

	"You've been on some raids," Morgan conceded. 

	"All right. I'd go along indefinitely if I could see some sensible plan. That's why I ask, 'How long does this go on?' When do we move? Next spring? Next year?" 

	Morgan gestured impatiently. "How do I know? It may be next spring; it may be ten years. The Poles waited three hundred years." 

	"That tears it," Benz said slowly. "I was hoping you could offer some reasonable plan. Wait and arm ourselves — that's a pretty picture! Homemade hand grenades against atom bombs! Why don't you quit kidding yourselves? We're licked!" He hitched at his belt. "The rest of you can do as you please — I'm through."

	Morgan shrugged. "If a man won't fight, I can't make him. You're assigned noncombatant duties. Turn in your gun. Report to Cathleen." 

	"You don't get me, Ed. I'm through." 

	"You don't get me, Joe. You don't resign from an Underground." 

	"There's no risk. I'll leave quietly, and let myself be registered as a straggler. It doesn't mean anything to the rest of you. I'll keep my mouth shut — that goes without saying." 

	Morgan took a long breath, then answered, "Joe, I've learned by bitter experience not to trust statements set off by 'naturally,' 'of course,' or 'that goes without saying.'" 

	"Oh, so you don't trust me?" 

	"As Captain of this Company I can't afford to. Unless you can get the Company to recall me from office, my rulings stand. You're under arrest. Hand over your gun. 

	Benz glanced around, at blank, unfriendly faces. He reached for his waist, "With your left hand, Joe!" 

	Instead of complying, Benz drew suddenly, backed away. "Keep clear!" he said shrilly. "I don't want to hurt anybody — but keep clear!" 

	Morgan was unarmed. There might have been a knife or two in the assembly, but most of them had come directly from the dinner table. It was not their custom to be armed inside the mine. 

	Young Morrie was armed with a rifle, having come from lookout duty. He did not have room to bring it into play, but Morgan could see that he intended to try. So could Benz. 

	"Stop it, Morrie!" Morgan assumed obedience and turned instantly to the others. "Let him go. Nobody move. Get going, Joe." 

	"That's better." Benz backed down the main tunnel, toward the main entrance, weed and drift choked for years. Its unused condition was their principal camouflage, but it could be negotiated.

	He backed away into the gloom, still covering them. The tunnel curved; shortly he was concealed by the bend. 

	Dad Carter went scurrying in the other direction as soon as Benz no longer covered them. He reappeared at once, carrying something. "Heads down!" he shouted, as he passed through them and took out after Benz. 

	"Dad!" shouted Morgan. But Carter was gone. 

	Seconds later a concussion tore at their ears and noses. 

	Morgan picked himself up and brushed at his clothes, saying in annoyed tones, "I never did like explosives in cramped quarters. Cleve — Art. Go check on it. Move!" 

	"Right, boss!" They were gone. 

	"The rest of you get ready to carry out withdrawal plan — full plan, with provisions and supplies. Jerry, don't disconnect either the receiver or the line-of-sight till I give the word. Margie will help you. Cathleen, get ready to serve anything that can't be carried. We'll have one big meal. 'The condemned ate hearty.'" 

	"Just a moment, Captain." McCracken touched his sleeve. "I had better get a message into Barclay." 

	"Soon as the boys report. You better get back into town." 

	"I wonder. Benz knows me. I think I'm here to stay." 

	"Hm ... well, you know best. How about your family?" 

	McCracken shrugged. "They can't be worse off than they would be if I'm picked up. I'd like to have them warned and then arrangements made for them to rejoin me if possible." 

	"We'll do it. You'll have to give me a new contact." 

	"Planned for. This message will go through and my number-two man will step into my shoes. The name is Hobart — runs a feed store on Pelham Street." 

	Morgan nodded. "Should have known you had it worked out. Well, what we don't know —" He was interrupted by Cleve, reporting.

	"He got away, Boss." 

	"Why didn't you go after him?" 

	"Half the roof came down when Dad chucked the grenade. Tunnel's choked with rock. Found a place where I could see but couldn't crawl through. He's not in the tunnel." 

	"How about Dad?" 

	"He's all right. Got clipped on the head with a splinter but not really hurt." 

	Morgan stopped two of the women hurrying past, intent on preparations for withdrawal. "Here — Jean, and you, Mrs. Bowen. Go take care of Dad Carter and tell Art to get back here fast. Shake a leg!" 

	When Art reported Morgan said, "You and Cleve go out and find Benz. Assume that he is heading for Barclay. Stop him and bring him in if you can. Otherwise kill him. Art is in charge. Get going." He turned to McCracken. "Now for a message." He fumbled in his pocket for paper, found the poster notice that McCracken had given him, tore off a piece, and started to write. He showed it to McCracken. "How's that?" he asked. 

	The message warned Hobart of Benz and asked him to try to head him off. It did not tell him that the Barclay Free Company was moving but did designate the "post office" through which next contact would be expected — the men's rest room of the bus station. 

	"Better cut out the post office," McCracken advised. "Hobart knows it and we may contact him half a dozen other ways. But I'd like to ask him to get my family out of sight. Just tell him that we are sorry to hear that Aunt Dinah is dead." 

	"Is that enough?" 

	Yes. 

	"Okay." Morgan made the changes, then called, "Margie! Put this in code and tell Jerry to get it out fast. Tell him it's the strike-out edition. He can knock down his sets as soon as it's out." 

	"Okay, boss." Margie had no knowledge of cryptography. Instead she had command of jive talk, adolescent slang, and high school double-talk which would be meaningless to any but another American bobbysoxer. At the other end a fifteen-year-old interpreted her butchered English by methods which impressed her foster parents as being telepathy — but it worked. 

	The fifteen-year-old could be trusted. Her entire family, save herself, had been in Los Angeles on Final Sunday. 

	Art and Cleve had no trouble picking up Benz's trail. His tracks were on the tailings spilling down from the main entrance to the mine. The earth and rock had been undisturbed since the last heavy rain; Benz's flight left clear traces. 

	But trail was cold by more than twenty minutes; they had left the mine by the secret entrance a quarter of a mile from where Benz had made his exit. 

	Art picked it up where Benz had left the tailings and followed it through brush with the woodsmanship of the Eagle Scout he had been. From the careless signs he left behind Benz was evidently in a hurry and heading by the shortest route for the highway. The two followed him as fast as they could cover ground, discarding caution for speed. 

	They checked just before entering the highway. "See anything?" asked Cleve. 

-

	"Which way would he go?" 

	"The Old Man said to head him off from Barclay." 

	"Yeah, but suppose he headed south instead? He used to work in Wickamton. He might head that way." 

	"The Boss said to cover Barclay. Let's go." 

	They had to cache their guns; from here on it would be their wits and their knives. An armed American on a highway would be as conspicuous as a nudist at a garden party. 

	Their object now was speed; they must catch up with him, or get ahead of him and waylay him. 

	Nine miles and two and a half hours later — one hundred and fifty minutes of dog trot, with time lost lying in the roadside brush when convoys thundered past — they were in the outskirts of Barclay. Around a bend, out of sight, was the roadblock of the Invaders' check station. The point was a bottleneck; Benz must come this way if he were heading for Barclay.

	"Is he ahead or behind us?" asked Cleve, peering out through bushes. 

	"Behind, unless he was picked up by a convoy — or sprouted wings. We'll give him an hour." 

	A horse-drawn hayrack lumbered up the road. Cleve studied it. Americans were permitted no power vehicles except under supervision, but this farmer and his load could go into town with only routine check at the road block. "Maybe we ought to hide in that and look for him in town." 

	"And get a bayonet in your ribs? Don't be silly." 

	"Okay. Don't blow your top." Cleve continued to watch the rig. "Hey," he said presently. "Get a load of that!" 

	"That" was a figure which dropped from the tail of the wagon as it started around the bend, rolled to the ditch on the far side, and slithered out of sight. 

	"That was Joe!" 

	"Are you sure?" 

	"Sure! Here we go." 

	"How?" Art objected. "Take it easy. Follow me." They faded back two hundred yards, to where they could cross the road on hands and knees through a drainage pipe. Then they worked up the other side to where Benz had disappeared in weeds. 

	They found the place where he had been; grass and weeds were still straightening up. The route he must have taken was evident — down toward the river bank, then upstream to the city. There were drops of blood. "Dad must have missed stopping him by a gnat's whisker," Cleve commented. 

	Bad job he didn t. 

	"Another thing — he said he was going to give himself up. I don't think he is, or he would have stayed with the wagon and turned himself in at the check station. He's heading for some hideout. Who does he know in Barclay?"

	"I don't know. We'd better get going." 

	"Wait a minute. If he touches off an alarm, they'll shoot him for us. If he gets by the 'eyes,' we've lost him and we'll have to pick him up inside. Either way, we don't gain anything by blundering ahead. We've got to go in by the chute." 

	Like all cities the Invader had consolidated, Barclay was girdled by electric-eye circuits. The enemy had trimmed the town to fit, dynamiting and burning where necessary to achieve unbroken sequence of automatic sentries. But the "chute"—an abandoned and forgotten aqueduct — passed under the alarms. Art knew how to use it; he had been in town twice since Final Sunday. 

	They worked back up the highway, crossed over, and took to the hills. Thirty minutes later they were on the streets of Barclay, reasonably safe as long as they were quick to step off the sidewalk for the occasional Invader. 

	The first "post office," a clothesline near their exit, told them nothing — the line was bare. They went to the bus station. Cleve studied the notices posted for inhabitants while Art went into the men's rest room. On the wall, defaced by scrawlings of every sort, mostly vulgar, he found what he sought: "Killroy was here." The misspelling of Kilroy was the clue — exactly eighteen inches below it and six to the right was an address: "1745 Spruce — ask for Mabel." 

	He read it as 2856 Pine — one block beyond Spruce. Art passed the address to Cleve, then they set out separately, hurrying to beat the curfew but proceeding with caution — at least one of them must get through. They met in the backyard of the translated address. Art knocked on the kitchen door. It was opened a crack by a middle-aged man who did not seem glad to see them. "Well?" 

	"We're looking for Mabel." 

	"Nobody here by that name." 

	"Sorry," said Art. "We must have made a mistake." He shivered. "Chilly out," he remarked. "The nights are getting longer." 

	"They'll get shorter by and by," the man answered. 

	"We've got to think so, anyhow," Art countered. 

	"Come in," the man said. "The patrol may see you." He opened the door and stepped aside. "My name's Hobart. What's your business?" 

	"We're looking for a man named Benz. He may have sneaked into town this afternoon and found someplace to —" 

	"Yes, yes," Hobart said impatiently. "He got in about an hour ago and he's holed up with a character named Moyland." As he spoke he removed a half loaf of bread from a cupboard, cut four slices, and added cold sausage, producing two sandwiches. He did not ask if they were hungry; he simply handed them to Art and Cleve. 

	"Thanks, pal. So he's holed up. Haven't you done anything about it? He has got to be shut up at once or he'll spill his guts." 

	"We've got a tap in on the telephone line. We had to wait for dark. You can't expect me to sacrifice good boys just to shut his mouth unless it's absolutely necessary. 

	"Well, it's dark now, and we'll be the boys you mentioned. You can call yours off." 

	"Okay." Hobart started pulling on shoes. 

	"No need for you to stick your neck out," Art told him. "Just tell us where this Moyland lives." 

	"And get your throat cut, too. I'll take you." 

	"What sort of a guy is this Moyland? Is he safe?" 

	"You can't prove it by me. He's a black market broker, but that doesn't prove anything. He's not part of the organization but we haven't anything against him." 

	Hobart took them over his back fence, across a dark side street, through a playground, where they lay for several minutes under bushes because of a false alarm, then through many more backyards, back alleys, and dark byways. The man seemed to have a nose for the enemy; there were no more alarms. At last he brought them through a cellar door into a private home. They went upstairs and through a room where a woman was nursing a baby. She looked up, but otherwise ignored them. They ended up in a dark attic. "Hi, Jim," Hobart called out softly. "What's new?"

	The man addressed lay propped on his elbows, peering out into the night through opera glasses held to slots of a ventilating louvre. He rolled over and lowered the glasses, pushing one of a pair of earphones from his head as he did so. "Hello, Chief. Nothing much. Benz is getting drunk, it looks like." 

	"I'd like to know where Moyland gets it," Hobart said. "Has he telephoned?" 

	"Would I be doing nothing if he had? A couple of calls came in, but they didn't amount to anything, so I let him talk." 

	How do you know they didn't amount to anything?" Jim shrugged, turned back to the louvre. "Moyland just pulled down the shade," he announced. 

	Art turned to Hobart. "We can't wait. We're going 

-

	Benz arrived at Moyland's house in bad condition. The wound in his shoulder, caused by Carter's grenade, was bleeding. He had pushed a handkerchief up against it as a compress, but his activity started the blood again; he was shaking for fear his condition would attract attention before he could get under cover. 

	Moyland answered the door. "Is that you, Zack?" Benz demanded, shrinking back as he spoke. 

	"Yes. Who is it?" 

	"It's me — Joe Benz. Let me in, Zack — quick!" 

	Moyland seemed about to close the door, then suddenly opened it. "Get inside." When the door was bolted, he demanded, "Now — what's your trouble? Why come to me?" 

	"I had to go someplace, Zack. I had to get off the street. They'd pick me up." 

	Moyland studied him. "You're not registered. Why not?" 

	Benz did not answer. Moyland waited, then went on, "You know what I can get for harboring a fugitive. You're in the Underground — aren't you?" 

	"Oh, no, Zack! I wouldn't do that to you. I'm just a — a straggler. I gotta get registered, Zack." 

	"That's blood on your coat. How?" 

	"Uh ... just an accident. Maybe you could let me have clean rags and some iodine." 

	Moyland stared at him, his bland face expressionless, then smiled. "You've got no troubles we can't fix. Sit down." He stepped to a cabinet and took out a bottle of bourbon, poured three fingers in a water glass, and handed it to Benz. "Work on that and I'll fix you up. 

	He returned with some torn toweling and a bottle. "Sit here with your back to the window, and open your shirt. Have another drink. You'll need it before I'm through." 

	Benz glanced nervously at the window. "Why don't you draw the shade?" 

	"It would attract attention. Honest people leave their shades up these days. Hold still. This is going to hurt." 

	Three drinks later Benz was feeling better. Moyland seemed willing to sit and drink with him and to soothe his nerves. "You did well to come in," Moyland told him. "There's no sense hiding like a scared rabbit. It's just butting your head against a stone wall. Stupid." 

	Benz nodded. "That's what I told them." 

	"Told who?" 

	"Hunh? Oh, nobody. Just some guys I was talking to. Tramps." 

	Moyland poured him another drink. "As a matter of fact you were in the Underground." 

	"Me? Don't be silly, Zack." 

	"Look, Joe, you don't have to kid me. I'm your friend. Even if you did tell me it wouldn't matter. In the first place, I wouldn't have any proof. In the second place, I'm sympathetic to the Underground — any American is. I just think they're wrong-headed and foolish. Otherwise I'd join 'em myself." 

	"They're foolish all right! You can say that again." 

	"So you were in it?" 

	"Huh? You're trying to trap me. I gave my word of honor —" 

	"Oh, relax!" Moyland said hastily. "Forget it. I didn't hear anything; I can't tell anything. Hear no evil, see no evil — that's me." He changed the subject. 

	The level of the bottle dropped while Moyland explained current events as he saw them. "It's a shame we had to take such a shellacking to learn our lesson but the fact of the matter is, we were standing in the way of the natural logic of progress. There was a time back in '45 when we could have pulled the same stunt ourselves, only we weren't bright enough to do it. World organization, world government. We stood in the way, so we got smeared. It had to come. A smart man can see that." 

	Benz was bleary but he did not find this comment easy to take. "Look, Zack — you don't mean you like what happened to us?" 

	"Like it? Of course not. But it was necessary. You don't have to like having a tooth pulled — but it has to be done. Anyhow," he went on, "it's not all bad. The big cities were economically unsound anyway. We should have blown them up ourselves. Slum clearance, you might call it." 

	Benz banged his empty glass down. "Maybe so — but they made slaves out of us!" 

	"Take it easy, Joe," Moyland said, filling his glass, "you're talking abstractions. The cop on the corner could push you around whenever he wanted to. Is that freedom? Does it matter whether the cop talks with an Irish accent or some other accent? No, chum, there's a lot of guff talked about freedom. No man is free. There is no such thing as freedom. There are only various privileges. Free speech — we're talking freely now, aren't we? After all, you don't want to get up on a platform and shoot off your face. Free press? When did you ever own a newspaper? Don't be a chump. Now that you've shown sense and come in, you are going to find that things aren't so very different. A little more orderly and no more fear of war, that's all. Girls make love just like they used to, the smart guys get along, and the suckers still get the short end of the deal."

	Benz nodded. "You're right, Zack. I've been a fool." 

	"I'm glad you see it. Now take those wild men you were with. What freedom have they got? Freedom to starve, freedom to sleep on the cold ground, freedom to be hunted." 

	"That was it," Benz agreed. "Did you ever sleep in a mine, Zack? Cold. That ain't half of it. Damp, too." 

	"I can imagine," Moyland agreed. "The Capehart Lode always was wet." 

	"It wasn't the Capehart; it was the Harkn —" He caught himself and looked puzzled. 

	"The Harkness, eh? That's the headquarters?" 

	"I didn't say that! You're putting words in my mouth! You —" 

	"Calm yourself, Joe. Forget it."Moyland got up and drew down the shade. "You didn't say anything." 

	"Of course I didn't." Benz stared at his glass. "Say, Zack, where do I sleep? I don't feel good." 

	"You'll have a nice place to sleep any minute now." 

	"Huh? Well, show me. I gotta fold up." 

	"Any minute. You've got to check in first." 

	"Huh? Oh, I can't do that tonight, Zack. I'm in no shape." 

	"I'm afraid you'll have to. See me pull that shade down? They'll be along any moment." 

	Benz stood up, swaying a little. "You framed me!" he yelled, and lunged at his host. 

	Moyland sidestepped, put a hand on his shoulder 

	and pushed him down into the chair. "Sit down, sucker," he said pleasantly. "You don't expect me to get A-bombed just for you and your pals, do you?"

	Benz shook his head, then began to sob. 

-

	Hobart escorted them out of the house, saying to Art as they left, "If you get back, tell McCracken that Aunt Dinah is resting peacefully." 

	"Okay." 

	"Give us two minutes, then go in. Good luck." 

	Cleve took the outside; Art went in. The back door was locked, but the upper panel was glass. He broke it with the hilt of his knife, reached in and unbolted the door. He was inside when Moyland showed up to investigate the noise. 

	Art kicked him in the belly, then let him have the point in the neck as he went down. Art stopped just long enough to insure that Moyland would stay dead, then went looking for the room where Benz had been when the shade was drawn. 

	He found Benz in it. The man blinked his eyes and tried to focus them, as if he found it impossible to believe what he saw. "Art!" he got out at last. "Jeez, boy! Am I glad to see you! Let's get out of here — this place is 'hot.' 

	Art advanced, knife out. 

	Benz looked amazed. "Hey, Art! Art! You're making a mistake. Art. You can't do this —" Art let him have the first one in the soft tissues under the breast bone, then cut his throat to be sure. After that he got out quickly. 

	Thirty-five minutes later he was emerging from the country end of the chute. His throat was burning from exertion and his left arm was useless — he could not tell whether it was broken or simply wounded. 

	Cleve lay dead in the alley behind Moyland's house, having done a good job of covering Art's rear. 

-

	It took Art all night and part of the next morning to get back near the mine. He had to go through the hills the entire way; the highway was, he judged, too warm at the moment.

	He did not expect that the Company would still be there. He was reasonably sure that Morgan would have carried out the evacuation pending certain evidence that Benz's mouth had been shut. He hurried. 

	But he did not expect what he did find — a helicopter hovering over the neighborhood of the mine. 

	He stopped to consider the matter. If Morgan had got them out safely, he knew where to rejoin. If they were still inside, he had to figure out some way to help them. The futility of his position depressed him — one man, with a knife and a bad arm, against a helicopter. 

	Somewhere a bluejay screamed and cursed. Without much hope he chirped his own identification. The bluejay shut up and a mockingbird answered him — Ted. 

	Art signaled that he would wait where he was. He considered himself well hidden; he expected to have to signal again when Ted got closer, but he underestimated Ted's ability. A hand was laid on his shoulder. 

	He rolled over, knife out, and hurt his shoulder as he did so. "Ted! Man, do you look good to me!" 

	"Same here. Did you get him?" 

	"Benz? Yes, but maybe not in time. Where's the gang?" 

	"A quarter mile north of back door. We're pinned down. Where's Cleve?" 

	"Cleve's not coming back. What do you mean 'pinned down'?" 

	"That damned 'copter can see right down the draw we're in. Dad's got 'em under an overhang and they're safe enough for the moment, but we can't move." 

	"What do you mean 'Dad's got 'em'?" demanded Art. "Where's the Boss?" 

	"He ain't in such good shape, Art. Got a machine gun slug in the ribs. We had a dust up. Cathleen's dead." 

	"The hell you say!" 

	"That's right. Margie and Maw Carter have got her baby. But that's one reason why we"re pinned down — the Boss and the kid, I mean." 

	A mockingbird's call sounded far away. "There's Dad," Ted announced. "We got to get back." 

	"Can we?" 

	"Sure. Just keep behind me. I'll watch out that I don't get too far ahead." 

	Art followed Ted in, by a circuitous and, at one point, almost perpendicular route. He found the Company huddled under a shelf of rock which had been undercut by a stream, now dry. Against the wall Morgan was on his back, with Dad Carter and Dr. McCracken squatting beside him. Art went up and made his report. 

	Morgan nodded, his face gray with pain. His shirt had been cut away; bandaging was wrapped around his ribs, covering a thick pad. "You did well, Art. Too bad about Cleve. Ted, we're getting out of here and you're going first, because you're taking the kid." 

	"The baby? How —" 

	"Doc'll dope it so that it won't let out a peep. Then you strap it to your back, papoose fashion." 

	Ted thought about it. "No, to my front. There's some knee-and-shoulder work on the best way out." 

	"Okay. It's your job." 

	"How do you get out, boss?" 

	"Don't be silly." 

	"Look here, boss, if you think we're going to walk off and leave you, you've got another —" 

	"Shut up and scram!" The exertion hurt Morgan; he coughed and wiped his mouth. 

	"Yes, sir." Ted and Art backed away. 

	"Now, Ed —" said Carter. 

	"You shut up, too. You still sure you don't want to be Captain?" 

	"You know better than that, Ed. They took things from me while I was your deppity, but they wouldn't have me for Captain." 

	"That puts it up to you, Doc." 

	McCracken looked troubled. "They don't know me that well, Captain." 

	"They'll take you. People have an instinct for such things." 

	"Anyhow, if I am Captain, I won't agree to your plan of staying here by yourself. We'll stay till dark and carry you out." 

	"And get picked up by an infrared spotter, like sitting ducks? That's supposing they let you alone until sundown — that other 'copter will be back with more troops before long." 

	"I don't think they'd let me walk off on you." 

	"It's up to you to make them. Oh, I appreciate your kindly thoughts, Doc, but you'll think differently as soon as you're Captain. You'll know you have to cut your losses." 

	McCracken did not answer. Morgan turned his head to Carter. "Gather them around, Dad." 

	They crowded in, shoulder to shoulder. Morgan looked from one troubled face to another and smiled. "The Barclay Free Company, a provisional unit of the United States of America, is now in session," he announced, his voice suddenly firm. "I'm resigning the captaincy for reasons of physical disability. Any nommat ions?" 

	The silence was disturbed only by calls of birds, the sounds of insects. 

	Morgan caught Carter's eyes. Dad cleared his throat. "I nominate Doc McCracken." 

	"Any other nominations?" He waited, then continued, "All right, all in favor of Doc make it known by raising your right hand. Okay — opposed the same sign. Dr. McCracken is unanimously elected. It's all yours, Captain. Good luck to you." 

	McCracken stood up, stooping to avoid the rock overhead. "We're evacuating at once. Mrs. Carter, give the baby about another tablespoon of the syrup, then help Ted. He knows what to do. You'll follow Ted. 

	Then Jerry. Margie, you are next. I'll assign the others presently. Once out of the canyon, spread out and go it alone. Rendezvous at dusk, same place as under Captain Morgan's withdrawal plan — the cave." He paused. Morgan caught his eye and motioned him over, "That's all until Ted and the baby are ready to leave. Now back away and give Captain Morgan a little air."

	When they had withdrawn McCracken leaned over Morgan the better to hear his weak words. "Don't be too sure you've seen the last of me, Captain. I might join up in a few days." 

	"You might at that. I'm going to leave you bundled up warm and plenty of water within reach. I'll leave you some pills, too — that'll give you some comfort and ease. Only half a pill for you — they're intended for cows." He grinned at his patient. 

	"Half a pill it is. Why not let Dad handle the evacuation? He'll make you a good deputy — and I'd like to talk with you until you leave." 

	"Right." He called Carter over, instructed him, and turned back to Morgan. 

	"After you join up with Powell's outfit," whispered Morgan, "your first job is to get into touch with Brockman. Better get Mrs. Carter started right away, once you've talked it over with Powell." 

	''I will.'' 

	"That's the most important thing we've got to worry about, Doc. We've got to have unity, and one plan, from coast to coast. I look forward to a day when there will be an American assigned, by name, to each and every one of them. Then at a set time — zzzt!" He drew a thumb across his throat. 

	McCracken nodded. "Could be. It will be. How long do you think it will take us?" 

	"I don't know. I don't think about 'how long'. Two years, five years, ten years — maybe a century. That's not the point. The only question is whether or not there are any guts left in America." He glanced out where the fifth person to leave was awaiting a signal from Carter, who in turn was awaiting a signal from Art, hidden out where he could watch for the helicopter. "Those people will stick."

	"I'm sure of that." 

	Presently Morgan added, "There's one thing this has taught me: You can't enslave a free man. Only person can do that to a man is himself. No, sir — you can't enslave a free man. The most you can do is kill him." 

	"That's a fact, Ed." 

	"It is. Got a cigarette, Doc?" 

	"It won't do you any good, Ed." 

	"It won't do me any harm, either — now, will it?" 

	"Well, not much." McCracken unregretfully gave him his last and watched him smoke it. 

	Later, Morgan said, "Dad's ready for you, Captain. So long." 

	"So long. Don't forget. Half a pill at a time. Drink all the water you want, but don't take your blankets off, no matter how hot you get." 

	"Half a pill it is. Good luck." 

	"I'll have Ted check on you tomorrow." Morgan shook his head. "That's too soon. Not for a couple of days at least." 

	McCracken smiled. "I'll decide that, Ed. You just keep yourself wrapped up. Good luck." He withdrew to where Carter waited for him. "You go ahead, Dad. I'll bring up the rear. Signal Art to start." 

	Carter hesitated. "Tell me straight, Doc. What kind of shape is he in?" 

	McCracken studied Carter's face, then said in a low voice, "I give him about two hours." 

	"I'll stay behind with him." 

	"No, Dad, you'll carry out your orders." Seeing the distress in the old man's eyes, he added, "Don't you worry about Morgan. A free man can take care of himself. Now get moving." 

	"Yes, sir." 

Blowups Happen

	"Put down that wrench!" 

	The man addressed turned slowly around and faced the speaker. His expression was hidden by a grotesque helmet, part of a heavy, lead-and-cadmium armor which shielded his entire body, but the tone of voice in which he answered showed nervous exasperation. 

	"What the hell's eating on you, doc?" He made no move to replace the tool in question. 

	They faced each other like two helmeted, arrayed fencers, watching for an opening. The first speaker's voice came from behind his mask a shade higher in key and more peremptory in tone. "You heard me, Harper. Put down that wrench at once, and come away from that 'trigger'. Erickson!" 

	A third armored figure came from the far end of the control room. "What 'cha want, doe?" 

	"Harper is relieved from watch. You take over as engineer-of-the-watch. Send for the standby engineer." 

	"Very well." His voice and manner were phlegmatic, as he accepted the situation without comment. The atomic engineer whom he had just relieved glanced from one to the other, then carefully replaced the wrench in its rack. 

	"Just as you say, Doctor Silard — but send for your relief, too. I shall demand an immediate hearing!" Harper swept indignantly out, his lead-sheathed boots clumping on the floorplates. 

	Doctor Silard waited unhappily for the ensuing twenty minutes until his own relief arrived. Perhaps he had been hasty. Maybe he was wrong in thinking that Harper had at last broken under the strain of tending the most dangerous machine in the world — the atomic breeder plant. But if he had made a mistake, it had to be on the safe side — slips must not happen in this business; not when a slip might result in atomic detonation of nearly ten tons of uranium-238, U-235, and plutonium. 

	He tried to visualize what that would mean, and failed. He had 'been told that uranium was potentially twenty million times as explosive as T.N.T. The figure was meaningless that way. He thought of the pile instead as a hundred million tons of high explosive, or as a thousand Hiroshimas. It still did not mean anything. He had once seen an A-bomb dropped, when he had been serving as a temperament analyst for the Air Forces. He could not imagine the explosion of a thousand such bombs; his. brain balked. Perhaps these atomic engineers could. Perhaps, with their greater mathematical ability and closer comprehension of what actually went on inside the nuclear fission chamber, they had some vivid glimpse of the mind-shattering horror locked up beyond that shield. If so, no wonder they tended to blow up—

	He sighed. Erickson looked away from the controls of the linear resonant accelerator on which he had been making some adjustment. 

	"What's the trouble, doc?" 

	"Nothing. I'm sorry I had to relieve Harper." 

	Silard could feel the shrewd glance of the big Scandinavian. "Not getting the jitters yourself, are you, doc? Sometimes you squirrel-sleuths blow up, too —" 

	"Me? I don't think so. I'm scared of that thing in there-I'd be crazy if I weren't." 

	"So am I," Erickson told him soberly, and went back to his work at the controls of the accelerator. The accelerator proper lay beyond another shielding barrier; its snout disappeared in the final shield between it and the pile and fed a steady stream of terrifically speeded up sub-atomic bullets to the beryllium target located within the pile itself. The tortured beryllium yielded up neutrons, which shot out in all directions through the uranium mass. Some of these neutrons struck uranium atoms squarely on their nuclei and split them in two. The fragments were new elements, barium, xenon, rubidium — depending on the portions in which each atom split. The new elements were usually unstable isotopes and broke down into a, dozen more elements by radioactive disintegration in a progressive reaction. 

	But these second transmutations were comparatively safe; it was the original splitting of the uranium nucleus, with the release of the awe-inspiring energy that bound it together — an incredible two hundred million electron volts-that was important — and perilous. 

	For, while uranium was used to breed other fuels by bombarding it with neutrons, the splitting itself gives up more neutrons which in turn may land in other uranium nuclei and split them. If conditions are favorable to a progressively increasing reaction of this sort, it may get out of hand, build up in an unmeasurable fraction of a micro-second into a complete atomic explosion — an explosion which would dwarf an atom bomb to pop-gun size; an explosion so far beyond all human experience as to be as completely incomprehensible as the idea of personal death. It could be feared, but not understood. 

	But a self-perpetuating sequence of nuclear splitting, just under the level of complete explosion, was necessary to the operation of the breeder plant. To split the first uranium nucleus by bombarding it with neutrons from the beryllium target took more power than the death of the atom gave up. In order that the breeder pile continue to operate it was imperative that each atom split by a neutron from the beryllium target should cause the splitting of many more. 

	It was equally imperative that this chain of reactions should always tend to dampen, to die out. It must not build up, or the uranium mass would explode within a time interval too short to be measured by any means whatsoever. 

	Nor would there be anyone left to measure it. 

	The atomic engineer on duty at the pile could control this reaction by means of the "trigger", a term the engineers used to include the linear resonant accelerator, the beryllium target, the cadmium damping rods, and adjacent controls, instrument board, and power sources. That is to say he could vary the bombardment on the beryllium target to increase or decrease the level of operation of the plant, he could change the "effective mass" of the pile with the cadmium dampers, and he could tell from his instruments that the internal reaction was dampened — or, rather, that it had been dampened the split second before. He could not possibly know what was actually happening now within the pile — subatomic speeds are too great and the time intervals too small. He was like the bird that flew backward; he could see where he had been, but never knew where he was going. 

	Nevertheless, it was his responsibility, and his alone, not only to maintain the pile at a high efficiency, but to see that the reaction never passed the critical point and progressed into mass explosion. 

	But that was impossible. He could not be sure; he could never be sure. 

	He could bring to the job all of the skill and learning of the finest technical education, and use it to reduce the hazard to the lowest mathematical probability, but the blind laws of chance which appear to rule in sub-atomic action might turn up a royal flush against him and defeat his most skillful play. 

	And each atomic engineer knew it, knew that he gambled not only with his own life, but with the lives of countless others, perhaps with the lives of every human being on the planet. Nobody knew quite what such an explosion would do. A conservative estimate assumed that, in addition to destroying the plant and its personnel completely, it would tear a chunk out of the populous and heavily traveled Los Angeles-Oklahoma Road-City a hundred miles to the north. 

	The official, optimistic viewpoint on which the plant had been authorized by the Atomic Energy Commission was based on mathematics which predicted that such a mass of uranium would itself be disrupted on a molar scale, and thereby limit the area of destruction, before progressive and accelerated atomic explosion could infect the entire mass. 

	The atomic engineers, by and large, did not place faith in the official theory. They judged theoretical mathematical prediction for what it was worth — precisely nothing, until confirmed by experiment. 

	But even from the official viewpoint, each atomic engineer while on watch carried not only his own life in his hands, but the lives of many others — how many, it was better not to think about. No pilot, no general, no surgeon ever carried such a daily, inescapable, ever present weight of responsibility for the lives of others as these men carried every time they went on watch, every time they touched a venire screw, or read a dial. 

	They were selected not alone for their intelligence and technical training, but quite as much for their characters and sense of social responsibility. Sensitive men were needed — men who could fully appreciate the importance of the charge entrusted to them; no other sort would do. But the burden of responsibility was too great to be borne indefinitely by a sensitive man. 

	It was, of necessity, a psychologically unstable condition. Insanity was an occupational disease. 

	Doctor Cummings appeared, still buckling the straps of the armor worn to guard against stray radiation. "What's up?" he asked Silard. 

	"I had to relieve Harper." 

	"So I guessed. I met him coming up. He was sore as hell — just glared at me." 

	"I know. He wants an immediate hearing. That's why I had to send for you." 

	Cummings grunted, then nodded toward the engineer, anonymous in all-enclosing armor. "Who'd I draw?" 

	"Erickson." 

	"Good enough. Squareheads can't go crazy — eh, Gus?" 

	Erickson looked up momentarily, and answered, "That's your problem," and returned to his work. Cummings turned back to Silard, and commented, "Psychiatrists don't seem very popular around here. O.K. — I relieve you, sir." 

	"Very well, sir." 

	Silard threaded his way through the zig-zag in the outer shield which surrounded the control room. Once outside this outer shield, he divested himself of the cumbersome armor, disposed of it in the locker room provided, and hurried to a lift. He left the lift at the tube station, underground, and looked around for an unoccupied capsule. Finding one, he strapped himself in, sealed the gasketed door, and settled the back of his head into the rest against the expected surge of acceleration. 

	Five minutes later he knocked at the door of the office of the general superintendent, twenty miles away. 

	The breeder plant proper was located in a bowl of desert hills on the Arizona plateau. Everything not necessary to the immediate operation of the plant — administrative offices, television station, and so forth — lay beyond the hills. The buildings housing these auxiliary functions were of the most durable construction technical ingenuity could devise. It was hoped that, if der tag ever came, occupants would stand approximately the chance of survival of a man going over Niagara Falls in a barrel. 

	Silard knocked again. He was greeted by a male secretary, Steinke. Silard recalled reading his case history. Formerly one of the most brilliant of the young engineers, he had suffered a blanking out of the ability to handle mathematical operations. A plain case of fugue, but there had been nothing that the poor devil could do about it — he had been anxious enough with his conscious mind to stay on duty. He had been rehabilitated as an office worker. 

	Steinke ushered him into the superintendent's private office. Harper was there before him, and returned his greeting with icy politeness. The superintendent was cordial, but Silard thought he. looked tired, as if the twenty-four-hour-a-day strain was too much for him. 

	"Come in, Doctor, come In. Sit down. Now. tell me about this. I'm a little' surprised. I thought Harper was one of my steadiest men." 

	"I don't say he isn't, sir." 

	"Well?" 

	"He may be perfectly all right, but your instructions to me are not to take any chances." 

	"Quite right" The superintendent gave the engineer, silent and tense in his chair, a troubled glance, then returned his attention to Silard. "Suppose you tell me about it." 

	Silard took a deep breath. "While on watch as psychological observer at the control station I noticed that the engineer of the watch seemed preoccupied and less responsive to stimuli than usual. During my off-watch observation of this case, over a period of the past several days, I have suspected an increasing lack of attention. For example, while playing contract bridge, he now occasionally asks for a review of the bidding which is contrary to his former behavior pattern. 

	"Other similar data are available. To cut it short, at 3:11 today, while on watch, I saw Harper, with no apparent reasonable purpose in mind, pick up a wrench used only for operating the valves of the water shield and approach the trigger. I relieved him of duty, and sent him out of the control room." 

	"Chief!" Harper calmed himself somewhat and continued, "If this witch-doctor knew a wrench from an oscillator, he'd know what I was doing. The wrench was on the wrong rack. I noticed it, and picked it up to return it to its proper place. On the way, I stopped to check the readings!" 

	The superintendent turned inquiringly to Doctor Shard. 

	"That may be true — Granting that it is true," answered the psychiatrist doggedly, "my diagnosis still stands. Your behavior pattern has altered; your present actions are unpredictable, and I can't approve you for responsible work without a complete check-up." 

	General Superintendent King drummed on the desktop, and sighed. Then he spoke slowly to Harper, "Cal, you're a good boy, and believe me, I know how you feel. But: there is no way to avoid it — you've got to go up for the psychometricals, and accept whatever disposition the board makes of you." He paused, but Harper maintained an expressionless silence. "Tell you what, son — why don't, you take a few days' leave? Then, when you come back,' you can go up before the board, or transfer to another department away from the bomb, whichever you prefer." He looked to Shard for approval, and received a nod. 

	But Harper was not mollified. "No, chief," he protested. "It won't do. Can't you' see what's wrong? It's this constant supervision. Somebody always watching the back of your neck, expecting you to go crazy. A man can't even shave in private. We're jumpy about the most innocent acts, for fear some head doctor, half batty himself, will see it and decide it's a sign we're slipping — good grief, what do you expect!" His outburst having run its course, he subsided into a flippant cynicism that did" not quite jell. "O.K. — never mind the strait jacket; I'll go quietly. You're a good Joe in spite of it, chief," he added, "and I'm glad to have worked under you. Goodbye." 

	King kept the pain in his eyes out of his voice. 'Wait a minute, Cal — you're not through here. Let's forget about the vacation.' I'm transferring you to the radiation laboratory. You belong in research anyhow; I'd never have spared you from it to stand watches if I hadn't been short on number-one men. 

	"As for the constant psychological observation, I hate it as much as you do. I don't suppose you know that they watch me about twice as hard as they watch you duty engineers." Harper showed his surprise, but Shard nodded in sober conflation. "But we have to have this supervision ... Do you remember Manning? No, he was before your time. We didn't have' psychological observers then. Manning was able and brilliant. Furthermore, he was always cheerful; nothing seemed to bother him. 

	"I was glad to have him on the pile, for he was always alert, and never seemed nervous about working with it — in fact he grew more buoyant and cheerful the longer he stood control watches. I should have known that was a very bad sign, but I didn't, and there was no observer to 'tell me so. 

	"His technician had to slug him one night ... He found him dismounting the, safety interlocks on the cadmium assembly. Poor old Manning never pulled out of it — he's been violently insane ever since. After Manning cracked up, we worked out the present system of two qualified engineers and an observer for every watch. It seemed the only thing to do." 

	"I suppose so, chief," Harper mused, his face no longer sullen, but still unhappy. "It's a hell of a situation just the same." 

	"That's putting it mildly." He got up and put out his hand. "Cal, unless you're dead set on leaving us, I'll expect to see you at the radiation laboratory tomorrow. Another thing — I don't often recommend this, but it might do you good to get drunk tonight." 

	King had signed to Shard to remain after the young man left. Once the door was closed he turned back to the psychiatrist. "There goes another one — and one of the best. Doctor, what am I going to do?" 

	Silard pulled at his cheek. "I don't know," he admitted. "The hell of it is, Harper's absolutely right. It does increase the strain on them to know that they are being watched... and yet they have to be watched. Your psychiatric staff isn't doing too well, either. It makes us nervous to be around the Big Bomb... the more so because we don't understand it. And it's a strain on us to be hated and despised as we are. Scientific detachment is difficult under such conditions; I'm getting jumpy myself." 

	King ceased pacing the floor and faced the doctor. "But there must be some solution —" he insisted. 

	Silard shook his head. "It's beyond me, Superintendent. I see no solution from the standpoint of psychology." 

	"No? Hmm — Doctor, who is the top man in your field?" 

	"Eh?" 

	"Who is the recognized number-one man in handling this sort of thing?" 

	"Why, that's hard to say. Naturally, there isn't any one, leading psychiatrist in the world; we specialize too much." I know what you mean, though. You don't want the best industrial temperament psychometrician; you want the" best all-around man for psychoses non-lesional and situational. That would be Lentz." 

	"Go on." 

	"Well — He covers the whole field of environment adjustment. He's the man that correlated the theory of optimum tonicity with the relaxation technique that Korzybski had developed empirically. He actually worked under, Korzybski himself, when he was a young student — it's the only thing he's vain about." 

	"He did? Then he must be pretty old; Koxzybski died in — What year did he die?" 

	"I started to say that you must know his work in symbology — theory of abstraction and calculus of statement, all that sort of thing — because of its applications to engineering and mathematical physics." 

	"That Lentz — yes, of course. But I had never thought of him as a psychiatrist." 

	"No, you wouldn't, in your field. Nevertheless, we are inclined to credit him with having done as much to check and reduce the pandemic neuroses of the Crazy Years as any other man, and more than any man left alive." 

	"Where is he?" 

	"Why, Chicago, I suppose. At the Institute." 

	"Get him here." 

	"Get him down here. Get on that visiphone and locate him. Then have Steinke call the Port of Chicago, and hire a stratocar to stand by for him. I want to see him as soon as possible-before the day is out." King sat up in his chair with the air of a man who is once more master of himself and the situation. His spirit knew that warming replenishment that comes only with reaching a decision. The harassed expression was gone. 

	Silard looked dumbfounded. "But, superintendent," he expostulated, "you can't ring for Doctor Lentz as if he were a junior clerk. He's — he's Lentz." 

	"Certainly — that's why I want him. But I'm not a neurotic clubwoman looking for sympathy, either. He'll come. If necessary, turn on the heat from Washington. Have the White House call him. But get him here at once. Move!" King strode out of the office. 

-

	When Erickson came off watch he inquired around and found that Harper had left for town. Accordingly, he dispensed with dinner at the base, shifted into "drinkin'clothes", and allowed himself to be dispatched via tube to Paradise. Paradise, Arizona, was a hard little boom town, which owed its existence to the breeder plant. It was dedicated exclusively to the serious business of detaching the personnel of the plant from their inordinate salaries. In this worthy project they received much cooperation from the plant personnel themselves, each of whom was receiving from twice to ten times as much money each payday as he had ever received in any other job, and none of whom was certain of living long enough to justify saving for old' age. Besides, the company carried a sinking fund in Manhattan for their dependents; why be stingy? 

	It was claimed, with some truth, that any entertainment or luxury obtainable in New York City could be purchased in Paradise. The local chamber of commerce had appropriated the slogan of Reno, Nevada, "Biggest Little City in the World." The Reno boosters retaliated by claiming that, while a town that close to the atomic breeder plant undeniably brought thoughts of death and the hereafter; Hell's Gates would be a more appropriate name. 

	Erickson started making the rounds. There were twenty-seven places licensed to sell liquor in the six blocks of the main street of Paradise. He expected to find Harper in one of them, and, knowing the man's habits and tastes, he expected to find him in the first two three he tried. 

	He was not mistaken. He found Harper sitting alone a table in the rear of deLancey's Sans Souci Bar. Lancey's was a favorite of both of them. There was old-fashioned comfort about its chrome-plated bar red leather furniture that appealed to them more than the spectacular fittings of the up-to-the-minute place. DeLancey was conservative; he stuck to indirect light and soft music; his hostesses were required to be fully clothed, even in the evening. The fifth of Scotch in front of Harper was about two thirds full. Erickson shoved three fingers in front Harper's face and demanded, "Count!" 

	"Three," announced Harper. "Sit down, Gus." 

	"That's correct," Erickson agreed, sliding his big frame into a low-slung chair. "You'll do — for now. What the outcome?" 

	"Have a drink. Not," he went on, "that this Scotch any good. I think Lance has taken to watering it. I surrendered, horse and foot." 

	"Lance wouldn't do that — stick to that theory anti you'll sink in the sidewalk up to your knees. How come you capitulated? I thought you planned to beat 'em about the head and shoulders, at least." ' I 

	"I did," mourned Harper, "but, cripes, Gus, the chief is right. If a brain mechanic says you're punchy, he has got to back him up, and take you off the watch list. The chief can't afford to take a chance." 

	"Yeah, the chief's all right, but I can't learn to love our dear psychiatrists. Tell you what — let's find us one, and, see if he can feel pain. I'll hold him while you slug 'im." 

	"Oh, forget it, Gus. Have a drink." 

	"A pious thought-but not Scotch. I'm going to have a martini; we ought to eat pretty soon." 

	"I'll have one, too." 

	"Do you good." Erickson lifted his blond head and bellowed, "Israfell" 

	A large, black person appeared at his elbow. "Mistuh Erickson! Yes, sub!" 

	"Izzy, fetch two martinis. Make mine with Italian." He turned back to Harper. "What are you going to do now, Cal?" 

	"Radiation laboratory." 

	"Well, that's not so bad. I'd like to have a go at the matter of rocket fuels 'myself. I've got some ideas." 

	Harper looked mildly amused. "You mean atomic fuel for interplanetary flight? That problem's pretty well exhausted. No, son, the ionosphere is the ceiling until we think up something better than rockets. Of course, you could mount a pile in a ship, and figure out some jury rig to convert some of its output into push, but where does that get you? You would still have a terrible mass-ratio because of the shielding and I'm betting you couldn't convert one percent into thrust. That's disregarding the question of getting the company to lend you a power pile for anything that doesn't pay dividends." 

	Erickson looked balky. "I don't concede that you've covered all the alternatives. What have we got? The early rocket boys went right ahead trying to build better rockets, serene in the belief that, by the time they could build rockets good enough to fly to the moon, a fuel would be perfected that would do the trick. And they did build ships that were good enough — you could take any ship that makes the Antipodes run, and refit it for the moon — if you had a fuel that was adequate. But they haven't got it. 

	"And why not? Because we let 'em down, that's why. Because they're still depending on molecular energy, on chemical reactions, with atomic power sitting right here in our laps. It's not their fault — old D. D. Harriman had Rockets Consolidated underwrite the whole first issue of Antarctic Pitchblende, and took a big slice of it himself, in the expectation that we would produce something usable in the way of a concentrated rocket fuel. Did we do it? Like hell! The company went hog-wild for immediate commercial exploitation, and there's no atomic rocket fuel yet." 

	"But you haven't stated it properly," Harper objected. "There are just two forms of atomic power-available, radioactivity and atomic disintegration. The first is too slow; the energy is there, but you can't wait years for it to come out — not in a rocket ship. The second we can only manage in a large power plant. There you are — stymied." 

	"We haven't really tried," Erickson answered. "The power is there; we ought to give 'em a decent fuel" 

	"What would you call a 'decent fuel'?" 

	Erickson ticked it off. "A small enough critical mass so that all, or almost all, the energy could be taken up as heat by the reaction mass — I'd like the reaction mass to be ordinary water. Shielding that would have to be no more than a lead and cadmium jacket. And the whole thing controllable to a fine point." 

	Harper laughed. "Ask for Angel's wings and be done with it. You couldn't store such fuel in a rocket; it would set itself off before it reached the jet chamber." 

	Erickson's Scandinavian stubbornness was just gathering for another try at the argument when the waiter arrived with the drinks. He set them down with a triumphant flourish. "There you are, suh!" 

	"Want to roll for them, Izzy?" Harper inquired. 

	"Don' mind if I do." 

	The Negro produced a leather dice cup and Harper rolled. He selected his combinations with care and managed to get four aces and jack in three rolls. Israfel took the cup. He rolled in the grand manner with a backwards twist to his wrist. His score finished at five kings, and he courteously accepted the price of six drinks. Harper stirred the engraved cubes with his forefinger. 

	"Izzy," he asked, "are these the same dice I rolled with?" 

	"Why, Mistuh Harper!" The black's expression was pained. 

	"Skip it," Harper conceded. "I should know better than to gamble with you. I haven't won a roll from you in six weeks. What did you start to say, Gus?" 

	"I was just going to say that there ought to be a better way to get energy out of —" 

	But they were joined again, this time by something very seductive in an evening gown that appeared to have been sprayed on her lush figure. She was young, perhaps nineteen or twenty. "You boys lonely?" she asked as she flowed into a chair. 

	"Nice of you to ask, but we're not," Erickson denied with patient politeness. He jerked a thumb at a solitary figure seated across the room. "Go talk to Hannigan; he's not busy." 

	She followed his gesture with her eyes, and answered with faint scorn, "Him? He's no use. He's been like that for three weeks-hasn't spoken to a soul. If you ask me, I'd say that he was cracking up." 

	"That so?" he observed noncommittally. "Here —" He fished out a five-dollar bill and handed it to her. "Buy yourself a drink. Maybe we'll look you up later." 

	"Thanks, boys." The money disappeared under her clothing, and she stood up. "Just ask for Edith." 

	"Hannigan does look bad," Harper considered, noting the brooding stare and apathetic attitude, "and he has been awfully stand-offish lately, for him. Do you suppose we're obliged to report him?" 

	"Don't let it worry you," advised Erickson, "there's a spotter on the job now. Look." Harper followed his companion's eyes and recognized Dr. Mott of the psychological staff. He was leaning against the far end of the bar and nursing a tall glass, which gave him protective coloration. But his stance was such that his field of vision included not only Hannigan, but Erickson and Harper as well. 

	"Yeah, and he's studying us as well," Harper added.' "Damn it to hell, why does it make my back hair rise just to lay eyes on one of them?" 

	The question was rhetorical, Erickson ignored it. "Let's get out of here," he suggested, "and have dinner some where else." 

	"O.K." 

	DeLancey himself waited on them as they left. "Going so soon, gentlemen?" he asked, in a voice that implied that their departure would leave him no reason to stay open. "Beautiful lobster thermidor tonight. If you do not like it, you need not pay." He smiled brightly. 

	"No sea food, Lance," Harper told him, "not tonight. Tell me — why do you stick around here when you know that the pile is bound to get you in the long run? Aren't you afraid of it?" 

	The tavern keeper's eyebrows shot up. "Afraid of this pile? But it is my friend!" 

	"Makes you money, eh?" 

	"Oh, I do not mean that." He leaned toward them confidentially. "Five years ago I come here to make some money quickly for my family before my cancer of the stomach, it kills me. At the clinic, with the wonderful new radiants you gentlemen make with the aid of the Big Bomb, I am cured-I live again. No, I am not afraid of the pile; it is my good friend." 

	"Suppose it blows up?" 

	"When the good Lord needs me, he will take me." He crossed himself quickly. 

	As they turned away, Erickson commented in a low voice to Harper. "There's your answer, Cal-if all us engineers had his faith, the job wouldn't get us down." 

	Harper was unconvinced. "I don't know," be mused. 'I don't think it's faith; I think it's lack of imagination and knowledge." 

-

	Notwithstanding King's confidence, Lentz did not show up until the next day. The superintendent was subconsciously a little surprised at his visitor's appearance. He had pictured a master psychologist as wearing flowing hair, an imperial, and having piercing black eyes. But this man was not overly tall, was heavy in his framework, and fat-almost gross. He might have been a butcher. Little, piggy, faded-blue eyes peered merrily out from beneath shaggy blond brows. There was no hair anywhere else on the enormous skull, and the ape-like jaw was smooth and pink. He was dressed in mussed pajamas of unbleached linen. A long cigarette holder jutted permanently from one corner of a wide mouth, widened still more by a smile which suggested unmalicious amusement at the worst that life, or men, could do. He had gusto. King found him remarkably easy to talk to. 

	At Lentz' suggestion the Superintendent went first into the history of atomic power plants, how the fission of the uranium atom by Dr. Otto Hahn in December, 1938, had opened up the way to atomic power. The door was opened just a crack; the process to be self perpetuating and commercially usable required an enormously greater knowledge than there was available in the entire civilized world at that time. 

	In 1938 the amount of separated uranium-235 in the world was not the mass of the head of a pin. Plutonium was unheard of. Atomic power was abstruse theory and a single, esoteric laboratory experiment. World War II, the Manhattan Project, and Hiroshima changed that; by late 1945 prophets were rushing into print with predictions of atomic power, cheap, almost free atomic power, for everyone in a year or two. 

	It did not work out that way. The Manhattan Project had been run with the single-minded purpose of making weapons; the engineering of atomic power was still in the future. 

	The far future, so it seemed. The uranium piles used to make the atom bomb were literally no good for commercial power; they were designed to throw away power as a useless byproduct, nor could the design of a pile, once in operation, be changed. A design — on paper — for an economic, commercial power pile could be made, but it had two serious hitches. The first was that such a pile would give off energy with such fury, if operated at a commercially satisfactory level, that there was no known way of accepting that energy and putting it to work. 

	This problem was solved first. A modification of the Douglas-Martin power screens, originally designed to turn the radiant energy of the sun (a natural atomic power pile itself) directly into electrical power, was used to receive the radiant fury of uranium fission and carry it away as electrical current. 

	The second hitch seemed to be no hitch at all. An "enriched" pile — one in which U-235 or plutonium had been added to natural uranium — was a quite satisfactory source of commercial power. We knew how to get U-235 and plutonium; that was the primary accomplishment of the Manhattan Project. 

	Or did we know how? Hanford produced plutonium; Oak Ridge extracted U-235, true — but the Hanford piles used more U-235 than they produced plutonium and Oak Ridge produced nothing but merely separated out the 7/10 of one percent of U-235 in natural uranium and "threw away" the 99%-plus of the energy which was still locked in the discarded U-238. Commercially ridiculous, economically fantastic! 

	But there was another way to breed plutonium, by means of a high-energy, unmoderated pile of natural uranium somewhat enriched. At a million electron volts or more U-238 will fission at somewhat lower energies it turns to plutonium. Such a pile supplies its own "fire" and produces more "fuel" than it uses; it could breed fuel for many other power piles of the usual moderated sort. 

	But an unmoderated power pile is almost by definition an atom bomb. 

	The very name "pile" comes from the pile of graphite bricks and uranium slugs set up in a squash court at the University of Chicago at the very beginning of the Manhattan Project. Such a pile, moderated by graphite or heavy water, cannot explode. 

	Nobody knew what an unmoderated, high-energy pile might do. It would breed plutonium in great quantities- but would it explode? Explode with such violence as to make the Nagasaki bomb seem like a popgun? 

	Nobody knew. 

	In the meantime the power-hungry technology of the United States grew still more demanding. The Douglas Martin sunpower screens met the immediate crisis when oil became too scarce to be wasted as fuel, but sunpower was limited to about one horsepower per square yard and was at the mercy of the weather. 

	Atomic power was needed — demanded. 

	Atomic engineers lived through the period in an agony of indecision. Perhaps a breeder pile could be controlled. Or perhaps if it did go out of control it would simply blow itself apart and thus extinguish its own fires. Perhaps it would explode like several atom bombs but with low efficiency. But it might — it just might — explode its whole mass of many tons of uranium at once and destroy the human race in the process. 

	There is an old story, not true, which tells of a scientist who had made a machine which would instantly destroy the world, so he believed, if he closed one switch. He wanted to know whether or not lie was right. So he closed the switch — and never found out. 

	The atomic engineers were afraid to close the switch. 

	"It was Destry's mechanics of infinitesimals that showed a way out of the, dilemma," King went on. "His equations appeared to predict that such an atomic explosion, once started, would disrupt the molar mass enclosing it so rapidly that neutron loss through the outer surface of the fragments would dampen the progression of the atomic explosion to zero before complete explosion could be reached. In an atom bomb such damping actually occurs. 

	"For the mass we use in the pile, his equations predicted possible force of explosion one-seventh of one percent of the force of complete explosion. That alone, of course, would be incomprehensibly destructive-enough to wreck this end of the state. Personally, I've never been sure that is all that would happen." 

	"Then why did you accept this job?" inquired Lentz. 

	King fiddled with items on his desk before replying. "I couldn't turn it down, doctor — I couldn't. If I had refused, they would have gotten someone else — and it was an opportunity that comes to a physicist once in history." 

	Lentz nodded. "And probably they would have gotten someone not as competent. I understand, Dr. King — you were compelled by the 'truth-tropism' of the scientist. He must go where the data is to be found, even if it kills him. But about this fellow Destry, I've never liked his mathematics; he postulates too much." 

	King looked up in quick surprise, then recalled that this was the man who had refined and given rigor to the calculus of statement. "That's just the hitch," he agreed. "His work is brilliant, but I've never been sure that his predictions were worth the paper they were written on. Nor, apparently," he added bitterly, "do my junior engineers." 

	He told the psychiatrist Of the difficulties they had had with personnel, of how the most carefully selected men would, sooner or later, crack under the strain. "At first I thought it might be some degenerating effect from the neutron radiation that leaks out through the shielding, so we improved the screening and the personal armor. But it didn't help. One young fellow who had joined us after the new screening was installed became violent at dinner one night, and insisted that a pork chop was about to explode. I hate to think of what might have happened if he had been on duty at the pile when he blew up." 

	The inauguration of the system of constant psychological observation had greatly reduced the probability of acute danger resulting from a watch engineer cracking up, but King was forced to admit that the system was not a success; there had actually been a marked increase in psychoneuroses, dating from that time. 

	"And that's the picture, Dr. Lentz. It gets worse all the time. It's getting me now. The strain is telling on me; I can't sleep, and I don't think my judgment is as good as it used to be — I have trouble making up my mind, of coming to a decision. Do you think you can do anything for us?" 

	But Lentz had no immediate relief for his anxiety. "Not so fast, superintendent," he countered. "You have given me the background, but I have no real data as yet. I must look around for a while, smell out the situation for myself, talk to your engineers, perhaps have a few drinks with them, and get acquainted. That is possible, is it not? Then in a few days, maybe, we know where we stand." 

	King had no alternative but to agree. 

	"And it is well that your young men do not know what I am here for. Suppose I am your old friend, a visiting physicist, eh?" 

	"Why, yes — of course. I can see to it that that idea gets around. But say —" King was reminded again of something that had bothered him from the time Silard had first suggested Lentz' name. "May I ask a personal question?" 

	The merry eyes were undisturbed. "Go ahead." 

	"I can't help but be surprised that one man should attain eminence in two such widely differing fields as psychology and mathematics. And right now I'm perfectly convinced of your ability to pass yourself off as a physicist. I don't understand it." 

	The smile was more amused, without being in the least patronizing, nor offensive. "Same subject," he answered. 

	"Eh? How's that —" 

	"Or rather, both mathematical physics and psychology are branches of the same subject, symbology. You are a specialist; it' would not necessarily come to your attention." 

	"I still don't follow you." 

	"No? Man lives in a world of ideas. Any phenomenon is so complex that he cannot possibly grasp the whole of it. He abstracts certain characteristics of a given phenomenon as an idea, then represents that idea as a symbol, be it a word or a mathematical sign. Human reaction is almost entirely reaction to symbols, and only negligibly to phenomena. As a matter Of fact," he continued, removing the cigarette holder from his mouth and settling into his subject, "it can be demonstrated that the human mind can think only in terms of symbols. 

	"When we think, we let symbols operate on other symbols in certain, set fashions — rules of logic, or rules of mathematics. If the symbols have been abstracted so that they are structurally similar to the phenomena they stand for, and if the symbol operations are similar in structure and order to the operations of phenomena in the real world, we think sanely. If our logic-mathematics, or our word-symbols, have been poorly chosen, we think not sanely. 

	"In mathematical physics you are concerned with making your symbology fit physical phenomena. In psychiatry I am concerned with precisely the same thing, except that I am more immediately concerned with the man who does the thinking than with the phenomena he is thinking about. But the same subject, always the dame subject." 

-

	"We're not getting anyplace, Gus." Harper put down his slide rule and frowned. 

	"Seems like it, Cal," Erickson grudgingly admitted. "Damn it, though — there ought to be some reasonable way of tackling the problem. What do we need? Some form of concentrated, controllable power for rocket fuel. What have we got? Power galore through fission. There must be some way to bottle that power, and serve it out when we need it — and the answer is some place in one of the radioactive series. I know it." He stared glumly around the laboratory as if expecting to find the answer written somewhere on the lead-sheathed walls. 

	"Don't be so down in the mouth about it. You've got me convinced there is an answer; let's figure out how to find it. In the first place the three natural radioactive series are out, aren't they?" 

	"Yes ... at least we had agreed that all that ground had been fully covered before." 

	"Okay; we have to assume that previous investigators have done what their notes show they have done — otherwise we might as well not believe anything, and start checking on everybody from Archimedes to date. Maybe that is indicated, but Methuselah himself couldn't carry out such an assignment. What have we got left?" 

	"Artificial radioactives." 

	"All right. Let's set up a list of them, both those that have been made up to now, and those that might possibly be made in the future. Call that our group-or rather, field, if you want to be pedantic about definitions. There are a limited number of operations that can be performed on each member of the group, and on the members taken in combination. Set it up." 

	Erickson did so, using the curious curlicues of the calculus of statement. Harper nodded. "All right — expand it." 

	Erickson looked up after a few moments, and asked, "Cal, have you any idea how many terms there are in the expansion?" 

	"No ... hundreds, maybe thousands, I suppose." 

	"You're conservative. It reaches four figures without considering possible new radioactives. We couldn't finish such a research in a century. He chucked his pencil down and looked morose. 

	Cal Harper looked at him curiously, but with sympathy. "Gus," he said gently, "the job isn't getting you, too, is it?" 

	"I don't think so. Why?" 

	"I never saw you so willing to give up anything before. Naturally you and I will never finish any such job, but at the very worst we will have eliminated a lot of wrong answers for somebody else. Look at Edison — sixty years of experimenting, twenty hours a day, yet he never found out the one thing he was most interested in knowing. I guess if he could take it, we can." 

	Erickson pulled out of his funk to some extent. "I suppose so," he agreed. "Anyhow, maybe we could work out some techniques for carrying a lot of experiments simultaneously." 

	Harper slapped him on the shoulder. "That's the ol' fight. Besides — we may not need to finish the research, or anything like it, to find a satisfactory fuel. The way I see it, there are probably a dozen, maybe a hundred, right answers. We may run across one of them any day. Anyhow, since you're willing to give me a hand with it in your off watch time, I'm game to peck away at it till hell freezes." 

-

	Lentz puttered around the plant and the administration center for several days, until he was known to everyone by sight He made himself pleasant and asked questions. He was soon regarded as a harmless nuisance, to be tolerated because he was a friend of the superintendent. He even poked his nose into the commercial power end of the plant, and had the radiation-to-electric-power sequence explained to him in detail. This alone would have been sufficient to disarm any suspicion that he might be a psychiatrist, for the staff psychiatrists paid no attention to the hard-bitten technicians of the power-conversion unit. There was no need to; mental instability on their part could not affect the pile, nor were they subject to the strain of social responsibility. Theirs was simply a job personally dangerous, a type of strain strong men have been inured to since the jungle. 

	In due course he got around to the unit of the radiation laboratory set aside for Calvin Harper's use. He rang the bell and waited. Harper answered the door, his antiradiation helmet shoved back from his face like some grotesque sunbonnet. "What is it?" he asked. "Oh — it's you, Doctor Lentz. Did you want to see me?" 

	"Why, yes, and no," the older man answered, "I was just looking around the experimental station and wondered what you do in here. Will I be in the way?" 

	"Not at all. Come in. Gus!" 

	Erickson got up from where he had been fussing over the power leads to their trigger — a modified betatron rather than a resonant accelerator. "Hello." 

	"Gus, this is Doctor Lentz — Gus Erickson." 

	"We've met," said Erickson, pulling off his gauntlet to shake hands. He had had a couple of drinks with Lentz in town and considered him a "nice old duck." "You're just between shows, but stick around and we'll start another run — not that there is much to see." 

	While Erickson continued with the set-up, Harper conducted Lentz around the laboratory, explaining the line of research they were conducting, as happy as a father showing off twins. The psychiatrist listened with one ear and made appropriate comments while he studied the young scientist for signs of the instability he had noted to be recorded against him. 

	"You see," Harper explained, oblivious to the interest in himself, "we are testing radioactive materials to see if we can produce disintegration of the sort that takes place in the pile, but in a minute, almost microscopic, mass. If we are successful, we can use the breeder pile to make a safe, convenient, atomic fuel for rockets — or for anything else." He went on to explain their schedule of experimentation. 

	"I see," Lentz observed politely. "What element are you examining now" 

	Harper told him. "But it's not a case of examining one element — we've finished Isotope II of this element with negative results. Our schedule calls next for running the same test on Isotope V. Like this." He hauled out a lead capsule, and showed the label to Lentz. He hurried away to the shield around the target of the betatron, left open by Erickson. Lentz saw that he had opened the capsule, and was performing some operation on it with 'a long pair of tongs in a gingerly manner, having first lowered his helmet. Then he closed and clamped the target shield. 

	"Okay, Gus?" he called out. "Ready to roll?" 

	"Yeah, I guess so," Erickson assured him, coming around from behind the ponderous apparatus, and rejoining them. They crowded behind a thick metal and concrete shield that cut them off from direct sight of the set up. 

	"Will I need to put- on armor?" inquired Lentz. 

	"No," Erickson reassured him, "we wear it because we are around the stuff day in and day out. You just stay behind the shield and you'll be all right." 

	Erickson glanced at Harper, who nodded, and fixed his, eyes on a panel of instruments mounted behind the shield. Lentz saw Erickson press a push button at the top of the board, then heard a series of relays click on the far side of the shield. There was a short moment of silence. 

	The floor slapped his feet like some incredible bastinado. The concussion that beat on his ears was so intense that it paralyzed the auditory nerve almost before it could be recorded as sound. The air-conducted concussion wave flailed every inch of his body with a single, stinging, numbing blow. As he picked himself up, he found he was trembling uncontrollably and realized, for the first time, that he was getting old. 

	Harper was seated on the floor and had commenced to bleed from the nose. Erickson had gotten up, his cheek was cut. He touched a hand to the wound, then stood there, regarding the blood on his fingers with a puzzled expression on his face. 

	"Are you hurt?" Lentz inquired inanely. "What happened?" 

	Harper cut in. "Gus, we've done it! We've done it! Isotope Five has turned the trick!" 

	Erickson looked still more bemused. "Five?" he said stupidly, " — but that wasn't Five, that was Isotope II I put it in myself." 

	"You put it in? I put it in! It was Five, I tell you!" 

	They stood staring at each other, still confused by the explosion, and each a little annoyed at the boneheaded stupidity the other displayed in the face of the obvious. Lentz diffidently interceded. 

	"Wait a minute, boys," he suggested, "maybe there's a reason — Gus, you placed a quantity of the second isotope in the receiver?" 

	"Why, yes, certainly. I wasn't satisfied with the last run, and I wanted to check it." 

	Lentz nodded. "It's my fault, gentlemen," he admitted ruefully. "I came in, disturbed your routine, and both of you charged the receiver. I know Harper did, for I saw him do it — with Isotope V. I'm sorry." 

	Understanding broke over Harper's face, and he slapped the older man on the shoulder. "Don't be sorry," he laughed; "you can come around to our lab and help us make mistakes anytime you feel in the mood — Can't he, Gus? This is the answer, Doctor Lentz, this is it!" 

	"But," the psychiatrist pointed out, "you don't know which isotope blew up." 

	"Nor care," Harper supplemented. "Maybe it was both, taken together. But we will know — this business is cracked now; we'll soon have it open." He gazed happily around at the wreckage. 

-

	In spite of Superintendent King's anxiety, Lentz refused to be hurried in passing judgment on the situation. Consequently, when be did present himself at King's office, and announced that he was ready to report, King was pleasantly surprised as well as relieved. "Well, I'm delighted," he said. "Sit down, doctor, sit down. Have a cigar. What do we do about it?" 

	But Lentz stuck to his perennial cigarette, and refused to be hurried. "I must have some information first: how important," he demanded, "is the power from your plant?" 

	King understood the implication at once. "If you are thinking about shutting down - the plant for more than a limited period, it can't be done." 

	"Why not? If the figures supplied me are correct, your power output is less than thirteen percent of the total power used in the country." 

	"Yes, that is true, but we also supply another thirteen percent second hand through the plutonium we breed here-and you haven't analyzed the items that make up the balance. A lot of it is domestic power which householders get from sunscreens located on their roofs. Another big slice is power for the moving roadways — that's sunpower again. The portion we provide here directly or indirectly is the main power source for most of the heavy industries — steel, plastics, lithics, all kinds of manufacturing and processing. You might as well cut the heart out of a man-" 

	"But the food industry isn't basically dependent on you?" Lentz persisted. 

	"No ... Food isn't basically a power industry — though we do supply a certain percentage of the power used in processing. I see your point, and will go on, concede that transportation, that is to say, distribution food, could get along without us. But good heavens, Doctor, you can't stop atomic power without causing the biggest panic this country has ever seen. It's the keystone our whole industrial system." 

	"The country has lived through panics before, and we got past the oil shortage safely." 

	"Yes — because sunpower and atomic power had to take the place of oil. You don't realize what would mean, Doctor. It would be worse than a war; in system like ours, one thing depends on another. If you cut off the heavy industries all at once, everything else stops too." 

	"Nevertheless, you had better dump the pile." The uranium in the pile was molten, its temperature bell greater than twenty-four hundred degrees centigrade. The pile could be dumped into a group of small containers when it was desired to shut it down. The mass into one container would be too small to maintain progressive atomic disintegration. 

	King glanced involuntarily at the glass-enclosed relay mounted on his office wall, by which he, as well as the engineer on duty, could dump the pile, if need be. "But couldn't do that ... or rather, if I did, the plant wouldn't stay shut down. The directors would simply replace me with someone who would operate it." 

	"You're right, of course." Lentz silently considered the situation for some time, then said, "Superintendent, will you order a car to fly me back to Chicago?" 

	"You're going, doctor?" 

	"Yes." He took the cigarette holder from his face, and, for once, the smile of Olympian detachment was gone completely. His entire manner was sober, even tragic. 

	"Short of shutting down the plant, there is no solution to your problem — none whatsoever!" 

	"I owe you a full explanation," he continued, presently. 

	"You are confronted here with recurring instances of situational psychoneurosis. Roughly, the symptoms manifest themselves as anxiety neurosis, or some form of hysteria. 

	The partial amnesia of your secretary, Steinke, is a good example of the latter. He might be cured with shock technique, but it would hardly be a kindness, as he has achieved a stable adjustment which puts him beyond the reach of the strain he could not stand. 

	"That other young fellow, Harper, whose blowup was the immediate cause of you sending for me, is an anxiety case. When the cause of the anxiety was eliminated from his matrix, he at once regained full sanity. But keep a close watch on his friend, Erickson—

	"However, it is the cause, and prevention, of situational psychoneurosis we are concerned with here, rather than the forms in which it is manifested. In plain language, psychoneurosis situational simply refers to the common fact that, if you put a man in a situation that worries him more than he can stand, in time he blows up, one way or another. 

	"That is precisely the situation here. You take sensitive, intelligent young men, impress them with the fact that a single slip on their part, or even some fortuitous circumstance beyond their control, will result in the death of God knows how many other people, and then expect them to remain sane. It's ridiculous — impossible!" 

	"But good heavens, doctor! — there must be some answer — There must!" He got up and paced around the room. Lentz noted, with pity, that King himself was riding the ragged edge of the very condition they were discussing. 

	"No," he said slowly. "No ... let me explain. You don't dare entrust control to less sensitive, less socially conscious men. You might as well turn the controls over to a mindless idiot. And to psychoneurosis situational there are but two cures. The first obtains when the psychosis results from a misevaluation of environment. That cure calls for semantic readjustment. One assists the patient to evaluate correctly his environment. The worry disappears because there never was a real reason for worry in the situation itself, but simply in the wrong meaning the patient's mind had assigned to it. 

	"The second case is when the patient has correctly evaluated the situation, and rightly finds in it cause for extreme worry. His worry is perfectly sane and proper, but he cannot stand up under it indefinitely; it drives him crazy. The only possible cure is to change the situation. I have stayed here long enough to assure myself that such is the condition here. You engineers have correctly evaluated the public danger of this thing, and it will, with dreadful certainty, drive all of you crazy! 

	"The only possible solution is to dump the pile — and leave it dumped." 

	King had continued his nervous pacing of the floor, as if the walls of the room itself were the cage of his dilemma. Now he stopped and appealed once more to the psychiatrist. "Isn't there anything I can do?" 

	"Nothing to cure. To alleviate — well, possibly." 

	"How?" 

	"Situational psychosis results from adrenalin exhaustion. When a man is placed under a nervous strain, his adrenal glands increase their secretion to help compensate for the strain. If the strain is too great and lasts too long, the adrenals aren't equal to the task, and he cracks. That is what you have here. Adrenalin therapy might stave of a mental breakdown, but it most assuredly would hasten a physical breakdown. But that would be safer from a viewpoint of public welfare — even though it assumes that physicists are expendable! 

	"Another thing occurs to me: If you selected any new watch engineers from the membership of churches that practice the confessional, it would increase the length of their usefulness." 

	King was plainly surprised. "I don't follow you." 

	"The patient unloads most of his worry on his confessor, who is not himself actually confronted by the situation, and can stand it. That is simply an ameliorative, however. I am convinced that in this situation, eventual insanity is inevitable. But there is a lot of good sense in the confessional," he mused. "It fills a basic human heed. I think that is why the early psychoanalysts were so surprisingly successful, for all their limited knowledge." He fell silent for a while, then added, "If you will be so kind as to order a stratocab for me —" 

	"You've nothing more to suggest?' 

	"No. You had better turn your psychological staff loose on means of alleviation; they're able men, all of them." 

	King pressed a switch, and spoke briefly to Steinke. Turning back to Lentz, he said, "You'll wait here until your car is ready?" 

	Lentz judged correctly that King desired it, and agreed. 

	Presently the tube delivery on King's desk went "Ping!" 

	The superintendent removed a small white pasteboard, a calling card. He studied it with surprise and passed it over to Lentz. "I can't imagine why he should be calling on me," he observed, and added, "Would you like to meet him?" 

	Lentz read: 

THOMAS P. HARRINGTON
Captain (Mathematics)
United States Navy
Director
U.S. Naval Observatory

	"But I do know him," he said. "I'd be very pleased to see him." 

-

	Harrington was a man with something on his mind. He seemed relieved when Steinke had finished ushering him in and had returned to the outer office. He commenced to speak at once, turning to Lentz, who was nearer to him than King. 

	"You're King? Why, Doctor Lentz! What are you doing here?" 

	"Visiting," answered Lentz, accurately - but incompletely, as he shook hands. "This is Superintendent King over here. Superintendent King — Captain Harrington." 

	"How do you do, Captain — it's a pleasure to have you here." 

	"It's an honor to be here sir." 

	"Sit down?" 

	"Thanks." He accepted a chair, and laid a briefcase at a corner of King's desk. "Superintendent, you are entitle to an explanation as to why I have broken in on you Ilk this —" 

	"Glad to have you." In fact, the routine of formal politeness was an anodyne to King's frayed nerves. 

	"That's kind of you, but — That secretary chap, the one that brought me in here, would it be too much to as for you to tell him to forget my name? I know it seem strange —" 

	"Not at all." King was mystified, but willing to grab any reasonable request of a distinguished colleague in science. He summoned Steinke to the interoffice visiphone and gave him his orders. 

	Lentz stood up, and indicated that he was about to leave. He caught Harrington's eye. "I think you want private palaver, Captain." 

	King looked from Harrington to Lentz, and back at Harrington. The astronomer showed momentary indecision, then protested, "I have no objection at all myself it's up to Doctor King. As a matter of fact," he added," might be a very good thing if you did sit in on it." 

	"I don't know what it is, Captain," observed King "that you want to see me about, but Doctor Lentz is a ready here in a confidential capacity." 

	"Good! Then that's settled .. I'll get right down I business. Doctor King, you know Destry's mechanics infinitesimals?" 

	"Naturally." Lentz cocked a brow at King, who chose to ignore it. 

	"Yes, of course. Do you remember - theorem six, an the transformation between equations thirteen and fourteen?" 

	"I think so, but I'd want to see them." King got up and went over to a bookcase. Harrington stayed him with a hand. 

	"Don't bother. I have them here." He hauled out a key, unlocked his briefcase, and drew out a large, much thumbed, loose-leaf notebook. "Here. You, too, Doctor Lentz. Are you familiar with this development?" 

	Lentz nodded. "I've had occasion to look into them." 

	"Good — I think it's agreed that the step between thirteen and fourteen is the key to the whole matter. Now the change from thirteen to fourteen looks perfectly valid and would be, in some fields. But suppose we expand it to show every possible phase of the matter, every link in the chain of reasoning." 

	He turned a page, and showed them the same two equations broken down into nine intermediate equations. He placed a finger under an associated group of mathematical symbols. "Do you see that? Do you see what that implies?" He peered anxiously at their faces. 

	King studied it, his lips moving. "Yes … I -believe I do see. 'Odd... I never looked at it just that way before — yet I've studied those equations until I've dreamed about them." He turned to Lentz. "Do you agree, Doctor?" 

	Lentz nodded slowly. "I believe so ... Yes, I think I may say so." 

	Harrington should have been pleased; he wasn't. "I had hoped you could tell me I was wrong," he said, almost petulantly, "but I'm afraid there is no further doubt about it. Doctor Destry included an assumption valid in molar physics, but for which we have absolutely no assurance in atomic physics. I suppose you realize what this means to you, Doctor King?" 

	King's voice was a dry whisper. "Yes," he said, "yes it means that if the Big Bomb out there ever blows up, we must assume that it will all go up all at once, rather than the way Destry predicted ... and God help the human race!" 

-

	Captain Harrington cleared his throat to break the silence that followed. "Superintendent," he said, "I would not have ventured to call had it been simply a matter of disagreement as to interpretation of theoretical predictions —" 

	"You have something more to go on?" 

	"Yes, and no. Probably you gentlemen think of the Naval Observatory as being exclusively preoccupied with ephemeredes and tide tables. In a way you would be right — but we still have some time to devote to research as long as it doesn't cut into the appropriation. My special interest has always been lunar theory. 

	"I don't mean lunar ballistics," he continued, "I mean the much more interesting problem of its origin and history, the problem the younger Darwin struggled with, as well as my Illustrious predecessor, Captain T. J. J. See. I think that it is obvious that any theory of lunar origin and history must take into account the surface features of the moon — especially the mountains, the craters, that mark its face so prominently." 

	He paused momentarily, and Superintendent King put in, "Just a minute, Captain — I may be stupid, or perhaps I missed something, but — is there a connection between what we were discussing before and lunar theory?" 

	"Bear with me for a few moments, Doctor King," Harrington apologized; "there is a connection — at least, I'm afraid there is a connection — but I would rather present my points in their proper order before making my conclusions." They granted him an alert silence; he went on: 

	"Although we are in the habit of referring to the 'craters' of the moon, we know they are not volcanic craters. Superficially, they follow none of the rules of terrestrial volcanoes in appearance or distribution, but when Rutter came out in 952 with his monograph on the dynamics of vulcanology, he proved rather conclusively that the lunar craters could not be caused by anything that we know as volcanic action. 

	"That left the bombardment theory as the simplest hypothesis. It looks good, on the face of it, and a few minutes spent throwing pebbles in to a patch of mud will convince anyone that the lunar craters could have been formed by falling meteors. 

	"But there are difficulties. If the moon was struck so repeatedly, why not the earth? It hardly seems necessary to mention that the earth's atmosphere would be no protection against masses big enough to form craters like Endymion, or Plato. And if they fell after the moon was a dead world while the earth was still young enough to change its face and erase the marks of bombardment, why did the meteors avoid so nearly completely the dry basins we call the seas? 

	"I want to cut this short; you'll find the data and the mathematical investigations from the data here in my notes. There is one other major objection to the meteor bombardment theory: the great rays that spread from 

	Tycho across almost the entire surface of the moon. It makes the moon look like a crystal ball that had been struck with a hammer, and impact from - outside seems evident, but there are difficulties. The striking mass, our hypothetical meteor, must have been smaller than the present crater of Tycho, but it must have the mass and speed to crack an entire planet." 

	"Work it out for yourself — you must either postulate a chunk out of the core of a dwarf star, or speeds such as we have never observed within the system. It's conceivable but a far-fetched explanation" 

	He turned to King. "Doctor, does anything occur to you that might account for a phenomenon like Tycho?" 

	The Superintendent grasped the arms of his chair, then glanced at his palms. He fumbled for a handkerchief, and wiped them. "Go ahead," he said, almost inaudibly. 

	"Very well then —" Harrington drew out of his briefcase a large photograph of the moon — a beautiful full-moon portrait made at Lick. "I want you to imagine the moon as she might have been sometime in the past. The dark areas we call the 'Seas' are actual oceans. It has an atmosphere, perhaps a heavier gas than oxygen and nitrogen, but an active gas, capable of supporting some conceivable form of life. 

	"For this is an inhabited planet, inhabited by intelligent beings, beings capable of discovering atomic power and exploiting it!" 

	He pointed out on the photograph, near the southern limb, the lime-white circle of Tycho, with its shining, incredible, thousand-mile-long rays spreading, thrusting, jutting out from it. "Here ... here at Tycho was located their main atomic plant." He moved his finger to a point near the equator, and somewhat east of meridian — the point where three great dark areas merged, Mare Nubium, Mare Imbriwn, Oceanus Procellarum-and picked out two bright splotches surrounded also by rays, but shorter, less distinct, and wavy. "And here at Copernicus and at Kepler, on islands at the middle of a great ocean, were secondary power stations." 

	He paused, and interpolated soberly, "Perhaps they knew the danger they ran, but wanted power so badly that they were willing to gamble the life of their race. Perhaps they were ignorant of the ruinous possibilities of their little machines, or perhaps their mathematicians assured them that it could not happen. 

	"But we will never know ... no one can ever know. For it blew up, and killed them — and it killed their planet. 

	"It whisked off the gassy envelope and blew it into outer space. It may even have set up a chain reaction, in that atmosphere. It blasted great chunks of the planet's crust Perhaps some of that escaped completely, too, but all that did not reach the speed of escape fell back down in time and splashed great ring-shaped craters in the land. 

	"The oceans cushioned the shock; only the more massive fragments formed craters through the water. Perhaps some life still remained in those ocean depths. If so, it was doomed to die — for the water, unprotected by atmospheric pressure, could not remain liquid and must inevitably escape lit time to outer space. Its life blood drained away. The planet was dead — dead by suicide! 

	He met the grave eyes of his two silent listeners with an expression almost of appeal. "Gentlemen-this is only a theory I realize ... only a theory, a dream, a nightmare — But it has kept me awake so many nights that I had to come tell you about it, and see if you saw it the same way I do. As for the mechanics of it, it's all in there, in my notes. You can check it — and I pray that you find some error! But it is the only lunar theory I have examined which included all of the known data, and accounted for all of them." 

	He appeared to have finished; Lentz spoke up. "Suppose, Captain, suppose we check your mathematics and find no flaw — what then?" 

	Harrington flung out his hands. "That's what I came here to find out!" 

	Although Lentz had asked the question, Harrington directed the appeal to King. The superintendent looked up; his eyes met the astronomer's, wavered, and dropped again. "There's nothing to be done," he said dully, "nothing at all." 

	Harrington stared at him in open amazement. "But good God, man!" he burst out. "Don't you see it? That pile has got to be disassembled — at once!" 

	"Take it easy, Captain." Lentz's calm voice was a spray of cold water. "And don't be too harsh on poor King — this worries him even more than it does you. What he means is this; we're not faced with a problem in physics, but with a political and economic situation. Let's put it this way: King can no more dump his plant than a peasant with a vineyard on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius can abandon his holdings and pauperize his family simply because there will be an eruption someday. 

	"King doesn't own that plant out there; he's only the custodian. If he dumps it against the wishes of the legal owners, they'll simply oust him and put in someone more amenable. No, we have to convince the owners." 

	"The President could make them do it," suggested Harrington. "I could get to the President —" 

	"No doubt you could, through your department. And you might even convince him. But could he help much?" 

	"Why, of course he could. He's the President!" 

	"Wait a minute. You're Director of the Naval Observatory; suppose you took a sledge hammer and tried to smash the big telescope — how far would you get?" 

	"Not very far," Farrington conceded. "We guard the big fellow pretty closely." 

	"Nor can the President act in an arbitrary manner," Lentz persisted. "He's not an unlimited monarch. If he shuts down this plant without due process of law, the federal courts will tie him in knots. I admit that Congress isn't helpless, since the Atomic Energy Commission takes orders from it, but — would you like to try to give a congressional committee a course in the mechanics of infinitesimals?" 

	Harrington readily stipulated the point. "But there is another way," he pointed out. "Congress is responsive to public opinion. What we need to do is to convince the public that the pile is a menace to everybody. That could be done without ever trying to explain things in terms of higher mathematics." 

	"Certainly it could," Lentz agreed. "You could go on the air with it and scare everybody half to death. You could create the damnedest panic this slightly slug-nutty country has ever seen. No, thank you. I, for one, would rather have us all take the chance of being quietly killed than bring on a mass psychosis that would destroy the culture we are building up. I think one taste of the Crazy Years is enough." 

	"Well, then, what do you suggest?" 

	Lentz considered shortly, then answered, "All I see is a forlorn hope. We've got to work on the Board of Directors and try to beat some sense in their heads." 

	King, who had been following the discussion with attention in spite of his tired despondency, interjected a remark. "How would you go about that?" 

	"I don't know," Lentz admitted. "It will take some thinking. But it seems the most fruitful line of approach. If it doesn't work, we can always fall back on Harrington's notion of publicity — I don't insist that the world commit suicide to satisfy my criteria of evaluation." 

	Harrington glanced at his wrist watch — a bulky affair — and whistled. "Good heavens," he exclaimed, "I forgot the time! I'm supposed officially to be at the Flag staff Observatory." 

	King had automatically noted the time shown by the Captain's watch as it was displayed. "But it can't be that late," he had objected. Harrington looked puzzled, then laughed. 

	"It isn't — not by two hours. We are in zone plus-seven; this shows zone plus-five — it's radio-synchronized with the master clock at Washington." 

	"Did you say radio-synchronized?" 

	"Yes. Clever, isn't it?" He held it out for inspection. "I call it a telechronometer; it's the only one of its sort to date. My nephew designed it for me. He's a bright one, that boy. He'll go far. That is" — his face clouded, as if the little interlude had only served to emphasize the tragedy that hung over them —"if any of us live that long!" 

	A signal light glowed at King's desk, and Steinke's face showed on the communicator screen. King answered him, then said, "Your car is ready, Doctor Lentz." 

	"Let Captain Harrington have it." 

	"Then you're not going back to Chicago?" 

	"No. The situation has changed. If you want me, I'm stringing along." 

-

	The following Friday Steinike ushered Lentz into King's office. King looked almost happy as he shook hands. "When did you ground, Doctor? I didn't expect you back for another hour, or so." 

	"Just now. I hired a cab instead of waiting for.. the shuttle." 

	"Any luck?" King demanded. 

	"None. The same answer they gave you: 'The Company is assured by independent experts that Destry's mechanics is valid, and sees no reason to encourage an hysterical attitude among its employees." 

	King tapped on his desk top, his eyes unfocused. Then, hitching himself around to face Lentz directly, he said, "Do you suppose the Chairman is right?" 

	"How?" 

	"Could the three of us, you, me, and Harrington, have gone off the deep end, slipped mentally?" 

	"No." 

	"You're sure?" 

	"Certain. I looked up some independent experts of my own, not retained by the Company, and had them check Harrington's work. It checks." Lentz purposely neglected to mention that he had done so partly because he was none too sure of King's present mental stability. 

	King sat up briskly, reached out and stabbed a push button. "I am going to make one more try," he explained, "to see if I can't throw a scare into Dixon's thick head. Steinke," he said to the communicator, "get me Mr. Dixon on the screen." 

	"Yes, sir." 

	In about two minutes the visiphone screen came to life and showed the features of Chairman Dixon. He was transmitting, not from his office, but from the boardroom of the power syndicate in Jersey City. "Yes?" he said. 

	"What is it, Superintendent?" His manner was somehow both querulous and affable. 

	"Mr. Dixon," King began, "I've called to try to impress on you the seriousness of the Company's action. I stake my scientific reputation that Harrington has proved completely —" 

	"Oh, that? Mr. King, I thought you understood that that was a closed matter." 

	"But Mr. Dixon —" 

	"Superintendent, please! If there was any possible legitimate cause to fear do you think I would hesitate? I have children you know, and grandchildren." 

	"That is just why —" 

	"We try to conduct the affairs of the Company with reasonable wisdom, and in the public interest. But we have other responsibilities, too. There are hundreds of thousands of little stockholders who expect us to show a reasonable return on their investment. You must not expect us to jettison a billion-dollar corporation just because you've taken up astrology. Moon theory!" He sniffed. 

	"Very well, Mister Chairman." King's tone was stiff. 

	"Don't, take it that way, Mr. King. I'm glad you called — the Board has just adjourned a special meeting. They have decided to accept you for retirement — with full pay, of course." 

	"I did not apply for retirement!" 

	"I know, Mr. King, but the Board feels that —" 

	"I understand. Goodbye!" 

	"Mr. King —" 

	"Goodbye!" He switched him off, and turned to Lentz. "' — with full pay,'" he quoted, "which I can enjoy in any way that I like for the rest of my life — just as happy as a man in the death house!" 

	"Exactly," Lentz agreed. "Well, we've tried our way. I suppose we should call up Harrington now and let him try the political and publicity method." 

	"I suppose so," King seconded absent-mindedly. "Will you be leaving for Chicago now?" 

	"No ..." said Lentz. "No.... I think I will catch the shuttle for Los Angeles and take the evening rocket for the Antipodes." 

	King looked surprised, but said nothing. Lentz answered the unspoken comment. "Perhaps some of us on the other side of the earth will survive. I've done all that I can here. I would rather be a live sheepherder in Australia than a dead psychiatrist in Chicago." 

	King nodded vigorously. "That shows horse sense. For two cents, I'd dump the pile now, and go with you." 

	"Not horse sense, my friend — a horse will run back into a burning barn, which is exactly what I plan not to do. Why don't you do it and come along. If you did, it would help Harrington to scare 'em to death." 

	"I believe I will!" 

	Steinke's face appeared again on the screen. "Harper and Erickson are here, Chief." 

	"I'm busy." 

	"They are pretty urgent about seeing you." 

	"Oh — all right," King said in a tired voice, "show them in. It doesn't matter." 

	They breezed in, Harper in the van. He commenced talking at once, oblivious to the superintendent's morose preoccupation. "We've got it, Chief, we've got it! — and it all checks out to the umpteenth decimal!" 

	"You've got what? Speak English." 

	Harper grinned. He was enjoying his moment of triumph, and was stretching it out to savor it. "Chief, do you remember a few weeks back when I asked for an additional allotment — a special one without specifying how I was going to spend it?" 

	"Yes. Come on — get to the point." 

	"You kicked at first, but finally granted it. Remember? Well, we've got something to show for it, all tied up in pink ribbon. It's the greatest advance in radioactivity since Hahn split the nucleus. Atomic fuel, Chief, atomic fuel, safe, concentrated, and controllable. Suitable for rockets, for power plants, for any damn thing you care to use it for." 

	King showed alert interest for the first time. "You mean a power source that doesn't require a pile?" 

	"Oh, no, I didn't say that. You use the breeder pile to make the fuel, then you use the fuel anywhere and anyhow you like, with something like ninety-two percent recovery of energy. But you could junk the power sequence, if you wanted to." 

	King's first wild hope of a way out of his dilemma was dashed; he subsided. "Go ahead. Tell me about it." 

	"Well — it's a matter of artificial radioactives. Just before I asked for that special research allotment, Erickson and I — Doctor Lentz had a finger in it too," he acknowledged with an appreciative nod to the psychiatrist, " — found two isotopes that seemed to be mutually antagonistic. That is, when we goosed 'em in the presence of each other they gave up their latent energy all at once — blew all to hell. The important point is we were using just a gnat's whisker of mass of each — the reaction didn't require a big mass to maintain it." 

	"I don't see," objected King, "how that could —" 

	"Neither do we, quite — but it works. We've kept it quiet until we were sure. We checked on what we had, and we found a dozen other fuels. Probably we'll be able to tailor-make fuels for any desired purpose. But here it is." He handed him a bound sheaf of typewritten notes which he had been carrying under his arm. "That's your copy. Look it over." 

	King started to do so. Lentz joined him, after a look that was a silent request for permission, which Erickson had answered with his only verbal contribution, "Sure, doc." 

	As King read, the troubled feelings of an acutely harassed executive left him. His dominant personality took charge, that of the scientist. He enjoyed the controlled and cerebral ecstasy of the impersonal seeker for the elusive truth. The emotions felt in his throbbing thalamus were permitted only to form a sensuous obbligato for the cold flame of cortical activity. For the time being, he was sane, more nearly completely sane than most men ever achieve at any time. 

	For a long period there was only an occasional grunt, the clatter of turned pages, a nod of approval. At last he put it down. 

	"It's the stuff," he said. "You've done it, boys. It's great; I'm proud of you." 

	Erickson glowed a bright pink, and swallowed. Harper's small, tense figure gave the ghost of a wriggle, reminiscent of a wire-haired terrier receiving approval. "That's fine, Chief. We'd rather hear you say that than get the Nobel Prize." 

	"I think you'll probably get it. However" — the proud light in his eyes died down —"I'm not going to take any action in this matter." 

	"Why not, Chief?" His tone was bewildered. 

	"I'm being retired. My successor will take over in the near future; this is too big a matter to start just before a change in administration." 

	"You being retired! What the hell?" 

	"About the same reason I took you off watch — at least, the directors think so." 

	"But that's nonsense! You were right to take me off the watch-list; I was getting jumpy. But you're another matter-we all depend on you." 

	"Thanks, Cal — but that's how it is; there's nothing to be done about it." He turned to Lentz. "I think this is the last ironical touch needed to make the whole thing pure farce," he observed bitterly. "This thing is big, bigger than we can guess at this stage — and I have to give it a miss." 

	"Well," Harper burst out, "I can think of something to do about it!" He strode over to King's desk and snatched up the manuscript. "Either you superintend the exploitation, or the Company can damn well get along without our discovery!" Erickson concurred belligerently. 

	"Wait a minute." Lentz had the floor. "Doctor Harper... have you already achieved a practical rocket fuel?" 

	"I said so. We've got it on hand now." 

	"An escape-speed fuel?" They understood his verbal shorthand — a fuel that would lift a rocket free of the earth's gravitational pull. 

	"Sure. Why, you could take any of the Clipper rockets, refit them a trifle, and have breakfast on the moon." 

	"Very well. Bear with me …" He obtained a sheet of paper from King, and commenced to write. They watched in mystified impatience. He continued briskly for some minutes, hesitating only momentarily. Presently he stopped, and spun the paper over to King. "Solve it!" he demanded. 

	King studied the paper. Lentz had assigned symbols to a great number of factors, some social, some psychological, some physical, some economic. He had thrown them together into a structural relationship, using the symbols of calculus of statement. King understood the paramathematical operations indicated by the symbols, but he was not as used to them as he was to the symbols and operations of mathematical physics. He plowed through the equations, moving his lips slightly in subconscious vocalization. 

	He accepted a pencil from Lentz, and completed the solution. It required several more lines, a few more equations, before they cancelled out, or rearranged themselves, into a definite answer. 

	He stared at this answer while puzzlement gave way to dawning comprehension and delight. 

	He looked up. "Erickson! Harper!" he rapped out. 

	"We will take your new fuel, refit a large rocket, install the breeder pile in it, and throw it into an orbit around the earth, far out in. space. There we will use it to make more fuel, safe fuel, for use on earth, with the danger from the Big Bomb itself limited to the operators actually on watch!" 

-

	There was no applause. It was not that sort of an idea; their minds were still struggling with the complex implications. 

	"But Chief," Harper finally managed, "how about your retirement? We're still not going to stand for it." 

	"Don't worry," King assured him. "It's all in there, implicit in those equations, you two, me, Lentz, the Board of Directors and just what we all have to do about it to accomplish it." 

	"All except the matter of time," Lentz cautioned. 

	"You'll note that elapsed time appears in your answer as an undetermined unknown." 

	"Yes … yes, of course. That's the chance we have to take. Let's get busy!" 

-

	Chairman Dixon called the Board of Directors to order. "This being a special meeting we'll dispense with minutes and reports," he announced. "As set forth in the call we have agreed to give the retiring superintendent two hours of our time." 

	"Mr. Chairman —" 

	"Yes, Mr. Strong?" 

	"I thought we had settled that matter." 

	"We have, Mr. Strong, but in view of Superintendent King's long and distinguished service, if he asks for a hearing, we are honor bound to grant it. You have the floor, Doctor King." 

	King got up, and stated briefly, "Doctor Lentz will speak for me." He sat down. 

	Lentz had to wait for coughing, throat-clearing, and scraping of chairs to subside. It was evident that the Board resented the outsider. 

	Lentz ran quickly over the main points in the argument which contended that the bomb presented an intolerable danger anywhere on the face of the earth. He moved on at once to the alternative proposal that the bomb should be located in a rocket ship, an artificial moonlet flying in a free orbit around the earth at a convenient distance — say fifteen thousand miles — while secondary power stations on earth burned a safe fuel manufactured by the bomb. 

	He announced the discovery the Harper-Erickson technique and dwelt on what it meant to them commercially. Each point was presented as persuasively as possible, with the full power of his engaging personality. Then he paused and waited for them to blow off steam. 

	They did. "Visionary —" "Unproved —" "No essential change in the situation —" The substance of it was that they were very happy to hear of the new fuel, but not particularly impressed by it. Perhaps in another twenty years, after it had been thoroughly tested and proved commercially, they might consider setting up another breeder pile outside the atmosphere. In the meantime there was no hurry. Only one director supported the scheme and he was quite evidently unpopular. 

	Lentz patiently and politely dealt with their objections. He emphasized the increasing incidence of occupational psychoneurosis among the engineers and the grave danger to everyone near the bomb even under the orthodox theory. He reminded them of their insurance and indemnity bond costs, and of the "squeeze" they paid state politicians. Then he changed his tone and let them have it directly and brutally. "Gentlemen," he said, "we believe that we are fighting for our lives ... our own lives, our families, and every life on the globe, if you refuse this compromise, we will fight as fiercely and with as little regard for fair play as any cornered animal." With that he made. His first move in attack. 

	It was quite simple. He offered for their inspection the outline of a propaganda campaign on a national scale, such as any major advertising firm could carry out as a matter of routine. It was complete to the last detail, television broadcasts, spot plugs, newspaper and magazine coverage with planted editorials, dummy "citizens' committees," and — most important — a supporting whispering campaign and a letters-to-Congress organization. Every businessman there knew from experience how such things worked. 

	But its object was to stir up fear of the Arizona pile and to direct that fear, not into panic, but into rage against the Board of Directors personally, and into a demand that the Atomic Energy Commission take action to have the Big Bomb removed to outer space. 

	"This is blackmail! We'll stop you!" 

	"I think not," Lentz replied gently. "You may be able to keep us out of some of the newspapers, but-you can't stop the rest of it. You can't even keep us off the air — ask the Federal Communications Commission." It was true. Harrington had handled the political end and had performed his assignment well; the President was convinced. 

	Tempers were snapping on all sides; Dixon had to pound for order. "Doctor Lentz," he said, his own temper under taut control, "you plan to make every-one of us appear a black-hearted scoundrel with no oilier thought than personal profit, even at the expense of the lives of others. You know that is not true; this is a simple difference of opinion as to what is wise." 

	"I did not say it was true," Lentz admitted blandly, "but you will admit that I can convince the public that you are deliberate villains. As to it being a difference of opinion ... you are none of you atomic physicists; you are not entitled to hold opinions in this matter. 

	"As a matter of fact," he went on callously, "the only doubt in my mind is whether or not an enraged public will destroy your precious plant before Congress has time to exercise eminent domain, and take it away from you!" 

	Before they had time to think up arguments in answer and ways of circumventing him, before their hot indignation had cooled and set as stubborn resistance, he offered his gambit. He produced another lay-out for a propaganda campaign — an entirely different sort. 

	This time the Board of Directors was to be built up, not torn down. All of the same techniques were to be used; behind-the-scenes feature articles with plenty of human interest would describe the functions of the Company, describe it as a great public trust, administered by patriotic, unselfish statesmen of the business world. At the proper point in the campaign, the Harper-Erickson fuel would be announced, not as a semi-accidental result of the initiative of two employees, but as the long-expected end product of years of systematic research conducted under an axed policy of the Board of Directors, a policy growing naturally out of their humane determination to remove forever the menace from even the sparsely settled Arizona desert. 

	No mention was to be made of the danger of complete, planet-embracing catastrophe. 

	Lentz discussed it. He dwelt on the appreciation that would be due them from a grateful world. He invited them to make a noble sacrifice, and, with subtle misdirection, tempted them to think of themselves as heroes. He deliberately played on one of the most deep-rooted of simian instincts, the desire for approval from one's kind, deserved or not. 

	All the while he was playing for time, as he directed his attention from one hard case, one resistant mind, to another; He soothed and he tickled and he played on personal foibles. For the benefit of the timorous and the devoted family men, he again painted a picture of the suffering, death, and destruction that might result from their well-meant reliance on the unproved and highly questionable predictions of Destry's mathematics. Then he described in glowing detail a picture of a world free from worry but granted almost unlimited power, safe power from an invention which was theirs for this one small concession. It worked. They did not reverse themselves all at once, but a committee was appointed to investigate the feasibility of the proposed spaceship power plant. By sheer brass Lentz suggested names for the committee and Dixon confirmed his nominations, not because he wished to, particularly, but because he was caught off guard and could not think of a reason to refuse without affronting those colleagues. Lentz was careful to include his one supporter in the list. 

	The impending retirement of King was not mentioned by either side. Privately, Lentz felt sure that it never would be mentioned. 

-

	It worked, but there was left much to do. For the first few days, after the victory in committee, King felt much elated by the prospect of an early release from the soul killing worry. He was buoyed up by pleasant demands of manifold new administrative duties. Harper and Erickson were detached to Goddard Field to collaborate with the rocket engineers there in design of firing chambers, nozzles, fuel stowage, fuel metering, and the like. A schedule had to be worked out with the business office to permit as much use of the pile as possible to be diverted to making atomic fuel, and a giant combustion chamber for atomic fuel had to be designed and ordered to replace the pile itself during the interim between the time it was shut down on earth and the later time when sufficient local, smaller plants could be built to carry the commercial load. He was busy. 

	When the first activity had died down and they were settled in a new routine, pending the shutting down of the plant and its removal to outer space, King suffered an emotional reaction. There was, by then, nothing to do but wait, and tend the pile, until the crew at Goddard Field smoothed out the bugs and produced a space-worthy rocket ship. 

	At Goddard they ran into difficulties, overcame them, and came across more difficulties. They had never used such high reaction velocities; it took many trials to find a nozzle shape that would give reasonably high efficiency. When that was solved, and success seemed in sight, the jets burned out on a time-trial ground test. They were stalemated for weeks over that hitch. 

	There was another problem quite separate from the rocket problem: what to do with the power generated by the breeder pile when relocated in a satellite rocket? It was solved drastically by planning to place the pile proper outside the satellite, unshielded, and let it waste its radiant energy. It would be a tiny artificial star, shining in the vacuum of space. In the meantime research would go on for a means to harness it again and beam the power back to Earth. But only its power would be wasted; plutonium and the never atomic fuels would be recovered and rocketed back to Earth. 

	Back at the power plant Superintendent King could do nothing but chew his nails and wait He had not even the release of running over to Goddard Field to watch the progress of the research, for, urgently as he desired to, he felt an even stronger, an overpowering compulsion to watch over the pile more lest it—heartbreakingly — blow up at the last minute. 

	He took to hanging around the control room. He had to stop that; his unease communicated itself to his watch engineers; two of them cracked up in a single day — one of them on watch. 

	He must face the fact — there had been a grave upswing in psychoneurosis among his engineers since the period of watchful waiting had commenced. At first, they had tried to keep the essential facts of the plan a close secret, but it had leaked out, perhaps through some member of the investigating committee. He admitted to himself now that it had been a mistake ever to try to keep it secret — Lentz had advised against it, and the engineers not actually engaged in the change-over were bound to know that something was up. 

	He took all of the engineers into confidence at last, under oath of secrecy that had helped for a week or more, a week in which they were all given a spiritual lift-by the knowledge, as he had been. Then it had worn off, the reaction had set in, and the psychological observers had started disqualifying engineers for duty almost daily. They were even reporting each other as mentally unstable with great frequency; he might even be faced with a shortage of psychiatrists if that kept up, he thought to himself with bitter amusement. His engineers were already standing four-hours in every sixteen. If one more dropped out, he'd put himself on watch. That would be a relief, to tell himself the truth. 

	Somehow some of the civilians around about and the non-technical employees were catching on to the secret. That mustn't go on — if it spread any further there might be a nationwide panic. But how the hell could he stop it? He couldn't. 

	He turned over in bed, rearranged his pillow, and tried once more to get to sleep. No good. His head ached, his eyes were balls of pain, and his brain was a ceaseless grind of useless, repetitive activity, like a disc recording stuck in one groove. 

	God! This was unbearable! He wondered if he were cracking up — if he already had cracked up This was worse, many times worse, than the old routine when he had simply acknowledged the danger and tried to forget it as much as possible. Not that the pile was any different — it was this five-minutes-to-armistice feeling, this waiting for the curtain to go up, this race against time with nothing to do to help. He sat up, switched on his bed lamp, and looked at the clock. Three-thirty. Not so good. He got up, went into his bathroom, and dissolved a sleeping powder in a glass of whisky and water, half and half. He gulped it down and went back to bed. Presently he dozed off. 

-

	He was running, fleeing down a long corridor. At the end lay safety he knew that, but he was so utterly exhausted that he doubted his ability to finish the race. The thing pursuing him was catching up; he forced his leaden, aching legs into greater activity. The thing behind him increased its pace, and actually touched him. His heart stopped, then pounded again. He became aware that he was screaming, shrieking in mortal terror. 

	But he had to reach the end of that corridor, more depended on it than just himself. He had to. He had to — He had to! Then the flash came and he realized that he had lost, realized it with utter despair and utter, bitter defeat. He had failed; the pile had blown up. 

	The flash was his bed lamp coming on automatically; it was seven o'clock. His pajamas were soaked, chipping with sweat, and his heart still pounded. Every ragged nerve throughout his body screamed for release. It would take more than a cold shower to cure this case of the shakes. 

	He got to the office before the janitor was out of it. He sat there, doing nothing, until Lentz walked in on him, two hours later. The psychiatrist came in just as he was taking two small tablets from a box in his desk. 

	"Easy ... easy, old man," Lentz said in a slow voice. "What have you there?" He came around and gently took possession of the box. 

	"Just a sedative." 

	Lentz studied the inscription on the cover. "How many have you had today?" 

	"Just two, so far." 

	"You don't need barbiturates; you need a walk in the fresh air. Come take one with me." 

	"You're a fine one to talk — you're smoking a cigarette that isn't lighted!" 

	"Me? Why, so I am! We both need that walk. Come." 

-

	Harper arrived less than ten minutes after they had left the office. Steinke was not in the outer office. He walked on through and pounded on the door of King's private office, then waited with the man who accompanied him — a hard young chap with an easy confidence to his bearing. Steinke let them in. 

	Harper brushed on past him with a casual greeting, then checked himself when he saw that there was no one else inside. 

	"Where's the chief?" he demanded. 

	"Out. He'll be back soon." 

	"I'll wait. Oh — Steinke, this is Greene. Greene — Steinke." 

	The two shook hands. "What brings you back, Cal?" Steinke asked, turning back to Harper. 

	"Well ... I guess it's all right to tell you —" 

	The communicator screen flashed into sudden activity, and cut him short. A face filled most of the frame. It was apparently too close to the pickup, as it was badly out of focus. "Superintendent!" it yelled in an agonized voice. "The pile — !" 

	A shadow flashed across the screen, they heard a dull "Smack!", and the face slid out of the screen. As it fell it revealed the control room behind it. Someone was down on the floor plates, a nameless heap. Another figure ran across the field of pickup and disappeared. 

	Harper snapped into action first. "That was Silard!" he shouted, " — in the control room! Come on, Steinke!" He was already in motion himself. 

	Steinke went dead white, but hesitated only an unmeasurable instant. He pounded sharp on Harper's heels. Greene followed without invitation, in a steady run that kept easy pace with them. 

	They had to wait for a capsule to unload at the tube station. Then all three of them tried to crowd into a two passenger capsule. It refused to start and moments were lost before Greene piled out and claimed another car. 

	The four minute trip at heavy acceleration seemed an interminable crawl. Harper was convinced that the system had broken down, when the familiar click and sigh announced their arrival at the station under the plant. They jammed each other trying to get out at the same time. 

	The lift was up; they did not wait for it. That was unwise; they gained no time by it, and arrived at the control level out of breath. Nevertheless, they speeded up when they reached the top, zigzagged frantically around the outer shield, and burst into the control room. 

	The limp figure was still on the floor, and another, also inert, was near it. 

	A third figure was bending over the trigger. He looked up as they came in, and charged them. They hit him together, and all three went down. It was two to one, but they got in each other's way. His heavy armor protected him from the force of their blows. He fought with senseless, savage violence. 

	Harper felt a bright, sharp pain; his right arm went limp and useless. The armored figure was struggling free of them. There was a shout from somewhere behind them: "Hold still!" 

	He saw a flash with the corner of one eye, a deafening crack hurried on top of it, and re-echoed painfully in the restricted space. 

	The armored figure dropped back to his knees, balanced there, and then fell heavily on his face. Greene stood in the entrance, a service pistol balanced in his hand. 

	Harper got up and went over to the trigger. He tried to reduce the power-level adjustment, but his right hand wouldn't carry out his orders, and his left was too clumsy. 

	"Steinke," he called, "come here! Take over." 

	Steinke hurried up, nodded as he glanced at the readings, and set busily to work. 

-

	It was thus that King found them when he bolted in a very few minutes later. 

	"Harper!" he shouted, while his quick glance was still taking in the situation. "What's happened?" 

	Harper told him briefly. He nodded. "I saw the tail end of the fight from my office — Steinke!" He seemed to grasp for the first time who was on the trigger. "He can't manage the controls —" He hurried toward him. 

	Steinke looked up at his approach. "Chief!" he called out, "Chief! I've got my mathematics back!" 

	King looked bewildered, then nodded vaguely, and let him be. He turned back to Harper. "How does it happen you're here?" 

	"Me? I'm here to report — we've done it, Chief!" 

	"Eh?" 

	"We've finished; it's all done. Erickson stayed behind to complete the power plant installation on the big ship. I came over in the ship we'll use to shuttle between Earth and the big ship, the power plant. Four minutes from Goddard Field to here in her. That's the pilot over there." He pointed to the door, where Greene's solid form partially hid Lentz. 

	"Wait a minute. You say that everything is ready to install the pile in the ship? You're sure?" 

	"Positive. The big ship has already flown with our fuel-longer and faster than she will have to fly to reach station in her orbit; I was in it — out in space, Chief! We're all set, six ways from zero." 

	King stared at the dumping switch, mounted behind glass at the top of the instrument board. "There's fuel enough," he said softly, as if he were alone and speaking only to himself, "there's been fuel enough for weeks." 

	He walked swiftly over to the switch, smashed the glass with his fist, and pulled it. 

	The room rumbled and shivered as tons of molten, massive metal, heavier than gold, coursed down channels, struck against baffles, split into a dozen dozen streams, and plunged to rest in leaden receivers — to rest, safe and harmless, until it should be reassembled far out in space. 

Searchlight
 
	"Will she hear you?"

	"If she's on this face of the Moon. If she was able to get out of the ship. If her suit radio wasn't damaged. If she has it turned on. If she is alive. Since the ship is silent and no radar beacon has been spotted, it is unlikely that she or the pilot lived through it."

	"She's got to be found! Stand by, Space Station. Tycho Base, acknowledge."

	Reply lagged about three seconds, Washington to Moon and back. "Lunar Base, Commanding General."

	"General, put every man on the Moon out searching for Betsy!"

	Speed-of-light lag made the answer sound grudging. "Sir, do you know how big the Moon is?"

	"No matter! Betsy Barnes is there somewhere — so every man is to search until she is found. If she's dead, your precious pilot would be better off dead, too!"

	"Sir, the Moon is almost fifteen million square miles. If I used every man I have, each would have over a thousand square miles to search. I gave Betsy my best pilot. I won't listen to threats against him when he can't answer back. Not from anyone, sir! I'm sick of being told what to do by people who don't know Lunar conditions. My advice — my official advice, sir — is to let Meridian Station try. Maybe they can work a miracle.

	The answer rapped back, "Very well, General! I'll speak to you later. Meridian Station! Report your plans."

-

	Elizabeth Barnes, "Blind Betsy," child genius of the piano, had been making a USO tour of the Moon. She "wowed 'em" at Tycho Base, then lifted by jeep rocket for Farside Hardbase, to entertain our lonely missilemen behind the Moon. She should have been there in an hour. Her pilot was a safety pilot; such ships shuttled unpiloted between Tycho and Farside daily.

	After lift-off her ship departed from its programming, was lost by Tycho's radars. It was … somewhere.

	Not in space, else it would be radioing for help and its radar beacon would be seen by other ships, space stations, surface bases. It had crashed — or made emergency landing — somewhere on the vastness of Luna.

-

	"Meridian Space Station, Director speaking —" Lag was unnoticeable; radio bounce between Washington and the station only 22,300 miles up was only a quarter second. "We've patched Earthside stations to blanket the Moon with our call. Another broadcast blankets the far side from Station Newton at the three-body stable position. Ships from Tycho are orbiting the Moon's rim — that band around the edge which is in radio shadow from us and from the Newton. If we hear — "Yes, yes! How about radar search?"

	"Sir, a rocket on the surface looks to radar like a million other features the same size. Our one chance is to get them to answer.. . if they can. Ultrahigh-resolution radar might spot them in months — but suits worn in those little rockets carry only six hours' air. We are praying they will hear and answer."

	"When they answer, you'll slap a radio direction finder on them. Eh?"

	"No, sir."

	"In God's name, why not?"

	"Sir, a direction finder is useless for this job. It would tell us only that the signal came from the Moon — which doesn't help."

	"Doctor, you're saying that you might hear Betsy — and not know where she is?"

	"We're as blind as she is. We hope that she will be able to lead us to her. . . if she hears us."

	"How?"

	"With a laser. An intense, very tight beam of light. She'll hear it —"

	"Hear a beam of light?"

	"Yes, sir. We are jury-rigging to scan like radar — that won't show anything. But we are modulating it to give a carrier wave in radio frequency, then modulating that into audio frequency — and controlling that by a piano. If she hears us, we'll tell her to listen while we scan the Moon and run the scale on the piano —"

	"All this while a little girl is dying?"

	"Mister President — shut up!"

	"Who was THAT?"

	"I'm Betsy's father. They've patched me from Omaha. Please, Mr. President, keep quiet and let them work. I want my daughter back."

	The President answered tightly, "Yes, Mr. Barnes. Go ahead, Director. Order anything you need."

-

	In Station Meridian the Director wiped his face. "Getting anything?"

	"No. Boss, can't something be done about that Rio Station? It's sitting right on the frequency!"

	"We'll drop a brick on them. Or a bomb. Joe, tell the President."

	"I heard, Director. They'll be silenced!"

-

	"Sh! Quiet! Betsy — do you hear me?" The operator looked intent, made an adjustment.

	From a speaker came a girl's light, sweet voice: "— to hear somebody! Gee, I'm glad! Better come quick — the Major is hurt."

	The Director jumped to the microphone. "Yes, Betsy, we'll hurry. You've got to help us. Do you know where you are?"

	"Somewhere on the Moon, I guess. We bumped hard and I was going to kid him about it when the ship fell over. I got unstrapped and found Major Peters and he isn't moving. Not dead — I don't think so; his suit puffs out like mine and I hear something when I push my helmet against him. I just now managed to get the door open." She added, "This can't be Farside; it's supposed to be night there. I'm in sunshine, I'm sure. This suit is pretty hot."

	"Betsy, you must stay outside. You've got to be where you can see us."

	She chuckled. "That's a good one. I see with my ears."

	"Yes. You'll see us, with your ears. Listen, Betsy. We're going to scan the Moon with a beam of light. You'll hear it as a piano note. We've got the Moon split into the eighty-eight piano notes. When you hear one, yell, 'Now!' Then tell us what note you heard. Can you do that?"

	"Of course," she said confidently, "if the piano is in tune."

	"It is. All right, we're starting —"

-

	"Now!"

	"What note, Betsy?"

	"E flat the first octave above middle C."

	"This note, Betsy?"

	"That's what I said."

	The Director called out, "Where's that on the grid? In Mare Nubium? Tell the General!" He said to the microphone, "We're finding you, Betsy honey! Now we scan just that part you're on. We change setup. Want to talk to your Daddy meanwhile?"

	"Gosh! Could I?"

	"Yes indeed!"

	Twenty minutes later the Director cut in and heard: "— of course not, Daddy. Oh, a teensy bit scared when the ship fell. But people take care of me, always have."

	"Betsy?"

	"Yes, sir?"

	"Be ready to tell us again."
 
-

	"Now!" She added, "That's a bullfrog G, three octaves down."

	"This note?"

	"That's right."

	"Get that on the grid and tell the General to get his ships up! That cuts it to a square ten miles on a side! Now, Betsy — we know almost where you are. We are going to focus still closer. Want to go inside and cool off?"

	"I'm not too hot. Just sweaty."

-

	Forty minutes later the General's voice rang out: "They've spotted the ship! They see her waving!"

Life-Line

	The chairman rapped loudly for order. Gradually the catcalls and boos died away as several self-appointed sergeants-at-arms persuaded a few hot-headed individuals to sit down. The speaker on the rostrum by the chairman seemed unaware of the disturbance. His bland, faintly insolent face was impassive. The chairman turned to the speaker, and addressed him, in a voice in which anger and annoyance were barely restrained.

	"Doctor Pinero," — the "Doctor" was faintly stressed — "I must apologize to you for the unseemly outburst during your remarks. I am surprised that my colleagues should so far forget the dignity proper to men of science as to interrupt a speaker, no matter," he paused and set his mouth, "no matter how great the provocation." Pinero smiled in his face, a smile that was in some way an open insult. The chairman visibly controlled his temper and continued, "I am anxious that the program be concluded decently and in order. I want you to finish your remarks. Nevertheless, I must ask you to refrain from affronting our intelligence with ideas that any educated man knows to be fallacious. Please confine yourself to your discovery — if you have made one." 

	Pinero spread his fat white hands, palms down. "How can I possibly put a new idea into your heads, if I do not first remove your delusions?" 

	The audience stirred and muttered. Someone shouted from the rear of the hail, "Throw the charlatan out! We've had enough." The chairman pounded his gavel. 

	"Gentlemen! Please!" Then to Pinero, "Must I remind you that you are not a member of this body, and that we did not invite you?" 

	Pinero's eyebrows lifted. "So? I seem to remember an invitation on the letterhead of the Academy?" 

	The chairman chewed his lower lip before replying. "True. I wrote that invitation myself. But it was at the request of one of the trustees — a fine public-spirited gentleman, but not a scientist, not a member of the Academy." 

	Pinero smiled his irritating smile. "So? I should have guessed. Old Bidwell, not so, of Amalgamated Life Insurance? And he wanted his trained seals to expose me as a fraud, yes? For if I can tell a man the day of his own death, no one will buy his pretty policies. But how can you expose me, if you will not listen to me first? Even supposing you had the wit to understand me? Bah! He has sent jackals to tear down a lion." He deliberately turned his back on them. The muttering of the crowd swelled and took on a vicious tone. The chairman cried vainly for order. There arose a figure in the front row. 

	"Mister Chairman!" 

	The chairman grasped the opening and shouted, "Gentlemen! Doctor Van RheinSmitt has the floor." The commotion died away. 

	The doctor cleared his throat, smoothed the forelock of his beautiful white hair, and thrust one hand into a side pocket of his smartly tailored trousers. He assumed his women's club manner. 

	"Mister Chairman, fellow members of the Academy of Science, let us have tolerance. Even a murderer has the right to say his say before the state exacts its tribute. Shall we do less? Even though one may be intellectually certain of the verdict? I grant Doctor Pinero every consideration that should be given by this august body to any unaffiliated colleague, even though" — he bowed slightly in Pinero's direction — "we may not be familiar with the university which bestowed his degree. If what he has to say is false, it can not harm us. If what he has to say is true, we should know it." His mellow cultivated voice rolled on, soothing and calming. "If the eminent doctor's manner appears a trifle in urbane for our tastes, we must bear in mind that the doctor may be from a place, or a stratum, not so meticulous in these little matters. Now our good friend and benefactor has asked us to hear this person and carefully assess the merit of his claims. Let us do so with dignity and decorum." 

	He sat down to a rumble of applause, comfortably aware that he had enhanced his reputation as an intellectual leader. Tomorrow the papers would again mention the good sense and persuasive personality of "America's handsomest University President". Who knew? Perhaps old Bidwell would come through with that swimming pool donation. 

	When the applause had ceased, the chairman turned to where the center of the disturbance sat, hands folded over his little round belly, face serene. 

	"Will you continue, Doctor Pinero?" 

	"Why should I?" 

	The chairman shrugged his shoulders. "You came for that purpose." 

	Pinero arose. "So true. So very true. But was I wise to come? Is there anyone here who has an open mind who can stare a bare fact in the face without blushing? I think not. Even that so beautiful gentleman who asked you to hear me out has already judged me and condemned me. He seeks order, not truth. Suppose truth defies order, will he accept it? Will you? I think not. Still, if I do not speak, you will win your point by default. The little man in the street will think that you little men have exposed me, Pinero, as a hoaxer, a pretender. That does not suit my plans. I will speak." 

	"I will repeat my discovery. In simple language I have invented a technique to tell how long a man will live. I can give you advance billing of the Angel of Death. I can tell you when the Black Camel will kneel at your door. In five minutes time with my apparatus I can tell any of you how many grains of sand are still left in your hourglass." He paused and folded his arms across his chest. For a moment no one spoke. The audience grew restless. Finally the chairman intervened. 

	"You aren't finished, Doctor Pinero?" 

	"What more is there to say?" 

	"You haven't told us how your discovery works." 

	Pinero's eyebrows shot up. "You suggest that I should turn over the fruits of my work for children to play with. This is dangerous knowledge, my friend. I keep it for the man who understands it, myself." He tapped his chest. 

	"How are we to know that you have anything back of your wild claims?" 

	"So simple. You send a committee to watch me demonstrate. If it works, fine. You admit it and tell the world so. If it does not work, I am discredited, and will apologize. Even I, Pinero, will apologize." 

	A slender stoop-shouldered man stood up in the back of the hail. The chair recognized him and he spoke: 

	"Mr. Chairman, how can the eminent doctor seriously propose such a course? Does he expect us to wait around for twenty or thirty years for some one to die and prove his claims?" 

	Pinero ignored the chair and answered directly: 

	"Pfui! Such nonsense! Are you so ignorant of statistics that you do not know that in any large group there is at least one who will die in the immediate future? I make you a proposition; let me test each one of you in this room and I will name the man who will die within the fortnight, yes, and the day and hour of his death." He glanced fiercely around the room. "Do you accept?" 

	Another figure got to his feet, a portly man who spoke in measured syllables. "I, for one, can not countenance such an experiment. As a medical man, I have noted with sorrow the plain marks of serious heart trouble in many of our elder colleagues. If Doctor Pinero knows those symptoms, as he may, and were he to select as his victim one of their number, the man so selected would be likely to die on schedule, whether the distinguished speaker's mechanical egg-timer works or not." 

	Another speaker backed him up at once. "Doctor Shepard is right. Why should we waste time on voodoo tricks? It is my belief that this person who calls himself Doctor Pinero wants to use this body to give his statements authority. If we participate in this farce, we play into his hands. I don't know what his racket is, but you can bet that he has figured out some way to use us for advertising for his schemes. I move, Mister Chairman, that we proceed with our regular business." 

	The motion carried by acclamation, but Pinero did not sit down. Amidst cries of "Order! Order!" he shook his untidy head at them, and had his say: 

	"Barbarians! Imbeciles! Stupid dolts! Your kind have blocked the recognition of every great discovery since time began. Such ignorant canaille are enough to start Galileo spinning in his grave. That fat fool down there twiddling his elk's, tooth calls himself a medical man. Witch doctor would be a better term! That little baldheaded runt over there — You! You style yourself a philosopher, and prate about life and time in your neat categories. What do you know of either one? How can you ever learn when you won't examine the truth when you have a chance? Bah!" He spat upon the stage. "You call this an Academy of Science. I call it an undertaker's convention, interested only in embalming the ideas of your red-blooded predecessors." 

	He paused for breath and was grasped on each side by two members of the platform committee and rushed out the wings. Several reporters arose hastily from the press table and followed him. The chairman declared the meeting adjourned. 

	The newspapermen caught up with him as he was going out by the stage door. He walked with a light springy step, and whistled a little tune. There was no trace of the belligerence he had shown a moment before. They crowded about him. "How about an interview, doe?" "What dyu think of Modem Education?" "You certainly told 'em. What are your views on Life after Death?" "Take off your hat, doe, and look at the birdie." 

	He grinned at them all. "One at a time, boys, and not so fast. I used to be a newspaperman myself. How about coming up to my place, and we'll talk about it?" 

	A few minutes later they were trying to find places to sit down in Pinero's messy bed-living-room, and lighting his cigars. Pinero looked around and beamed. "What'll it be, boys? Scotch, or Bourbon?" When that was taken care of he got down to business. "Now, boys, what do you want to know?" 

	"Lay it on the line, doe. Have you got something, or haven't you?" 

	"Most assuredly I have something, my young friend." 

	"Then tell us how it works. That guff you handed the profs won't get you anywhere now." 

	"Please, my dear fellow. it is my invention. I expect to make some money with it. Would you have me give it away to the first person who asks for it?" 

	"See here, doe, you've got to give us something if you expect to get a break in the morning papers. What do you use? A crystal ball?" 

	"No, not quite. Would you like to see my apparatus?" 

	"Sure. Now we are getting somewhere." 

	He ushered them into an adjoining room, and waved his hand. "There it is, boys." The mass of equipment that met their eyes vaguely resembled a medico's office x-ray gear. Beyond the obvious fact that it used electrical power, and that some of the dials were calibrated in familiar terms, a casual inspection gave no clue to its actual use. 

	"What's the principle, doe?" 

	Pinero pursed his lips and considered. "No doubt you are all familiar with the truism that life is electrical in nature? Well, that truism isn't worth a damn, but it will help to give you an idea of the principle. You have also been told that time is a fourth dimension. Maybe you believe it, perhaps not. It has been said so many times that it has ceased to have any meaning. It is simply a cliché that windbags use to impress fools. But I want you to try to visualize it now and try to feel it emotionally." 

	He stepped up to one of the reporters. "Suppose we, take you as an example. Your name is Rogers, is it not? Very well, Rogers, you are a space-time event having duration four ways. You are not quite six feet tall, you are about twenty inches wide and perhaps ten inches thick. In time, there stretches behind you more of this space-time event reaching to perhaps nineteen-sixteen, of which we see a cross-section here at right angles to the time axis, and as thick as the present. At the far end is a baby, smelling of sour milk and drooling its breakfast on its bib. At the other end lies, perhaps, an old man someplace in the nineteen-eighties. Imagine this space-time event which we call Rogers as a long pink worm, continuous through the years, one end at his mother's womb, the other at the grave. It stretches past us here and the cross-section we see appears as a single discrete body. But that is illusion. There is physical continuity to this pink worm, enduring through the years. As a matter of fact there is physical continuity in, this concept to the entire race, for these pink worms branch off from other pink worms. In this fashion the race is like a vine whose branches intertwine and send Out shoots. Only by taking a cross-section of the vine would we fall into the error of believing that the shootlets were discrete individuals." 

	He paused and looked around at their faces. One of them, a dour hard-bitten chap, put in a word. 

	"That's all very pretty, Pinero; if true, but where does that get you?" 

	Pinero favored him with an unresentful smile. "Patience, my friend. I asked you to think of life as electrical. Now think of our long pink worm as a conductor of electricity. You have heard, perhaps, of the fact that electrical engineers can, by certain measurements, predict the exact location of a break in a trans-Atlantic cable without ever leaving the shore. I do the same with our pink worms. By applying my instruments to the cross-section here in this room I can tell where the break occurs, that is to say, when death takes place. Or, if you like, I can reverse the connections and tell you the date of your birth. But that is uninteresting; you already know it." 

	The dour individual sneered. "I've caught you, doe. If what you said about the race being like a vine of pink worms is true, you can't tell birthdays because the connection with the race is continuous at birth. Your electrical. conductor reaches on back through the mother into a man's remotest ancestors." 

	Pinero beamed, "True, and clever, my friend. But you have pushed the analogy too far. It is not done in the precise manner in which one measures the length of an electrical conductor. In some ways it is more like measuring the length of a long corridor by bouncing an echo off the far end. At birth there is a sort of twist in the corridor, and, by proper calibration, I can detect the echo from that twist. There is just one case in which I can get no determinant reading; when a woman is actually carrying a child, I can't sort out her life-line from that of the unborn infant." 

	"Let's see you prove it." 

	"Certainly, my dear friend. Will you be a subject?" 

	One of the others spoke up. "He's called your bluff, Luke. Put up, or shut up." 

	"I'm game. What do I do?" 

	"First write the date of your birth on a sheet of paper, and hand it to one of your colleagues." 

	Luke complied. "Now what?" 

	"Remove your outer clothing and step upon these scales. Now tell me, were you ever very much thinner, or very much fatter, than you are now. No? What did you weigh at birth? Ten pounds? A fine bouncing baby boy. They don't come so big any more." 

	"What is all this flubdubbery?" 

	"I am trying to approximate the average cross-section of our long pink conductor, my dear Luke. Now will you seat yourself here. Then place this electrode in your mouth. No, it will not hurt you; the voltage is quite low, less than one micro-volt, but I must have a good connection." The doctor left him and went behind his apparatus, where he lowered a hood over his head before touching his controls. Some of the exposed dials came to life and a low humming came from the machine. It stopped and the doctor popped out of his little hide-away. 

	"I get sometime in February, nineteen-twelve. Who has the piece of paper with the date?" 

	It was produced and unfolded. The custodian read, "February 22nd, 1912." 

	The stillness that followed was broken by a voice from the edge of the little group. "Doe, can I have another drink?" 

	The tension relaxed, and several spoke at once, "Try it on me, doe." "Me first, doe, I'm an orphan and really want to know." "How about it, doe. Give us all a little loose play." 

	He smilingly complied, ducking in and out of the hood like a gopher from its hole. When they all had twin slips of paper to prove the doctor's skill, Luke broke a long silence. 

	"How about showing how you predict death, Pinero." 

	"If you wish. Who will try it?" 

	No one answered. Several of them nudged Luke forward. "Go ahead, smart guy. You asked for it." He allowed himself to be seated in the chair. Pinero changed some of the switches, then entered the hood. When the humming ceased, he came out, rubbing his hands briskly together. 

	"Well, that's all there is to see, boys. Got enough for a story?" 

	"Hey, what about the prediction? When does Luke get his 'thirty'?" 

	Luke faced him. "Yes, how about it? What's your answer?" 

	Pinero looked pained. "Gentlemen, I am surprised at you. I give that information for a fee. Besides, it is a professional confidence. I never tell anyone but the client who consults me." 

	"I don't mind. Go ahead and tell them." 

	"I am very sorry. I really must refuse. I agreed only to show you how, not to give the results." 

	Luke ground the butt of his cigarette into the floor. "It's a hoax, boys. He probably looked up the age of every reporter in town just to be ready to pull this. It won't wash, Pinero." 

	Pinero gazed at him sadly. "Are you married, my friend?" 

	"Do you have any one dependent on you? Any close relatives?" 

	"No. WHY, do you want to adopt me?" 

	Pinero shook his head sadly. "I am very sorry for you, my dear Luke. You will die before tomorrow." 

-

	"SCIENCE MEET ENDS IN RIOT" 
	"SAVANTS SAPS SAYS SEER" 
	"DEATH PUNCHES TIMECLOCK" 
	"SCRIBE DIES PER DOC'S DOPE" 
	"HOAX' CLAIMS SCIENCE HEAD" 

-

	"... within twenty minutes of Pinero's strange prediction, Timons was struck by a falling sign while walking down Broadway toward the offices of the Daily Herald where he was employed. 

	"Doctor Pinero declined to comment but confirmed the story that he had predicted Timons' death by means of his so-called chronovitameter. Chief of Police Roy..." 

-

Does the FUTURE worry You????????
Don't waste money on fortune tellers -
Consult Doctor Hugo Pinero, Bio-Consultant
to help you plan for the future by
infallible scientific methods.
No Hocus-Pocus. No "Spirit" Messages.
$10,000 Bond posted in forfeit to back
our predictions. Circular on request.
SANDS of TIME, Inc.
Majestic Bldg., Suite 700
(adv.)

-

Legal Notice

	To whom it may concern, greetings; I, John Cabot Winthrop III, of the firm Winthrop, Winthrop, Ditmars & Winthrop, Attorneys-at-Law, do affirm that Hugo Pinero of this city did hand to me ten thousand dollars in lawful money of the United States, and instruct me to place it in escrow with a chartered bank of my selection with escrow instructions as follows:. 

	The entire bond shall be forfeit, and shall forthwith be paid to the first client of Hugo Pinero and/or Sands of Time, Inc. who shall exceed his life tenure as predicted by Hugo Pinero by one per centurn, or to the estate of the first client who shall fail of such predicted tenure in a like amount, whichever occurs first in point of time. 

	I do further affirm that I have this day placed this bond in escrow with the above related instructions with the Equitable-First National Bank of this city. 

	Subscribed--and sworn,
	John Cabot Winthrop Ill

	Subscribed and sworn to before me
	this 2nd day of April, 1951.
	Albert M. Swanson
	Notary Public in and for this county and state
	My commission expires June 17, 1951.

-

	"Good evening Mr. and Mrs. Radio Audience, let's go to Press! Flash! Hugo Pinero, The Miracle Man from Nowhere, has made his thousandth death prediction without a claimant for the reward he posted for anyone who catches him failing to call the turn. With thirteen of his clients already dead it is mathematically certain that — he has a private line to the main office of the Old Man with the Scythe. That is one piece of news I don't want to know before it happens. Your Coast-to-Coast Correspondent will not be a client of Prophet Pinero …" 

-

	The judge's watery baritone cut through the stale air of the courtroom. "Please, Mr. Weeds, let us return to our muttons. This court granted your prayer for a temporary restraining order, and now you ask that it be made permanent. In rebuttal, Mr. Pinero claims that you have presented no cause and asks that the injunction be lifted, and that I order your client to cease from attempts to interfere with what Pinero describes as a simple — lawful business. As you are not addressing a jury, please omit the rhetoric and tell me in plain language why I should not grant his prayer." 

	Mr. Weeds jerked his chin nervously, making his flabby Grey dewlap drag across his high stiff collar, and resumed: 

	"May it please the honorable court, I represent the public-" 

	"Just a moment. I thought you were appearing for Amalgamated Life Insurance." 

	"I am, Your Honor, in a formal sense. In a wider sense I represent several other major assurance, fiduciary, and financial institutions; their stockholders, and policy holders, who constitute a majority of the citizenry. In addition we feel that we protect the interests of the entire population; unorganized, inarticulate, and otherwise unprotected." 

	"I thought that I represented the public," observed the judge dryly. "I am afraid I must regard you as appearing for your client-of-record. But continue; what is your thesis?" 

	The elderly barrister attempted to swallow his Adam's apple, then began again. "Your Honor, we contend that there are two separate reasons why this injunction should be made permanent, and, further, that each reason is sufficient alone. In the first place, this person is engaged in the practice of soothsaying, an occupation proscribed both in common law and statute. He is a common fortune teller, a vagabond charlatan who preys on the gullibility of the public. He is cleverer than the ordinary gypsy palm-reader, astrologer, or table tipper, and to the same extent more dangerous. He makes false claims of modern scientific methods to give a spurious dignity to his thaumaturgy. We have here in court leading representatives of the Academy of Science to give expert witness as to the absurdity of his claims. 

	"In the second place, even if this person's claims were true-granting for the sake of argument such an absurdity" — Mr. Weems permitted himself a thin-lipped smile — "we contend that his activities are contrary to the public interest in general, and unlawfully injurious to the interests of my client in particular. We are prepared to produce numerous exhibits with the legal custodians to prove that this person did publish, or cause to have published, utterances urging the public to dispense with the priceless boon of life insurance to the great detriment of their welfare and to the financial damage of my client." 

	Pinero arose in his place. "Your Honor, may I say a few words?" 

	"What is it?" 

	"I believe I can simplify the situation if permitted to make a brief analysis." 

	"Your Honor," cut in Weems, "this is most irregular." 

	"Patience, Mr. Weems. Your interests will be protected. It seems to me that we need more light and less noise in this matter. If Dr. Pinero can shorten the proceedings by speaking at this time, I am inclined to let him. Proceed, Dr. Pinero." 

	"Thank you, Your Honor. Taking the last of Mr. Weems' points first, I am prepared to stipulate that I published the utterances he speaks of" 

	"One moment, Doctor. You have chosen to act as your own attorney. Are you sure you are competent to protect your own interests?" 

	"I am prepared to chance it, Your Honor. Our friends here can easily prove what I stipulate." 

	"Very well. You may proceed." 

	"I will stipulate that many persons have cancelled life insurance policies as a result thereof, but I challenge them to show that anyone so doing has suffered any loss or damage there from. It is true that the Amalgamated has lost business through my activities, but that is the natural result of my discovery, which has made their policies as obsolete as the bow and arrow. If an injunction is granted on that ground, I shall set up a coal oil lamp factory, then ask for an injunction against the Edison and General Electric companies to forbid them to manufacture incandescent bulbs." 

	"I will stipulate that I am engaged in the business of making predictions of death, but I deny that I am practicing magic, black, white, or rainbow colored. If to make predictions by methods of scientific accuracy is illegal, then the actuaries of the Amalgamated have been guilty for years in that they predict the exact percentage that will die each year in any given large group. I predict death retail; the Amalgamated predicts it wholesale. If their actions are legal, how can mine be illegal?" 

	"I admit that it makes a difference whether I can do what I claim, or not; and I will stipulate that the so-called expert witnesses from the Academy of Science will testify that I cannot. But they know nothing of my method and cannot give truly expert testimony on it." 

	"Just a moment, Doctor. Mr. Weems, is it true that your expert witnesses are not conversant with Dr. Pinero's theory and methods?" 

	Mr. Weems looked worried. He drummed on the table top, then answered, "Will the Court grant me a few moments indulgence?" 

	"Certainly." 

	Mr. Weems held a hurried whispered consultation with his cohorts, then faced the bench. "We have a procedure to suggest, Your Honor. If Dr. Pinero will take the stand and explain the theory and practice of his alleged method, then these distinguished scientists will be able to advise the Court as to the validity of his claims." 

	The judge looked inquiringly at Pinero, who responded, "I will not willingly agree to that. Whether my process is true or false, it would be dangerous to let it fall into the hands of fools and quacks" he waved his hand at the group of professors seated in the front row, paused and smiled maliciously "as these gentlemen know quite well. Furthermore it is not necessary to know the process in order to prove that it will work. Is it necessary to understand the complex miracle of biological reproduction in order to observe that a hen lays eggs? Is it necessary for me to reeducate this entire body of self-appointed custodians of wisdom — cure them of their ingrown superstitions — in order to prove that my predictions are correct? There are but two ways of forming an opinion in science. One is the scientific method; the other, the scholastic. One can judge from experiment, or one can blindly accept authority. To the scientific mind, experimental proof is all important and theory is merely a convenience in description, to be junked when it no longer fits. To the academic mind, authority is everything and facts are junked when they do not fit theory laid down by authority." 

	"It is this point of view-academic minds clinging like oysters to disproved theories-that has blocked every advance of knowledge in history. I am prepared to prove my method by experiment, and, like Galileo in another court, I insist, 'It still moves!'" 

	"Once before I offered such proof to this same body of self-styled experts, and they rejected it. I renew my offer; let me measure the life lengths of the members of the Academy of Science. Let them appoint a committee to judge the results. I will seal my findings in two sets of envelopes; on the outside of each envelope in one set will appear the name of a member, on the inside the date of his death. In the other envelopes I will place names, on the outside I will place dates. Let the committee place the envelopes in a vault, then meet from time to time to open the appropriate envelopes. In such a large body of men some deaths may be expected, if Amalgamated actuaries can be trusted, every week or two. In such a fashion they will accumulate data very rapidly to prove that Pinero is a liar, or no." 

	He stopped, and pushed out his little chest until it almost caught up with his little round belly. He glared at the sweating savants. "Well?" 

	The judge raised his eyebrows, and caught Mr. Weems' eye. "Do you accept?" 

	"Your Honor, I think the proposal highly improper-" 

	The judge cut him short. "I warn you that I shall rule against you if you do not accept, or propose an equally reasonable method of arriving at the truth." 

	Weems opened his mouth, changed his mind, looked up and down the faces of learned witnesses, and faced the bench. "We accept, Your Honor." 

	"Very well. Arrange the details between you. The temporary injunction is lifted, and Dr. Pinero must not be molested in the pursuit of his business. Decision on the petition for permanent injunction is reserved without prejudice pending the accumulation of evidence. Before we leave this matter I wish to comment on the theory implied by you, Mr. Weems, when you claimed damage to your client. There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute nor common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back, for their private benefit. That is all." 

-

	Bidwell grunted in annoyance. "Weems, if you can't think up anything better than that, Amalgamated is going to need a new chief attorney. It's been ten weeks since you lost the injunction, and that little wart is coining money hand over fist. Meantime every insurance firm in the country is going broke. Hoskins, what's our loss ratio?" 

	"It's hard to say, Mr. Bidwell. It gets worse every day. We've paid off thirteen big policies this week; all of them taken out since Pinero started operations." 

	A spare little man spoke up. "I say, Bidwell, we aren't accepting any new applications for United until we have time to check and be sure that they have not consulted Pinero. Can't we afford to wait until the scientists show him up?" 

	Bidwell snorted. "You blasted optimist! They won't show him up. Aldrich, can't you face a fact? The fat little blister has got something; how I don't know. This is a fight to the finish. If we wait, we're licked." He threw his cigar into a cuspidor, and bit savagely into a fresh one. "Clear out of here, all of you! I'll handle this my own way. You too, Aldrich. United may wait, but Amalgamated won't." 

	Weems cleared his throat apprehensively. "Mr. Bidwell, I trust you will consult with me before embarking on any major change in policy?" 

	Bidwell grunted. They filed out. When they were all gone and the door closed, Bidwell snapped the switch of the inter-office announcer. "O.K.; send him in." 

	The outer door opened; a slight dapper figure stood for a moment at the threshold. His small dark eyes glanced quickly about the room before he entered, then he moved up to Bidwell with a quick soft tread. He spoke to Bidwell in a flat emotionless voice. His face remained impassive except for the live animal eyes. "You wanted to talk to me?" 

	"Yes." 

	"What's the proposition?" 

	"Sit down, and we'll talk." 

-

	Pinero met the young couple at the door of his inner office. 

	"Come in, my dears, come in. Sit down. Make yourselves at home. Now tell me, what do you want of Pinero? Surely such young people are not anxious about the final roll call?" 

	The boy's honest young face showed slight confusion. "Well, you see, Dr. Pinero, I'm Ed Harley and this is my wife, Betty. We're going to have-that is, Betty is expecting a baby and, well-" 

	Pinero smiled benignly. "I understand. You want to know how long you will live in order to make the best possible provision for the youngster. Quite wise. Do you both want readings, or just yourself?" 

	The girl answered, "Both of us, we think." 

	Pinero beamed at her. "Quite so. I agree. Your reading presents certain technical difficulties at this time, but I can give you some information now, and more later after your baby arrives. Now come into my laboratory, my dears, and we'll commence." He rang for their case histories, then showed them into his workshop. "Mrs. Harley first, please. If you will go behind that screen and remove your shoes and your outer clothing, please. Remember, I am an old man, whom you are consulting as you would a physician." 

	He turned away and made some minor adjustments of his apparatus. Ed nodded to his wife who slipped behind the screen and reappeared almost at once, clothed in two wisps of silk. Pinero glanced up, noted her fresh young prettiness and her touching shyness. 

	"This way, my dear. First we must weigh you. There. Now take your place on the stand. This electrode in your mouth. No, Ed, you mustn't touch her while she is in the circuit. It won't take a minute. Remain quiet." 

	He dove under the machine's hood and the dials sprang into life. Very shortly he came out with a perturbed look on his face. "Ed, did you touch her?" 

	"No, Doctor." Pinero ducked back again, remained a little longer. When he came out this time, he told the girl to get down and dress. He turned to her husband. 

	"Ed, make yourself ready." 

	"What's Betty's reading, Doctor?" 

	"There is a little difficulty. I want to test you first." 

	When he came out from taking the youth's reading, his face was more troubled than ever. Ed inquired as to his trouble. Pinero shrugged his shoulders, and brought a smile to his lips. 

	"Nothing to concern you, my boy. A little mechanical misadjustment, I think. But I shan't be able to give you two your readings today. I shall need to overhaul my machine. Can you come back tomorrow?" 

	"Why, I think so. Say, I'm sorry about your machine. I hope it isn't serious." 

	"It isn't, I'm sure. Will you come back into my office, and visit for a bit?" 

	"Thank you, Doctor. You are very kind." 

	"But Ed, I've got to meet Ellen." 

	Pinero turned the full force of his personality on her. 

	"Won't you grant me a few moments, my dear young lady? I am old and like the sparkle of young folk's company. I get very little of it. Please." He nudged them gently into his office, and seated them. Then he ordered lemonade and cookies sent in, offered them cigarettes, and lit a cigar. 

	Forty minutes later Ed listened entranced, while Betty was quite evidently acutely nervous and anxious to leave, as the doctor spun out a story concerning his adventures as a young man in Tierra del Fuego. When the doctor stopped to relight his cigar, she stood up. 

	"Doctor, — we really must leave. Couldn't we hear the rest tomorrow?" 

	"Tomorrow? There will not be time tomorrow." 

	"But you haven't time today either. Your secretary has rung five times." 

	"Couldn't you spare me just a few more minutes?" 

	"I really can't today, doctor. I have an appointment. There is someone waiting for me." 

	"There is no way to induce you?" 

	"I'm afraid not. Come, Ed." 

	After they had gone, the doctor stepped to the window and stared out over the city. Presently he picked out two tiny figures as they left the office building. He watched them hurry to the corner, wait for the lights to change, then start across the street. When they were part way across, there came the scream of a siren. The two little figures hesitated, started back, stopped, and turned. Then the car was upon them. As the car slammed to a stop, they showed up from beneath it, no longer two figures, but simply a limp unorganized heap of clothing. 

	Presently the doctor turned away — from the window. Then he picked up his phone, and spoke to his secretary. 

	"Cancel my appointments for the rest of the day.... No... No one... I don't care; cancel them." Then he sat down in his chair. His cigar went out. Long after dark he held it, still unlighted. 

-

	Pinero sat down at his dining table and contemplated the gourmet's luncheon spread before him. He had ordered this meal with particular care, and had come home a little early in order to enjoy it fully. 

	Somewhat later he let a few drops of fiori d'Alpini roll around his tongue and trickle down his throat. The heavy fragrant syrup warmed his mouth, and reminded him of the little mountain flowers for which it was named. He sighed. It — had been a good meal, an exquisite meal and had justified the exotic liqueur. His musing was interrupted by a disturbance at the front door. The voice of his elderly maidservant was raised in remonstrance. A heavy male voice interrupted her. The commotion moved down the hail and the dining room door was pushed open. 

	"Madonna! Non si puo entrare! The Master is eating!" 

	"Never mind, — Angela. I have time to see these gentlemen. You ..may go." Pinero faced the surly-faced spokesman of the intruders. "You have business with me; yes?" 

	"You bet we have. Decent people have had enough of your damned nonsense." 

	"And so?" 

	The caller did not answer at once. A smaller dapper individual moved out from behind him and faced Pinero. 

-

	"We might as well begin." The chairman of the committee placed a key in the lock-box and opened it. "Wenzell, will you help me pick out today's envelopes?" He was interrupted by a touch on his arm. — "Dr. Baird, you are wanted on the telephone." 

	"Very well. Bring the instrument here." 

	When it was fetched he placed the receiver to his ear. "Hello.... Yes; speaking.... What? .. No, we have beard nothing... Destroyed the machine, you say.... Dead! How?.... No! No statement. None at all.... Call me later...." 

	He slammed the instrument down — and pushed it from him. 

	"What's up? Who's dead now?" 

	Baird held up one hand. "Quiet, gentlemen, please! 

	Pinero was murdered a few moments ago at his home." 

	"Murdered?!" 

	"That isn't all. About the same time vandals broke into his office and smashed his apparatus." 

	No one spoke at first. The committee members glanced around at each other. No one seemed anxious to be the first to comment. 

	Finally one spoke up. "Get it out." 

	"Get what out?" 

	"Pinero's envelope. It's in there too. I've seen it." 

	Baird located it and slowly tore it open. He unfolded the single sheet of paper, and scanned it. 

	"Well? Out with it!" 

	"One thirteen p.m. — today." 

	They took this in silence. 

	Their dynamic calm was broken by a member across the table from Baird reaching for the lock-box. Baud interposed a hand. 

	"What do you want?" 

	"My prediction-it's in there-we're all in there." 

	"Yes, yes. We're all in here. Let's have them." 

	Baird placed both hands over the box. He held the eye of the man opposite him but did not speak. He licked his lips. The corner of his mouth twitched. His hands shook. Still he did not speak. The man opposite relaxed back into his chair. 

	"You're right, of course," he said. 

	"Bring me that waste basket." Baird's voice was low and strained but steady. 

	He accepted it and dumped the litter on the rug. He placed the tin basket on the table before him. He tore half a dozen envelopes across, set a match to them, and dropped them in the basket. Then he started tearing a double handful at a time, and fed the fire steadily. The smoke made him cough, and tears ran out of his smarting eyes. Someone got up and opened a window. When he was through, he pushed the basket away from him, looked down, and spoke. 

	"I'm afraid I've ruined this table top." 

Solution Unsatisfactory

	In 1903 the Wright brothers flew at Kitty Hawk. In December, 1938, in Berlin, Dr. Hahn split the uranium atom. 

	In April, 1943, Dr. Estelle Karst, working under the Federal Emergency Defense Authority, perfected the Karst-Obre technique for producing artificial radioactives. 

	So American foreign policy had to change. 

	Had to. Had to. It is very difficult to tuck a bugle call back into a bugle. Pandora's Box is a one-way proposition. You can turn pig into sausage, but not sausage into pig. Broken eggs stay broken. "All the King's horses and all the King's men can't put Humpty together again." 

	I ought to know — I was one of the King's men. 

	By rights I should not have been. I was not a professional military man when World War II broke out, and when Congress passed the draft law I drew a high number, high enough to keep me out of the army long enough to die of old age. 

	Not that very many died of old age that generation! But I was the newly appointed secretary to a freshman congressman; I had been his campaign manager and my former job had left me. By profession, I was a high-school teacher of economics and sociology — school boards don't like teachers of social subjects actually to deal with social problems — and my contract was not renewed. I jumped at the chance to go to Washington.

	My congressman was named Manning. Yes, the Manning, Colonel Clyde C. Manning, U. S. Army retired — Mr. Commissioner Manning. What you may not know about him is that he was one of the Army's No. 1 experts in chemical warfare before a leaky heart put him on the shelf. I had picked him, with the help of a group of my political associates, to run against the two-bit chiseler who was the incumbent in our district. We needed a strong liberal candidate and Manning was tailor-made for the job. He had served one term in the grand jury, which cut his political eye teeth, and had stayed active in civic matters thereafter. 

	Being a retired army officer was a political advantage in vote-getting among the more conservative and well-to-do citizens, and his record was O.K. for the other side of the fence. I'm not primarily concerned with vote-getting; what I liked about him was that, though he was liberal, he was tough-minded, which most liberals aren't. Most liberals believe that water runs downhill, but, praise God, it'll never reach the bottom. 

	Manning was not like that. He could see a logical necessity and act on it, no matter how unpleasant it might be.

-

	We were in Manning's suite in the House Office Building, taking a little blow from that stormy first session of the Seventy-eighth Congress and trying to catch up on a mountain of correspondence, when the War Department called. Manning answered it himself. 

	I had to overhear, but then I was his secretary. "Yes," he said, "speaking. Very well, put him on. Oh hello, General ... Fine, thanks. Yourself?" Then there was a long silence. Presently, Manning said, "But I can't do that, General, I've got this job to take care of ... What's that? ... Yes, who is to do my committee work and represent my district? ... I think so." He glanced at his wrist watch. "I'll be right over." He put down the phone, turned to me, and said, "Get your hat, John. We are going over to the War Department."

	"So?" I said, complying. 

	"Yes," he said with a worried look, "the Chief of Staff thinks I ought to go back to duty." He set off at a brisk walk, with me hanging back to try to force him not to strain his bum heart. "It's impossible, of course." We grabbed a taxi from the stand in front of the office building and headed for the Department. 

	But it was possible, and Manning agreed to it, after the Chief of Staff presented his case. Manning had to be convinced, for there is no way on earth for anyone, even the President himself, to order a congressman to leave his post, even though he happens to be a member of the military service, too.

	The Chief of Staff had anticipated the political difficulty and had been forehanded enough to have already dug up an opposition congressman with whom to pair Manning's vote for the duration of the emergency. This other congressman, the Honorable Joseph T. Brigham, was a reserve officer who wanted to go to duty himself — or was willing to; I never found out which. Being from the opposite political party, his vote in the House of Representatives could be permanently paired against Manning's and neither party would lose by the arrangement. 

	There was talk of leaving me in Washington to handle the political details of Manning's office, but Manning decided against it, judging that his other secretary could do that, and announced that I must go along as his adjutant. The Chief of Staff demurred, but Manning was in a position to insist, and the Chief had to give in. 

	A chief of staff can get things done in a hurry if he wants to. I was sworn in as a temporary officer before we left the building; before the day was out I was at the bank, signing a note to pay for the sloppy service uniforms the Army had adopted and to buy a dress uniform with a beautiful shiny belt — a dress uniform which, as it turned out, I was never to need.

-

	We drove over into Maryland the next day and Manning took charge of the Federal nuclear research laboratory, known officially by the hush-hush title of War Department Special Defense Project No. 347. I didn't know a lot about physics and nothing about modern atomic physics, aside from the stuff you read in the Sunday supplements. Later, I picked up a smattering, mostly wrong, I suppose, from associating with the heavyweights with whom the laboratory was staffed.

	Colonel Manning had taken an Army p.g. course. At Massachusetts Tech and had received a master of science degree for a brilliant thesis on the mathematical theories of atomic structure. That was why the Army had to have him for this job. But that had been some years before; atomic theory had turned several cart wheels in the meantime; he admitted to me that he had to bone like the very devil to try to catch up to the point where he could begin to understand what his highbrow charges were talking about in their reports.

	I think he overstated the degree of his ignorance; there was certainly no one else in the United States who could have done the job. It required a man who could direct and suggest research in a highly esoteric field, but who saw the problem from the standpoint of urgent military necessity Left to themselves the physicists would have reveled in the intellectual luxury of an unlimited research expense account, but, while they undoubtedly would have made major advances in human knowledge, they might never have developed anything of military usefulness, or the military possibilities of a discovery might be missed for years.

	It's like this: It takes a smart dog to hunt birds, it takes a hunter behind him to keep him from wasting time chasing rabbits. And the hunter needs to know nearly as much as the dog. 

	No derogatory reference to the scientists is intended — by no means! We had all the genius in the field that the United States could produce, men from Chicago, Columbia, Cornell, M. I. T., Cal Tech, Berkeley, every radiation laboratory in the country, as well as a couple of broad — A boys lent to us by the British. And they had every facility that ingenuity could think up and money could build. The five-hundred-ton cyclotron which had originally been intended for the University of California was there, and was already obsolete in the face of the new gadgets these brains had thought up, asked for, and been given. Canada supplied us with all the uranium we asked for — tons of the treacherous stuff — from Great Bear Lake, up near the Yukon, and the fractional-residues technique of separating uranium isotope 235 from the commoner isotope 238 had already been worked out, by the same team from Chicago that had worked up the earlier expensive mass spectograph method. 

	Someone in the United States government had realized the terrific potentialities of uranium 235 quite early and, as far back as the summer of 1940, had rounded up every atomic research man in the country and had sworn them to silence. Atomic power, if ever developed, was planned to be a government monopoly, at least till the war was over. It might turn out to be the most incredibly powerful explosive ever dreamed of, and it might be the source of equally incredible power. In any case, with Hitler talking about secret weapons and shouting hoarse insults at democracies, the government planned to keep any new discoveries very close to the vest. 

	Hitler had lost the advantage of a first crack at the secret of uranium through not taking precautions. Dr. Hahn, the first man to break open the uranium atom, was a German. But one of his laboratory assistants had fled Germany to escape a pogrom. She came to this country, and told us about it.

	We were searching, there in the laboratory in Maryland, for a way to use U-235 in a controlled explosion. We had a vision of a one-ton bomb that would be a whole air raid in itself, a single explosion that would flatten out an entire industrial center. Dr. Ridpath, of Continental Tech, claimed that he could build such a bomb, but that he could not guarantee that it would not explode as soon as it was loaded and as for the force of the explosion — well, he did not believe his own figures; they ran out to too many ciphers.

	The problem was, strangely enough, to find an explosive which would be weak enough to blow up only one county at a time, and stable enough to blow up only on request. If we could devise a really practical rocket fuel at the same time, one capable of driving a war rocket at a thousand miles an hour, or more, then we would be in a position to make most anybody say "uncle" to Uncle Sam. 

	We fiddled around with it all the rest of 1943 and well into 1944. The war in Europe and the troubles in Asia dragged on. After Italy folded up, England was able to release enough ships from her Mediterranean fleet to ease the blockade of the British Isles. With the help of the planes we could now send her regularly and with the additional over-age destroyers we let her have, England hung on somehow, digging in and taking more and more of her essential defense industries underground. Russia shifted her weight from side to side as usual, apparently with the policy of preventing either side from getting a sufficient advantage to bring the war to a successful conclusion. People were beginning to speak of "permanent war." 

-

	I was killing time in the administrative office, trying to improve my typing — a lot of Manning's reports had to be typed by me personally — when the orderly on duty stepped in and announced Dr. Karst. I flipped the interoffice communicator. "Dr. Karst is here, chief. Can you see her?" 

	"Yes," he answered, through his end. I told the orderly to show her in. 

	Estelle Karst was quite a remarkable old girl and, I suppose, the first woman ever to hold a commission in the Corps of Engineers. She was an M.D. as well as an Sc.D. and reminded me of the teacher I had had in fourth grade. I guess that was why I always stood up instinctively when she came into the room — I was afraid she might look at me and sniff. It couldn't have been her rank; we didn't bother much with rank.

	She was dressed in white coveralls and a shop apron and had simply thrown a hooded cape over herself to come through the snow. I said, "Good morning, ma'am," and led her into Manning's office. 

	The Colonel greeted her with the urbanity that had made him such a success with women's clubs, seated her, and offered her a cigarette.

	"I'm glad to see you, Major," he said. "I've been intending to drop around to your shop." 

	I knew what he was getting at; Dr. Karst's work had been primarily physiomedical; he wanted her to change the direction of her research to something more productive in a military sense.

	"Don't call me 'major,' " she said tartly. 

	"Sorry, Doctor —" 

	"I came on business, and must get right back. And I presume you are a busy man, too. Colonel Manning, I need some help." 

	"That's what we are here for." 

	"Good. I've run into some snags in my research. I think that one of the men in Dr. Ridpath's department could help me, but Dr. Ridpath doesn't seem disposed to be cooperative." 

	"So? Well, I hardly like to go over the head of a departmental chief, but tell me about it; perhaps we can arrange it. Whom do you want?" 

	"I need Dr. Obre." 

	"The spectroscopist. Hm-m-m. I can understand Dr. Ridpath's reluctance, Dr. Karst, and I'm disposed to agree with him. After all, the high-explosives research is really our main show around here." 

	She bristled and I thought she was going to make him stay in after school at the very least. "Colonel Manning, do you realize the importance of artificial radioactives to modern medicine?" 

	"Why, I believe I do. Nevertheless, Doctor, our primary mission is to perfect a weapon which will serve as a safeguard to the whole country in time of war —" She sniffed and went into action. "Weapons — fiddlesticks! Isn't there a medical corps in the Army? Isn't it more important to know how to heal men than to know how to blow them to bits? Colonel Manning, you're not a fit man to have charge of this project! You're a ... you're a, a warmonger, that's what you are!" 

	I felt my ears turning red, but Manning never budged. He could have raised Cain with her, confined her to her quarters, maybe even have court-martialed her, but Manning isn't like that. He told me once that every time a man is court-martialed, it is a sure sign that some senior officer hasn't measured up to his job. "I am sorry you feel that way, Doctor," he said mildly, "and I agree that my technical knowledge isn't what it might be. And, believe me, I do wish that healing were all we had to worry about. In any case, I have not refused your request. Let's walk over to your laboratory and see what the problem is. Likely there is some arrangement that can be made which will satisfy everybody. 

	He was already up and getting out his greatcoat. Her set mouth relaxed a trifle and she answered, "Very well. I'm sorry I spoke as I did."

	"Not at all," he replied. "These are worrying times. Come along, John." I trailed after them, stopping in the outer office to get my own coat and to stuff my notebook in a pocket. 

	By the time we had trudged through mushy snow the eighth of a mile to her lab they were talking about gardening! 

	Manning acknowledged the sentry's challenge with a wave of his hand and we entered the building. He started casually on into the inner lab, but Karst stopped him. "Armor first, Colonel."

	We had trouble finding overshoes that would fit over Manning's boots, which he persisted in wearing, despite the new uniform regulations, and he wanted to omit the foot protection, but Karst would not hear of it. She called in a couple of her assistants who made jury-rigged moccasins out of some soft-lead sheeting. The helmets were different from those used in the explosives lab, being fitted with inhalers. "What's this?" inquired Manning. 

	"Radioactive dust guard," she said. "It's absolutely essential." 

	We threaded a lead-lined meander and arrived at the workroom door which she opened by combination. I blinked at the sudden bright illumination and noticed the air was filled with little shiny motes. 

	"Hm-m-m — it is dusty," agreed Manning. "Isn't there some way of controlling that?" His voice sounded muffled from behind the dust mask. 

	"The last stage has to be exposed to air," explained Karst. "The hood gets most of it. We could control it, but it would mean a quite expensive new installation." 

	"No trouble about that. We're not on a budget, you know, It must be very annoying to have to work in a mask like this." 

	"It is," acknowledged Karst. "The kind of gear it would take would enable us to work without body armor, too. That would be a comfort." 

	I suddenly had a picture of the kind of thing these researchers put up with. I am a fair-sized man, yet I found that armor heavy to carry around. Estelle Karst was a small woman, yet she was willing to work maybe fourteen hours, day after day, in an outfit which was about as comfortable as a diving suit. But she had not complained. 

	Not all the heroes are in the headlines. These radiation experts not only ran the chance of cancer and nasty radioaction burns, but the men stood a chance of damaging their germ plasm and then having their wives present them with something horrid in the way of offspring — no chin, for example, and long hairy ears. Nevertheless, they went right ahead and never seemed to get irritated unless something held up their work. 

	Dr. Karst was past the age when she would be likely to be concerned personally about progeny, but the principle applies. 

	I wandered around, looking at the unlikely apparatus she used to get her results, fascinated as always by my failure to recognize much that reminded me of the physics laboratory I had known when I was an undergraduate, and being careful not to touch anything. Karst started explaining to Manning what she was doing and why, but I knew that it was useless for me to try to follow that technical stuff. If Manning wanted notes, he would dictate them. My attention was caught by a big boxlike contraption in one corner of the room. It had a hopperlike gadget on one side and I could hear a sound from it like the whirring of a fan with a background of running water. It intrigued me. I moved back to the neighborhood of Dr. Karst and the Colonel and heard her saying, "The problem amounts to this, Colonel: I am getting a much more highly radioactive end product than I want, but there is considerable variation in the half-life of otherwise equivalent samples. That suggests to me that I am using a mixture of isotopes, but I haven't been able to prove it. And frankly, I do not know enough about that end of the field to be sure of sufficient refinement in my methods. I need Dr. Obre's help on that." 

	I think those were her words, but I may not be doing her justice, not being a physicist. I understood the part about "half-life." All radioactive materials keep right on radiating until they turn into something else, which takes theoretically forever. As a matter of practice their periods, or "lives," are described in terms of how long it takes the original radiation to drop to one-half strength. That time is called a "half-life" and each radioactive isotope of an element has its own specific characteristic half-lifetime.

	One of the staff — I forget which one — told me once that any form of matter can be considered as radioactive in some degree; it's a question of intensity and period, or half-life. 

	"I'll talk to Dr. Ridpath," Manning answered her, "and see what can be arranged. In the meantime you might draw up plans for what you want to reequip your laboratory." 

	"Thank you, Colonel." 

	I could see that Manning was about ready to leave, having pacified her; I was still curious about the big box that gave out the odd noises. 

	"May I ask what that is, Doctor?" 

	"Oh, that? That's an air conditioner." 

	"Odd-looking one. I've never seen one like it." 

	"It's not to condition the air of this room. It's to remove the radioactive dust before the exhaust air goes outdoors. We wash the dust out of the foul air." 

	"Where does the water go?" 

	"Down the drain. Out into the bay eventually, I suppose. 

	I tried to snap my fingers, which was impossible because of the lead mittens. "That accounts for it, Colonel!" 

	"Accounts for what?" 

	"Accounts for those accusing notes we've been getting from the Bureau of Fisheries. This poisonous dust is being carried out into Chesapeake Bay and is killing the fish." 

	Manning turned to Karst. "Do you think that possible, Doctor?" 

	I could see her brows draw together through the window in her helmet. "I hadn't thought about it," she admitted. "I'd have to do some figuring on the possible concentrations before I could give you a definite answer. But it is possible — yes. However," she added anxiously, "it would be simple enough to divert this drain to a sink hole of some sort." 

	"Hm-m-m — yes." He did not say anything for some minutes, simply stood there, looking at the box. 

	Presently he said, "This dust is pretty lethal?" 

	"Quite lethal, Colonel." There was another long silence. 

	At last I gathered he had made up his mind about something for he said decisively, "I am going to see to it that you get Obre's assistance, Doctor —" 

	"Oh, good!" 

	"— but I want you to help me in return. I am very much interested in this research of yours, but I want it carried on with a little broader scope. I want you to investigate for maxima both in period and intensity as well as for minima. I want you to drop the strictly utilitarian approach and make an exhaustive research along lines which we will work out in greater detail later." 

	She started to say something but he cut in ahead of her. "A really thorough program of research should prove more helpful in the long run to your original purpose than a more narrow one. And I shall make it my business to expedite every possible facility for such a research. I think we may turn up a number of interesting things." 

	He left immediately, giving her no time to discuss it. He did not seem to want to talk on the way back and I held my peace. I think he had already gotten a glimmering of the bold and drastic strategy this was to lead to, but even Manning could not have thought out that early the inescapable consequences of a few dead fish — otherwise he would never have ordered the research.

	No, I don't really believe that. He would have gone right ahead, knowing that if he did not do it, someone else would. He would have accepted the responsibility while bitterly aware of its weight. 

-

	1944 wore along with no great excitement on the surface. Karst got her new laboratory equipment and so much additional help that her department rapidly became the largest on the grounds. The explosives research was suspended after a conference between Manning and Ridpath, of which I heard only the end, but the meat of it was that there existed not even a remote possibility at that time of utilizing U235 as an explosive. As a source of power, yes, sometime in the distant future when there had been more opportunity to deal with the extremely ticklish problem of controlling the nuclear reaction. Even then it seemed likely that it would riot be a source of power in prime movers such as rocket motors or mobiles, but would be used in vast power plants at least as large as the Boulder Dam installation. 

	After that Ridpath became a sort of co-chairman of Karst's department and the equipment formerly used by the explosives department was adapted or replaced to carry on research on the deadly artificial radioactives. Manning arranged a division of labor and Karst stuck to her original problem of developing techniques for tailor-making radioactives. I think she was perfectly happy, sticking with a one-track mind to the problem at hand. I don't know to this day whether or not Manning and Ridpath ever saw fit to discuss with her what they intended to do. 

	As a matter of fact, I was too busy myself to think much about it. The general elections were coming up and I was determined that Manning should have a constituency to return to, when the emergency was over. He was not much interested, but agreed to let his name be filed as a candidate for re-election. I was trying to work up a campaign by remote control and cursing because I could not be in the field to deal with the thousand and one emergencies as they arose. 

	I did the next best thing and had a private line installed to permit the campaign chairman to reach me easily. I don't think I violated the Hatch Act, but I guess I stretched it a little. Anyhow, it turned out all right; Manning was elected as were several other members of the citizen-military that year. An attempt was made to smear him by claiming that he was taking two salaries for one job, but we squelched that with a pamphlet entitled "For Shame!" which explained that he got one salary for two jobs. That's the Federal law in such cases and people are entitled to know it.

-

	It was just before Christmas that Manning first admitted to me how much the implications of the Karst-Obre process were preying on his mind. He called me into his office over some inconsequential matter, then did not let me go. I saw that he wanted to taik. 

	"How much of the K-O dust do we now have on hand?" he asked suddenly. 

	"Just short of ten thousand units," I replied. "I can look up the exact figures in half a moment." A unit would take care of a thousand men, at normal dispersion. He knew the figure as well as I did, and I knew he was stalling. 

	We had shifted almost imperceptibly from research to manufacture, entirely on Manning's initiative and authority. Manning had never made a specific report to the Department about it, unless he had done so orally to the Chief of Staff.

	"Never mind," he answered to my suggestion, then added, "Did you see those horses?" 

	"Yes," I said briefly. 

	I did not want to talk about it. I like horses. We had requisitioned six broken-down old nags, ready for the bone yard, and had used them experimentally. W knew now what the dust would do. After they had died any part of their carcasses would register on a photographic plate and tissue from the pieces of their lungs and from the bronchia glowed with a light of its own. Manning stood at the window, staring out at the dreary Maryland winter for a minute or two before replying, "John, I wish that radioactivity had never been discovered. Do you realize what that devilish stuff amounts to?" 

	"Well," I said, "it's a weapon, about like poison gas — maybe more efficient." 

	"Rats!" he said, and for a moment I thought he was annoyed with me personally. "That's about like comparing a sixteen-inch gun with a bow and arrow We've got here the first weapon the world has ever seen against which there is no defense, none whatsoever. It's death itself, C.O.D. 

	"Have you seen Ridpath's report?" he went on. I had not. Ridpath had taken to delivering his reports by hand to Manning personally. 

	"Well," he said, "ever since we started production I've had all the talent we could spare working on the problem of a defense against the dust. Ridpath tells me and I agree with him that there is no means whatsoever to combat the stuff, once it's used." 

	"How about armor," I asked, "and protective clothing?" 

	"Sure, sure," he agreed irritatedly, "provided you never take it off to eat, or to drink or for any purpose whatever, until the radioaction has ceased, or you are out of the danger zone. That is all right for laboratory work; I'm talking about war." 

	I considered the matter. "I still don't see what you are fretting about, Colonel. If the stuff is as good as you say it is, you've done just exactly what you set out to do — develop a weapon which would give the United States protection against aggression." 

	He swung around. "John, there are times when I think you are downright stupid!" 

	I said nothing. I knew him and I knew how to discount his moods. The fact that he permitted me to see his feelings is the finest compliment I have ever had. "Look at it this way," he went on more patiently; "this dust, as a weapon, is not just simply sufficient to safeguard the United States, it amounts to a loaded gun held at the head of every man, woman, and child on the globe!" 

	"Well," I answered, "what of that? It's our secret, and we've got the upper hand. The United States can put a stop to this war, and any other war. We can declare a Pax Americana, and enforce it." 

	"Hm-m-m — I wish it were that easy. But it won't remain our secret; you can count on that. It doesn't matter how successfully we guard it; all that anyone needs is the hint given by the dust itself and then it is just a matter of time until some other nation develops a technique to produce it. You can't stop brains from working, John; the reinvention of the method is a mathematical certainty, once they know what it is they are looking for. And uranium is a common enough substance, widely distributed over the globe — don't forget that! 

	"It's like this: Once the secret is out — and it will be out if we ever use the stuff! — the whole world will be comparable to a room full of men, each armed with a loaded .45. They can't get out of the room and each one is dependent on the good will of every other one to stay alive. All offense and no defense. See what I mean?" 

	I thought about it, but I still didn't guess at the difficulties. It seemed to me that a peace enforced by us was the only way out, with precautions taken to see that we controlled the sources of uranium. I had the usual American subconscious conviction that our country would never use power in sheer aggression Later, I thought about the Mexican War and the Spanish-American War and some of the things we did in Central America, and I was not so sure — It was a couple of weeks later, shortly after inauguration day, that Manning told me to get the Chief of Staff's office on the telephone. I heard only the tail end of the conversation. "No, General, I won't," Manning was saying. "I won't discuss it with you, or the Secretary, either. This is a matter the Commander in Chief is going to have to decide in the long run. If he turns down, it is imperative that no one else ever knows about it. That's my considered opinion. ... What that? ... I took this job under the condition that I was to have a free hand. You've got to give me a little lee way this time. ... Don't go brass hat on me. I knew you when you were a plebe ... O.K., O.K., sorry... If the Secretary of War won't listen to reason, you tell him I'll be in my seat in the House of Representatives tomorrow, and that I'll get the favor I want from the majority leader ... All right. Good-bye." 

	Washington rang up again about an hour later. It was the Secretary of War. This time Manning listened more than he talked. Toward the end, he said, "All I want is thirty minutes alone with the President. If nothing comes of it, no harm has been done. If I convince him, then you will know all about it ... No, Sir. I did not mean that you would avoid responsibility. I intended to be helpful ... Fine! Thank you, Mr. Secretary."

	The White House rang up later in the day and set time. 

-

	We drove down to the District the next day through a nasty cold rain that threatened to turn to sleet. The usual congestion in Washington was made worse b the weather; it very nearly caused us to be late in arriving. I could hear Manning swearing under his breath all the way down Rhode Island Avenue. But we were dropped at the west wing entrance to the White House with two minutes to spare. Manning was ushered into the Oval Office almost at once and I was left cooling my heels and trying to get comfortable in civilian clothes. After so many months of uniform they itched in the wrong places.

	The thirty minutes went by. 

	The President's reception secretary went in, and came out very promptly indeed. He stepped on out into the outer reception room and I heard something that began with, "I'm sorry, Senator, but —" He came back in, made a penciled notation, and passed it out to an usher. 

	Two more hours went by. 

	Manning appeared at the door at last and the secretary looked relieved. But he did not come out, saying instead, "Come in, John. The President wants to take a look at you." 

	I fell over my feet getting up. 

	Manning said, "Mr. President, this is Captain DeFries." The President nodded, and I bowed, unable to say anything. He was standing on the hearth rug, his fine head turned toward us, and looking just like his pictures — but it seemed strange for the President of the United States not to be a tall man. 

	I had never seen him before, though, of course, I knew something of his record the two years he had been in the Senate and while he was Mayor before that. 

	The President said, "Sit down, DeFries. Care to smoke?" Then to Manning. "You think he can do it?" 

	"I think he'll have to. It's Hobson's choice." 

	"And you are sure of him?" 

	"He was my campaign manager." 

	"I see." 

	The President said nothing more for a while and God knows I didn't! — though I was bursting to know what they were talking about. He commenced again with, 

	"Colonel Manning, I intend to follow the procedure you have suggested, with the changes we discussed But I will be down tomorrow to see for myself that the dust will do what you say it will. Can you prepare demonstration?" 

	"Yes, Mr. President." 

	"Very well, we will use Captain DeFries unless think of a better procedure." I thought for a moment that they planned to use me for a guinea pig! But he turned to me and continued, "Captain, I expect to send you to England as my representative." 

	I gulped. "Yes, Mr. President." And that is ever word I had to say in calling on the President of the United States. 

-

	After that, Manning had to tell me a lot of things he had on his mind. I am going to try to relate them as carefully as possible, even at the risk of being dull an obvious and of repeating things that are common knowledge. 

	We had a weapon that could not be stopped. Any type of K-O dust scattered over an area rendered that area uninhabitable for a length of time that depended on the half-life of the radioactivity.

	Period. Full stop. 

	Once an area was dusted there was nothing that could be done about it until the radioactivity had fallen off to the point where it was no longer harmful. The dust could not be cleaned out; it was everywhere. There was no possible way to counteract it — burn it, combine it chemically; the radioactive isotope was still there, still radioactive, still deadly. Once used on a stretch of land, for a predetermined length of time that piece of earth would not tolerate life. 

	It was extremely simple to use. No complicate bomb-sights were needed, no care need be taken to hit "military objectives." Take it aloft in any sort of aircraft, attain a position more or less over the area you wish to sterilize, and drop the stuff. Those on the ground in the contaminated area are dead men, dead in an hour, a day, a week, a month, depending on the degree of the infection — but dead.

	Manning told me that he had once seriously considered, in the middle of the night, recommending that every single person, including himself, who knew the Karst-Obre technique be put to death, in the interests of all civilization. But he had realized the next day that it had been sheer funk; the technique was certain in time to be rediscovered by someone else. 

	Furthermore, it would not do to wait, to refrain from using the grisly power, until someone else perfected it and used it. The only possible chance to keep the world from being turned into one huge morgue was for us to use the power first and drastically — get the upper hand and keep it.

	We were not at war, legally, yet we had been in the war up to our necks with our weight on the side of democracy since 1940. Manning had proposed to the President that we turn a supply of the dust over to Great Britain, under conditions we specified, and enable them thereby to force a peace. But the terms of the peace would be dictated by the United States — for we were not turning over the secret. 

	After that, the Pax Americana. 

	The United States was having power thrust on it, willy-nilly. We had to accept it and enforce a worldwide peace, ruthlessly and drastically, or it would be seized by some other nation. There could not be coequals in the possession of this weapon. The factor of time predominated. 

	I was selected to handle the details in England because Manning insisted, and the President agreed with him, that every person technically acquainted with the Karst-Obre process should remain on the laboratory reservation in what amounted to protective custody — imprisonment. That included Manning himself. 

	I could go because I did not have the secret — I could not even have acquired it without years of schooling and what I did not know I could not tell, even under well, drugs. We were determined to keep the secret as long as we could to consolidate the Pax; we did not distrust our English cousins, but they were British with a first loyalty to the British Empire. No need to tempt them. 

	I was picked because I understood the background if not the science, and because Manning trusted me. I don't know why the President trusted me, too, but. then my job was not complicated. 

-

	We took off from the new field outside Baltimore on a cold, raw afternoon which matched my own feeling I had an all-gone feeling in my stomach, a runny nose and, buttoned inside my clothes, papers appointing me a special agent of the President of the Unite States. They were odd papers, papers without precedent; they did not simply give me the usual diplomatic immunity; they made my person very nearly as sacred as that of the President himself. 

	At Nova Scotia we touched ground to refuel, the F.B.I. men left us, we took off again, and the Canadian transfighters took their stations around us. All the dust we were sending was in my plane; if the President's representative were shot down, the dust would go to the bottom with him.

	No need to tell of the crossing. I was airsick and miserable, in spite of the steadiness of the new six-engine jobs. I felt like a hangman on the way to an execution and wished to God that I were a boy again, with nothing more momentous than a debate contest, or a track meet, to worry me. 

	There was some fighting around us as we neared Scotland, I know, but I could not see it, the cabin being shuttered. Our pilot-captain ignored it and brought his ship down on a totally dark field, using a beam, I suppose, though I did not know nor care. I would have welcomed a crash. Then the lights outside went on and I saw that we had come to rest in an underground hangar.

	I stayed in the ship. The Commandant came to see me to come to his quarters as his guest. I shook my head. "I stay here," I said. "Orders. You are to treat this ship as United States soil, you know," 

	He seemed miffed, but compromised by having dinner served for both of us in my ship. 

	There was a really embarrassing situation the next day. I was commanded to appear for a Royal audience. But I had my instructions and I stuck to them. I was sitting on that cargo of dust until the President told me what to do with it. Late in the day I was called on by a member of Parliament — nobody admitted out loud that it was the Prime Minister — and a Mr. Windsor. The M.P. did most of the talking and I answered his questions. My other guest said very little and spoke slowly with some difficulty. But I got a very favorable impression of him. He seemed to be a man who was carrying a load beyond human strength and carrying it heroically. 

-

	There followed the longest period in my life. It was actually only a little longer than a week, but every minute of it had that split-second intensity of imminent disaster that comes just before a car crash. The President was using the time to try to avert the need to use the dust. He had two face-to-face television conferences with the new Fuehrer. The President spoke German fluently, which should have helped. He spoke three times to the warring peoples themselves, but it is doubtful if very many on the Continent were able to listen, the police regulations there being what they were. 

	The Ambassador from the Reich was given a special demonstration of the effect of the dust. He was flown out over a deserted stretch of Western prairie and allowed to see what a single dusting would do to a herd of steers. It should have impressed him and I thought that it did — nobody could ignore a visual demonstration! — but what report he made to his leader we never knew.

	The British Isles were visited repeatedly during the wait by bombing attacks as heavy as any of the war was safe enough but I heard about them, and I could see the effect on the morale of the officers with who I associated. Not that it frightened them — it made them coldly angry. The raids were not directed mainly at dockyards or factories, but were ruthless destruction of anything, particularly villages. 

	"I don't see what you chaps are waiting for," a flight commander complained to me. "What the Jerri need is a dose of their own shrecklichkeit, a lesson their own Aryan culture." 

	I shook my head. "We'll have to do it our own way He dropped the matter, but I knew how he and his brother officers felt. They had a standing toast, as sacred as the toast to the King: "Remember Coventry! Our President had stipulated that the R. A. F. was not to bomb during the period of negotiation, but the bombers were busy nevertheless. The continent was showered, night after night, with bales of leaflets, prepared by our own propaganda agents. The first of them called on the people of the Reich to stop a useless war and promised that the terms of peace would not be vindictive. The second rain of pamphlets showed photographs of that herd of steers. The third was a simple direct warning to get out of cities and to stay out. As Manning put it, we were calling "Halt!" three times before firing. I do not think that he or the President expected it to work, but we were morally obligated to try. 

	The Britishers had installed for me a television, of the Simonds-Yarley nonintercept type, the sort where the receiver must "trigger" the transmitter in order for the transmission to take place at all. It made assurance of privacy in diplomatic communication for the first time in history, and was a real help in the crisis. I had brought along my own technician, one of the F. B. I.'s new corps of specialists, to handle the scrambler and the trigger. 

-

	He called to me one afternoon. "Washington signaling. 

	I climbed tiredly out of the cabin and down to the booth on the hangar floor, wondering if it were another false alarm. 

	It was the President. His lips were white. "Carry out your basic instructions, Mr. DeFries." 

	"Yes, Mr. President!" 

-

	The details had been worked out in advance and, once I had accepted a receipt and token payment from the Commandant for the dust, my duties were finished. But, at our instance, the British had invited military observers from every independent nation and from the several provisional governments of occupied nations. The United States Ambassador designated me as one at the request of Manning. 

	Our task group was thirteen bombers. One such bomber could have carried all the dust needed, but it was split up to insure most of it, at least, reaching its destination. I had fetched forty percent more dust than Ridpath calculated would be needed for the mission and my last job was to see to it that every canister actually went on board a plane of the flight. The extremely small weight of dust used was emphasized to each of the military observers. 

	We took off just at dark, climbed to twenty-five thousand feet, refueled in the air, and climbed again. Our escort was waiting for us, having refueled thirty minutes before us. The flight split into thirteen groups, and cut the thin air for middle Europe. The bombers we rode had been stripped and hiked up to permit the utmost maximum of speed and altitude. 

	Elsewhere in England, other flights had taken off shortly before us to act as a diversion. Their destinations were every part of Germany; it was the intention to create such confusion in the air above the Reich that our few planes actually engaged in the serious work might well escape attention entirely, flying so high in the stratosphere.

	The thirteen dust carriers approached Berlin from different directions, planning to cross Berlin as if following the spokes of a wheel. The night was appreciably clear and we had a low moon to help us. Berlin: not a hard city to locate, since it has the largest square mile area of any modern city and is located on a broad flat alluvial plain. I could make out the River Spree as we approached it, and the Havel. The city was blacked out, but a city makes a different sort of black from open country. Parachute flares hung over the city in many places, showing that the R. A. F. had been busy before we got there and the A. A. batteries on the ground helped to pick out the city. 

	There was fighting below us, but not within fifteen thousand feet of our altitude as nearly as I could judge The pilot reported to the captain, "On line of bearing!" The chap working the absolute altimeter steadily fed his data into the fuse pots of the canister. The canisters were equipped with a light charge of black powder, sufficient to explode them and scatter the dust at a time after release predetermined by the fuse pot setting. The method used was no more than an efficient expedient. The dust would have been almost as effective had it simply been dumped out in paper bag although not as well distributed. 

	The Captain hung over the navigator's board, slight frown on his thin sallow face. "Ready one!" reported the bomber. 

	"Release!" 

	"Ready two!" 

	The Captain studied his wristwatch. "Release!" "Ready three!" 

	"Release!" 

	When the last of our ten little packages was out of the ship we turned tail and ran for home. 

-

	No arrangements had been made for me to get home; nobody had thought about it. But it was the one thing I wanted to do. I did not feel badly; I did not feel much of anything. I felt like a man who has at last screwed up his courage and undergone a serious operation; it's over now, he is still numb from shock but his mind is relaxed. But I wanted to go home. 

	The British Commandant was quite decent about it; he serviced and manned my ship at once and gave me an escort for the offshore war zone. It was an expensive way to send one man home, but who cared? We had just expended some millions of lives in a desperate attempt to end the war; what was a money expense? He gave the necessary orders absentmindedly. 

	I took a double dose of nembutal and woke up in Canada. I tried to get some news while the plane was being serviced, but there was not much to be had. The government of the Reich had issued one official news bulletin shortly after the raid, sneering at the much vaunted "secret weapon" of the British and stating that a major air attack had been made on Berlin and several other cities, but that the raiders had been driven off with only minor damage. The current Lord Haw-Haw started one of his sarcastic speeches but was unable to continue it. The announcer said that he had been seized with a heart attack, and substituted some recordings of patriotic music. The station cut off in the middle of the "Horst Wessel" song. After that there was silence. 

	I managed to promote an Army car and a driver at the Baltimore field which made short work of the Annapolis speedway. We almost overran the turnoff to the laboratory. 

	Manning was in his office. He looked up as I came in, said, "Hello, John," in a dispirited voice, and dropped his eyes again to the blotter pad. He went back drawing doodles.

	I looked him over and realized for the first time that the chief was an old man. His face was gray and flabby, deep furrows framed his mouth in a triangle. His clothes did not fit. 

	I went up to him and put a hand on his shoulder "Don't take it so hard, chief. It's not your fault. We gave them all the warning in the world." 

	He looked up again. "Estelle Karst suicided this morning. Anybody could have anticipated it, but nobody did. And somehow I felt harder hit by her death than by the death of all those strangers in Berlin. "How did she it?" I asked. 

	"Dust. She went into the canning room, and took off her armor." 

	I could picture her — head held high, eyes snapping and that set look on her mouth which she got when people did something she disapproved of. One little old woman whose lifetime work had been turn against her. 

	"I wish," Manning added slowly, "that I could explain to her why we had to do it." 

	We buried her in a lead-lined coffin, then Manning and I went on to Washington. 

-

	While we were there, we saw the motion picture that had been made of the death of Berlin. You have not seen them; they never were made public, but they were of great use in convincing the other nations of the world that peace was a good idea. I saw them when Congress did, being allowed in because I was Manning's assistant. 

	They had been made by a pair of R. A. F. pilots, who had dodged the Luftwaffe to get them. The first shot showed some of the main streets the morning after the raid. There was not much to see that would show up on telephoto shots, just busy and crowded streets, but if you looked closely you could see that there had been an excessive number of automobile accidents. 

	The second day showed the attempt to evacuate. The inner squares of the city were practically deserted save for bodies and wrecked cars, but the streets leading out of town were boiling with people, mostly on foot, for the trams were out of service. The pitiful creatures were fleeing, not knowing that death was already lodged inside them. The plane swooped down at one point and the cinematographer had his telephoto lens pointed directly into the face of a young woman for several seconds. She stared back at it with a look too woebegone to forget, then stumbled and fell.

	She may have been trampled. I hope so. One of those six horses had looked like that when the stuff was beginning to hit his vitals.

	The last sequence showed Berlin and the roads around it a week after the raid. The city was dead; there was not a man, a woman, a child — nor cats, nor dogs, not even a pigeon. Bodies were all around, but they were safe from rats. There were no rats. 

	The roads around Berlin were quiet now. Scattered carelessly on shoulders and in ditches, and to a lesser extent on the pavement itself, like coal shaken off a train, were the quiet heaps that had been the citizens of the capital of the Reich. There is no use in talking about it. 

	But, so far as I am concerned, I left what soul I had in that projection room and I have not had one since. The two pilots who made the pictures eventually died — systemic, cumulative infection, dust in the air over Berlin. With precautions it need not have happened, but the English did not believe, as yet, that our extreme precautions were necessary. 

-

	The Reich took about a week to fold up. It might have taken longer if the new Fuehrer had not gone to Berlin the day after the raid to "prove" that the British boasts had been hollow. There is no need to recount the provisional governments that Germany had in the following several months; the only one we are concerned with is the so-called restored monarchy which used a cousin of the old Kaiser as a symbol, the one that sued for peace.

	Then the trouble started. 

	When the Prime Minister announced the terms the private agreement he had had with our President he was met with a silence that was broken only in cries of "Shame! Shame! Resign!" I suppose it was inevitable; the Commons reflected the spirit of a people who had been unmercifully punished for four years They were in a mood to enforce a peace that would have made the Versailles Treaty look like the Beatitudes. 

	The vote of no confidence left the Prime Minister no choice. Forty-eight hours later the King made a speech from the throne that violated all constitutional precedent, for it had not been written by a Prime Minister. In this greatest crisis in his reign, his voice was clear and unlabored; it sold the idea to England and a national coalition government was formed. 

	I don't know whether we would have dusted London to enforce our terms or not; Manning thinks we would have done so. I suppose it depended on the character of the President of the United States, and there is no way of knowing about that since we did not have to do it.

	The United States, and in particular the President the United States, was confronted by two inescapable problems. First, we had to consolidate our position once, use our temporary advantage of an overwhelmingly powerful weapon to insure that such a weapon would not be turned on us. Second, some means had to be worked out to stabilize American foreign policy so that it could handle the tremendous power we suddenly had thrust upon us. 

	The second was by far the most difficult and serious. If we were to establish a reasonably permanent peace — say a century or so — through a monopoly on a weapon so powerful that no one dare fight us, it was imperative that the policy under which we acted be more lasting than passing political administrations. But more of that later — The first problem had to be attended to at once — time was the heart of it. The emergency lay in the very simplicity of the weapon. It required nothing but aircraft to scatter it and the dust itself, which was easily and quickly made by anyone possessing the secret of the Karst-Obre process and having access to a small supply of uranium-bearing ore. 

	But the Karst-Obre process was simple and might be independently developed at any time. Manning reported to the President that it was Ridpath's opinion, concurred in by Manning, that the staff of any modern radiation laboratory should be able to work out an equivalent technique in six weeks, working from the hint given by the events in Berlin alone, and should then be able to produce enough dust to cause major destruction in another six weeks. 

	Ninety days — ninety days provided they started from scratch and were not already halfway to their goal. Less than ninety days — perhaps no time at all — By this time Manning was an unofficial member of the Cabinet; "Secretary of Dust," the President called him in one of his rare jovial moods. As for me, well, I attended Cabinet meetings, too. As the only layman who had seen the whole show from beginning to end, the President wanted me there. 

	I am an ordinary sort of man who, by a concatenation of improbabilities, found himself shoved into the councils of the rulers. But I found that the rulers were ordinary men, too, and frequently as bewildered as I was. 

	But Manning was no ordinary man. In him ordinary hard sense had been raised to the level of genius. Oh, yes, I know that it is popular to blame everything on him and to call him everything from traitor to mad dog, but I still think he was both wise and benevolent, I don't care how many second-guessing historians don't agree with me. 

	"I propose," said Manning, "that we begin by immobilizing all aircraft throughout the world." 

	The Secretary of Commerce raised his brows. "Aren't you," he said, "being a little fantastic, Colonel Manning?" 

	"No, I'm not," answered Manning shortly. "I' being realistic. The key to this problem is aircraft Without aircraft the dust is an inefficient weapon. The only way I see to gain time enough to deal with the whole problem is to ground all aircraft and put them out of operation. All aircraft, that is, not actually the service of the United States Army. After that we can deal with complete world disarmament and permanent methods of control." 

	"Really now," replied the Secretary, "you are not proposing that commercial airlines be put out of operation. They are an essential part of world economy. It would be an intolerable nuisance." 

	"Getting killed is an intolerable nuisance, too." Manning answered stubbornly. "I do propose just that. All aircraft. All." 

	The President had been listening without comment to the discussion. He now cut in. "How about aircraft on which some groups depend to stay alive, Colonel such as the Alaskan lines?" 

	"If there are such, they must be operated by American Army pilots and crews. No exceptions." 

	The Secretary of Commerce looked startled. "And to infer from that last remark that you intended the prohibition to apply to the United States as well other nations?" 

	"Naturally." 

	"But that's impossible. It's unconstitutional. It violates civil rights." 

	"Killing a man violates his civil rights, too," Manning answered stubbornly. 

	"You can't do it. Any Federal Court in the country would enjoin you in five minutes." 

	"It seems to me," said Manning slowly, "that Andy Jackson gave us a good precedent for that one when he told John Marshall to go fly a kite." He looked slowly around the table at faces that ranged from undecided to antagonistic. "The issue is sharp, gentlemen, and we might as well drag it out in the open. We can be dead men, with everything in due order, constitutional, and technically correct; or we can do what has to be done, stay alive, and try to straighten out the legal aspects later." He shut up and waited. 

	The Secretary of Labor picked it up. "I don't think the Colonel has any corner on realism. I think I see the problem, too, and I admit it is a serious one. The dust must never be used again. Had I known about it soon enough, it would never have been used on Berlin. And I agree that some sort of worldwide control is necessary. But where I differ with the Colonel is in the method. What he proposes is a military dictatorship imposed by force on the whole world. Admit it, Colonel. Isn't that what you are proposing?" 

	Manning did not dodge it. "That is what I am proposing. 

	"Thanks. Now we know where we stand. I, for one, do not regard democratic measures and constitutional procedure as of so little importance that I am willing to jettison them any time it becomes convenient. To me, democracy is more than a matter of expediency, it is a faith. Either it works, or I go under with it." 

	"What do you propose?" asked the President. 

	"I propose that we treat this as an opportunity to create a worldwide democratic commonwealth! Let us use our present dominant position to issue a call to all nations to send representatives to a conference to form a world constitution." 

	"League of Nations," I heard someone mutter. 

	"No!" he answered the side remark. "Not a League of Nations. The old League was helpless because it had no real existence, no power. It was not implemented to enforce its decisions; it was just a debating society, a sham. This would be different for we would turn over the dust to it!" 

	Nobody spoke for some minutes. You could see them turning it over in their minds, doubtful, partially approving, intrigued but dubious. 

	"I'd like to answer that," said Manning. 

	"Go ahead," said the President. 

	"I will. I'm going to have to use some pretty plain language and I hope that Secretary Lamer will do me the honor of believing that I speak so from sincerity and deep concern and not from personal pique. 

	"I think a world democracy would be a very fine thing and I ask that you believe me when I say I would willingly lay down my life to accomplish it. I also think it would be a very fine thing for the lion to lay down with the lamb, but I am reasonably certain that only the lion would get up. If we try to form an actual world democracy, we'll be the lamb in the setup. "

	"There are a lot of good, kindly people who are internationalists these days. Nine out of ten of them are soft in the head and the tenth is ignorant. If we set up a worldwide democracy, what will the electorate be? Take a look at the facts: Four hundred million Chinese with no more concept of voting and citizen responsibility than a flea; three hundred million Hindus who aren't much better indoctrinated; God knows how many in the Eurasian Union who believe in God knows what; the entire continent of Africa only semi-civilized eighty million Japanese who really believe that thy are Heaven-ordained to rule; our Spanish-American friends who might trail along with us and might not but who don't understand the Bill of Rights the way we think of it; a quarter of a billion people of two dozen different nationalities in Europe, all with revenge and black hatred in their hearts. 

	"No, it won't wash. It's preposterous to talk about world democracy for many years to come. If you turn the secret of the dust over to such a body, you will arming the whole world to commit suicide." 

	Lamer answered at once. "I could resent some of your remarks, but I won't. To put it bluntly, I consider the source. The trouble with you, Colonel Manning, is that you are a professional soldier and have no faith in people. Soldiers may be necessary, but the worst of them are martinets and the best are merely paternalistic." There was quite a lot more of the same. 

	Manning stood it until his turn came again. "Maybe I am all those things, but you haven't met my argument. What are you going to do about the hundreds of millions of people who have no experience in, nor love for, democracy? Now, perhaps, I don't have the same concept of democracy as yourself, but I do know this: 

	Out West there are a couple of hundred thousand people who sent me to Congress; I am not going to stand quietly by and let a course be followed which I think will result in their deaths or utter ruin. 

	"Here is the probable future, as I see it, potential in the smashing of the atom and the development of lethal artificial radioactives. Some power makes a supply of the dust. They'll hit us first to try to knock us out and give them a free hand. New York and Washington overnight, then all of our industrial areas while we are still politically and economically disorganized. But our army would not be in those cities; we would have planes and a supply of dust somewhere where the first dusting wouldn't touch them. Our boys would bravely and righteously proceed to poison their big cities. Back and forth it would go until the organization of each country had broken down so completely that they were no longer able to maintain a sufficiently high level of industrialization to service planes and manufacture dust. That presupposes starvation and plague in the process. You can fill in the details. 

	"The other nations would get in the game. It would be silly and suicidal, of course, but it doesn't take brains to take a hand in this. All it takes is a very small group, hungry for power, a few airplanes and a supply of dust. It's a vicious circle that cannot possibly be stopped until the entire planet has dropped to a level economy too low to support the techniques necessary to maintain it. My best guess is that such a point would be reached when approximately three-quarters of the world's population were dead of dust, disease, or hunger, and culture reduced to the peasant-and-village type.

	"Where is your Constitution and your Bill of Rights if you let that happen?" 

	I've shortened it down, but that was the gist of it. I can't hope to record every word of an argument that went on for days. 

	The Secretary of the Navy took a crack at him next. "Aren't you getting a bit hysterical, Colonel? After all the world has seen a lot of weapons which were going to make war an impossibility too horrible to contemplate. Poison gas, and tanks, and airplanes — even firearms, if I remember my history." 

	Manning smiled wryly. "You've made a point, Mr. Secretary. 'And when the wolf really came, the little boy shouted in vain.' I imagine the Chamber of Commerce in Pompeii presented the same reasonable argument to any early vulcanologist so timid as to fear Vesuvius. I'll try to justify my fears. The dust differs from every earlier weapon in its deadliness and ease of use, but most importantly in that we have developed no defense against it. For a number of fairly technical reasons, I don't think we ever will, at least not this century." 

	"Why not?" 

	"Because there is no way to counteract radioactivity short of putting a lead shield between yourself and it, an airtight lead shield. People might survive by living in sealed underground cities, but our characteristic American culture could not be maintained." 

	"Colonel Manning," suggested the Secretary of State, "I think you have overlooked the obvious alternative." 

	"Have I?" 

	"Yes—to keep the dust as our own secret, go out own way, and let the rest of the world look out for itself. That is the only program that fits our traditions." The Secretary of State was really a fine old gentleman, and not stupid, but he was slow to assimilate new ideas.

	"Mr. Secretary," said Manning respectfully, "I wish we could afford to mind our own business. I do wish we could. But it is the best opinion of all the experts that we can't maintain control of this secret except by rigid policing. The Germans were close on our heels in nuclear research; it was sheer luck that we got there first. I ask you to imagine Germany a year hence — with a supply of dust." 

	The Secretary did not answer, but I saw his lips form the word Berlin. 

	They came around. The President had deliberately let Manning bear the brunt of the argument, conserving his own stock of goodwill to coax the obdurate. He decided against putting it up to Congress; the dusters would have been overhead before each senator had finished his say. What he intended to do might be unconstitutional, but if he failed to act there might not be any Constitution shortly. There was precedent — the Emancipation Proclamation, the Monroe Doctrine, the Louisiana Purchase, suspension of habeas corpus in the War between the States, the Destroyer Deal. 

	On February 22nd the President declared a state of full emergency internally and sent his Peace Proclamation to the head of every sovereign state. Divested of its diplomatic surplusage, it said: The United States is prepared to defeat any power, or combination of powers, in jig time. Accordingly, we are outlawing war and are calling on every nation to disarm completely at once. In other words, "Throw down your guns, boys; we've got the drop on you!" 

	A supplement set forth the procedure: All aircraft capable of flying the Atlantic were to be delivered in one week's time to a field, or rather a great stretch of prairie, just west of Fort Riley, Kansas. For lesser aircraft, a spot near Shanghai and a rendezvous in Wales were designated. Memoranda would be issued lat with respect to other war equipment. Uranium and i ores were not mentioned; that would come later. 

	No excuses. Failure to disarm would be construe as an act of war against the United States. 

-

	There were no cases of apoplexy in the Senate; well not, I don't know. 

	There were only three powers to be seriously worried about, England, Japan, and the Eurasian Union. 

	England had been forewarned, we had pulled her out of a war she was losing, and she — or rather her men in power — knew accurately what we could and would do.

	Japan was another matter. They had not seen Berlin and they did not really believe it. Besides, they had been telling each other for so many years that they were unbeatable, they believed it. It does not do to get too tough with a Japanese too quickly, for they will die rather than lose face. The negotiations were conducted very quietly indeed, but our fleet was halfway from Pearl Harbor to Kobe, loaded with enough dust to sterilize their six biggest cities, before they were concluded. Do you know what did it? This never hit the newspapers but it was the wording of the pamphlets we proposed to scatter before dusting. 

	The Emperor was pleased to declare a New Order Peace. The official version, built up for home consumption, made the whole matter one of collaboration between two great and friendly powers, with Japan taking the initiative. 

	The Eurasian Union was a puzzle. After Stalin's unexpected death in 1941, no western nation knew very much about what went on in there. Our own diplomatic relations had atrophied through failure to re place men called home nearly four years before. Everybody knew, of course, that the new group power called themselves Fifth Internationalists, but what that meant, aside from ceasing to display pictures of Lenin and Stalin, nobody knew.

	But they agreed to our terms and offered to cooperate in every way. They pointed out that the Union had never been warlike and had kept out of the recent world struggle. It was fitting that the two remaining great powers should use their greatness to insure a lasting peace. 

	I was delighted; I had been worried about the E. U. They commenced delivery of some of their smaller planes to the receiving station near Shanghai at once. The reports on the number and quality of the planes seemed to indicate that they had stayed out of the war through necessity; the planes were mostly of German make and in poor condition, types that Germany had abandoned early in the war. 

	Manning went west to supervise certain details in connection with immobilizing the big planes, the transoceanic planes, which were to gather near Fort Riley. We planned to spray them with oil, then dust from a low altitude, as in crop dusting, with a low concentration of one-year dust. Then we could turn our backs on them and forget them, while attending to other matters. 

	But there were hazards. The dust must not be allowed to reach Kansas City, Lincoln, Wichita — any of the nearby cities. The smaller towns roundabout had been temporarily evacuated. Testing stations needed to be set up in all directions in order that accurate tab on the dust might be kept. Manning felt personally responsible to make sure that no bystander was poisoned. 

	We circled the receiving station before landing at Fort Riley. I could pick out the three landing fields which had hurriedly been graded. Their runways were white in the sun, the twenty-four-hour cement as yet undirtied. Around each of the landing fields were crowded dozens of parking fields, less perfectly graded. Tractors and bulldozers were still at work on some of them. In the eastemnmost fields, the German and British ships were already in place, jammed wing to body as tightly as planes on the flight deck of a carrier — save for a few that were still being towed into position, the tiny tractors looking from the air like ants dragging pieces of leaf many times larger than themselves. 

	Only three flying fortresses had arrived from tje Eurasian Union. Their representatives had asked for a short delay in order that a supply of high-test aviation gasoline might be delivered to them. They claimed shortage of fuel necessary to make the long flight over the Arctic safe. There was no way to check the claim and the delay was granted while a shipment was routed from England. 

	We were about to leave, Manning having satisfied himself as to safety precautions, when a dispatch came in announcing that a flight of E. U. bombers might be expected before the day was out. Manning wanted to see them arrive; we waited around for four hours. When it was finally reported that our escort fighters had picked them up at the Canadian border Manning appeared to have grown fidgety and state that he would watch them from the air. We took off gained altitude and waited. 

	There were nine of them in the flight, cruising in column of echelons and looking so huge that our little fighters were hardly noticeable. They circled the field and I was admiring the stately dignity of them when Manning's pilot, Lieutenant Rafferty, exclaimed "What the devil! They are preparing to land downwind!"

	I still did not tumble, but Manning shouted to the copilot, "Get the field!" 

	He fiddled with his instruments and announced "Got 'em, sir!" 

	"General alarm! Armor!" 

	We could not hear the sirens, naturally, but I could see the white plumes rise from the big steam whistle on the roof of the Administration Building — three long blasts, then three short ones. It seemed almost at the same time that the first cloud broke from the E. U planes. 

	Instead of landing, they passed low over the receiving station, jampacked now with ships from all over the world. Each echelon picked one of three groups centered around the three landing fields and streamers of heavy brown smoke poured from the bellies of the E. U. ships. I saw a tiny black figure jump from a tractor and run toward the nearest building. Then the smoke screen obscured the field. 

	"Do you still have the field?" demanded Manning. "Yes, sir." 

	"Cross connect to the chief safety technician. Hurry!" 

	The copilot cut in the amplifier so that Manning could talk directly. "Saunders? This is Manning. How about it?" 

	"Radioactive, chief. Intensity seven point four." They had paralleled the Karst-Obre research. 

	Manning cut him off and demanded that the communication office at the field raise the Chief of Staff. There was nerve-stretching delay, for it had to be routed over land wire to Kansas City, and some chief operator had to be convinced that she should commandeer a trunk line that was in commercial use. But we got through at last and Manning made his report. "It stands to reason," I heard him say, "that other flights are approaching the border by this time. New York, of course, and Washington. Probably Detroit and Chicago as well. No way of knowing." 

	The Chief of Staff cut off abruptly, without comment. I knew that the U.S. air fleets, in a state of alert for weeks past, would have their orders in a few seconds, and would be on their way to hunt out and down the attackers, if possible before they could reach the cities. 

	I glanced back at the field. The formations were broken up. One of the E. U. bombers was down, crashed, half a mile beyond the station. While I watched, one of our midget dive bombers screamed down on a behemoth E. U. ship and unloaded his eggs. It was a center hit, but the American pilot had cut it too fine, could not pull out, and crashed before his victim. 

-

	There is no point in rehashing the newspaper stories of the Four-Days War. The point is that we should have lost it, and we would have, had it not been for an unlikely combination of luck, foresight, and good management. Apparently, the nuclear physicists of the Eurasian Union were almost as far along as Ridpath crew when the destruction of Berlin gave them the time they needed. But we had rushed them, forced them to move before they were ready, because of the deadline for disarmament set forth in our Peace Proclamation. 

	If the President had waited to fight it out with Congress before issuing the proclamation, there would n be any United States. 

	Manning never got credit for it, but it is evident me that he anticipated the possibility of something like the Four-Days War and prepared for it in a dozen different devious ways. I don't mean military preparation; the Army and the Navy saw to that. But it was no accident that Congress was adjourned at the time. I had something to do with the vote-swapping and compromising that led up to it, and I know. 

	But I put it to you — would he have maneuvered to get Congress out of Washington at a time when I feared that Washington might be attacked if he had dictatorial ambitions? 

	Of course, it was the President who was back of the ten-day leaves that had been granted to most of the civil-service personnel in Washington and he himself must have made the decision to take a swing through the South at that time, but it must have been Manning who put the idea in his head. It is inconceivable that the President would have left Washington to escape personal danger. 

	And then, there was the plague scare. I don't know how or when Manning could have started that — it certainly did not go through my notebook — but I simply do not believe that it was accidental that a completely unfounded rumor of bubonic plague caused New York City to be semi-deserted at the time the E. U. bombers struck. 

	At that, we lost over eight hundred thousand people in Manhattan alone. 

	Of course, the government was blamed for the lives that were lost and the papers were merciless in their criticism at the failure to anticipate and force an evacuation of all the major cities. 

	If Manning anticipated trouble, why did he not ask for evacuation? 

	Well, as I see it, for this reason: 

	A big city will not be, never has been, evacuated in response to rational argument. London never was evacuated on any major scale and we failed utterly in our attempt to force the evacuation of Berlin. The people of New York City had considered the danger of air raids since 1940 and were long since hardened to the thought. 

	But the fear of a nonexistent epidemic of plague caused the most nearly complete evacuation of a major city ever seen. 

	And don't forget what we did to Vladivostok and Irkutsk and Moscow — those were innocent people, too. War isn't pretty.

	I said luck played a part. It was bad navigation that caused one of our ships to dust Ryazan instead of Moscow, but that mistake knocked out the laboratory and plant which produced the only supply of military radioactives in the Eurasian Union. Suppose the mistake had been the other way around — suppose that one of the E. U. ships in attacking Washington, D.C., by mistake had included Ridpath's shop forty-five miles away in Maryland?

	Congress reconvened at the temporary capital in St. Louis, and the American Pacification Expedition started the job of pulling the fangs of the Eurasian Union. It was not a military occupation in the usual sense; there were two simple objectives: to search out and dust all aircraft, aircraft plants, and fields, and locate and dust radiation laboratories, uranium supplies, and bodes of carnotite and pitchblende. No attempt was made to interfere with, or to replace, civil government. 

	We used a two-year dust, which gave a breathing spell in which to consolidate our position. Liberal rewards were offered to informers, a technique which worked remarkably well not only in the E. U., but most parts of the world. 

	The "weasel," an instrument to smell out radiation based on the electroscope-discharge principle and refined by Ridpath's staff, greatly facilitated the work locating uranium and uranium ores. A grid of weasels properly spaced over a suspect area, could locate any important mass of uranium almost as handily as a direction-finder can spot a radio station.

	But, notwithstanding the excellent work of General Bulfinch and the Pacification Expedition as a whole, was the original mistake of dusting Ryazan that made the job possible of accomplishment. 

	Anyone interested in the details of the pacification work done in 1945-6 should see the "Proceedings the American Foundation for Social Research" for paper entitled A Study of the Execution of the American Peace Policy from February, 1945. The de facto solution of the problem of policing the world against war left the United States with the much greater problem of perfecting a policy that would insure that the deadly power of the dust would never fall into unfit hands. 

	The problem is as easy to state as the problem of squaring the circle and almost as impossible of accomplishment. Both Manning and the President believed that the United States must of necessity kee[ the power for the time being, until some permanent institution could be developed fit to retain it. The hazard was this: Foreign policy is lodged jointly in the hands of the President and the Congress. We were fortunate at the time in having a good President and adequate Congress, but that was no guarantee for the future. We have had unfit Presidents and power-hungry Congresses — oh, yes! Read the history of the Mexican War. 

	We were about to hand over to future governments of the United States the power to turn the entire globe into an empire, our empire. And it was the sober opinion of the President that our characteristic and beloved democratic culture would not stand up under the temptation. Imperialism degrades both oppressor and oppressed. 

	The President was determined that our sudden power should be used for the absolute minimum of maintaining peace in the world — the simple purpose of outlawing war and nothing else. It must not be used to protect American investments abroad, to coerce trade agreements, for any purpose but the simple abolition of mass killing. 

	There is no science of sociology. Perhaps there will be, some day, when a rigorous physics gives a finished science of colloidal chemistry and that leads in turn to a complete knowledge of biology, and from there to a definitive psychology. After that we may begin to know something about sociology and politics. Sometime around the year 5000 A. D., maybe — if the human race does not commit suicide before then. 

	Until then, there is only horse sense and rule of thumb and observational knowledge of probabilities. Manning and the President played by ear. 

	The treaties with Great Britain, Germany and the Eurasian Union, whereby we assumed the responsibility for world peace and at the same time guaranteed the contracting nations against our own misuse of power, were rushed through in the period of relief and goodwill that immediately followed the termination of the Four-Days War. We followed the precedents established by the Panama Canal treaties, the Suez Canal agreements, and the Philippine Independence policy. 

	But the purpose underneath was to commit future governments of the United States to an irrevocable benevolent policy. 

	The act to implement the treaties by creating the Commission of World Safety followed soon after, and Colonel Manning became Mr. Commissioner Manning. Commissioners had a life tenure and the intention was to create a body with the integrity, the permanence and freedom from outside pressure possessed by the Supreme Court of the United States. Since the treaties contemplated an eventual joint trust, commissioners need not be American citizens — and the oath they took was to preserve the peace of the world. 

	There was trouble getting the clause past the Congress! Every other similar oath had been to the Constitution of the United States. 

	Nevertheless the Commission was formed. It took charge of world aircraft, assumed jurisdiction over radioactives, natural and artificial, and commenced the long slow task of building up the Peace Patrol. 

	Manning envisioned a corps of world policemen, an aristocracy which, through selection and indoctrination, could be trusted with unlimited power over the life of every man, every woman, every child on the fate of the globe. For the power would be unlimited; the precautions necessary to insure the unbeatable weapon from getting loose in the world again made it axiomatic that its custodians would wield power that is safe only in the hands of Deity. There would be no one to guard those selfsame guardians. Their own characters and the watch they kept on each other would be all that stood between the race and disaster. For the first time in history, supreme political power was to be exerted with no possibility of checks and balances from the outside. Manning took up the task of perfecting it with a dragging subconscious conviction that it was too much for human nature. 

	The rest of the Commission was appointed slowly, the names being sent to the Senate after long joint consideration by the President and Manning. The director of the Red Cross, an obscure little professor of history from Switzerland, Dr. Igor Rimski who had developed the Karst-Obre technique independently and whom the A. P. F. had discovered in prison after the dusting of Moscow — those three were the only foreigners. The rest of the list is well known. 

	Ridpath and his staff were of necessity the original technical crew of the Commission; United States Army and Navy pilots its first patrolmen. Not all of the pilots available were needed; their records were searched, their habits and associates investigated, their mental processes and emotional attitudes examined by the best psychological research methods available — which weren't good enough. Their final acceptance for the Patrol depended on two personal interviews, one with Manning, one with the President. 

	Manning told me that he depended more on the President's feeling for character than he did on all the association and reaction tests the psychologists could think up. "It's like the nose of a bloodhound," he said. "In his forty years of practical politics he has seen more phonies than you and I will ever see and each one was trying to sell him something. He can tell one in the dark." 

	The long-distance plan included the schools for the indoctrination of cadet patrolmen, schools that were to be open to youths of any race, color, or nationality, and from which they would go forth to guard the peace of every country but their own. To that country a man would never return during his service. They were to be a deliberately expatriated band of Janizaries, with an obligation only to the Commission and to the race, and welded together with a carefully nurtured esprit de corps. 

	It stood a chance of working. Had Manning been allowed twenty years without interruption, the original plan might have worked. 

-

	The President's running mate for reelection was the result of a political compromise. The candidate for Vice President was a confirmed isolationist who had opposed the Peace Commission from the first, but it was he or a party split in a year when the opposition was strong. The President sneaked back in but with a greatly weakened Congress; only his power of veto twice prevented the repeal of the Peace Act. The Vice President did nothing to help him, although he did not publicly lead the insurrection. Manning revised his plans to complete the essential program by the end of 1952, there being no way to predict the temper of the next administration. 

	We were both overworked and I was beginning to realize that my health was gone. The cause was not far to seek; a photographic film strapped next to my skin would cloud in twenty minutes. I was suffering from cumulative minimal radioactive poisoning. No well defined cancer that could be operated on, but a systemic deterioration of function and tissue. There was no help for it, and there was work to be done. I've always attributed it mainly to the week I spent sitting on those canisters before the raid on Berlin. 

-

	February 17, 1951. I missed the televue flash about the plane crash that killed the President because I was lying down in my apartment. Manning, by that time, was requiring me to rest every afternoon after lunch, though I was still on duty. I first heard about it from my secretary when I returned to my office, and at once hurried into Manning's office. 

	There was a curious unreality to that meeting. It seemed to me that we had slipped back to that day when I returned from England, the day that Estelle Karst died. He looked up. "Hello, John," he said. 

	I put my hand on his shoulder. "Don't take it so hard, chief," was all I could think of to say. 

	Forty-eight hours later came the message from the newly sworn-in President for Manning to report to him. I took it in to him, an official despatch which I decoded. Manning read it, face impassive. 

	"Are you going, chief?" I asked. 

	"Eh? Why, certainly." 

	I went back into my office, and got my topcoat, gloves, and briefcase. 

	Manning looked up when I came back in. "Never mind, John," he said. "You're not going." I guess I must have looked stubborn, for he added, "You're not to go because there is work to do here. Wait a minute." He went to his safe, twiddled the dials, opened it and removed a sealed envelope which he threw on the desk between us. "Here are your orders. Get busy." 

	He went out as I was opening them. I read them through and got busy. There was little enough time.

-

	The new President received Manning standing and in the company of several of his bodyguards and intimates. Manning recognized the senator who had led the movement to use the Patrol to recover expropriated holdings in South America and Rhodesia, as well as the chairman of the committee on aviation with whom he had had several unsatisfactory conferences in an attempt to work out a modus operandi for reinstituting commercial airlines. 

	"You're prompt, I see," said the President. "Good." Manning bowed. 

	"We might as well come straight to the point," the Chief Executive went on. "There are going to be some changes of policy in the administration. I want your resignation." 

	"I am sorry to have to refuse, sir." 

	"We'll see about that. In the meantime, Colonel Manning, you are relieved from duty." 

	"Mr. Commissioner Manning, if you please." 

	The new President shrugged. "One or the other, as you please. You are relieved, either way." 

	"I am sorry to disagree again. My appointment is for life." 

	"That's enough," was the answer. "This is the United States of America. There can be no higher authority. You are under arrest." 

	I can visualize Manning staring steadily at him for a long moment, then answering slowly, "You are physically able to arrest me, I will concede, but I advise you to wait a few minutes." He stepped to the window. "Look up into the sky." 

	Six bombers of the Peace Commission patrolled over the Capitol. "None of those pilots is American born," Manning added slowly. "If you confine me, none of us here in this room will live out the day."

	There were incidents thereafter, such as the unfortunate affair at Fort Benning three days later, and the outbreak in the wing of the Patrol based in Lisbon and its resultant wholesale dismissals, but for practical purposes, that was all there was to the coup d'etat. Manning was the undisputed military dictator of the world.

	Whether or not any man as universally hated as Manning can perfect the Patrol he envisioned, make it self-perpetuating and trustworthy, I don't know and — because of that week of waiting in a buried English hangar — I won't be here to find out. Manning's heart disease makes the outcome even more uncertain — he may last another twenty years; he may keel over dead tomorrow — and there is no one to take his place. I've set this down partly to occupy the short time I have left and partly to show there is another side to any story, even world dominion. 

	Not that I would like the outcome, either way. If there is anything to this survival-after-death business I am going to look up the man who invented the bow and arrow and take him apart with my bare hands For myself, I can't be happy in a world where any man or group of men, has the power of death over you and me, our neighbors, every human, every animal, every living thing. I don't like anyone to have that kind power. 

	And neither does Manning. 

The End