y word. "You'll
get it," I said. "Thanks, Mr. Braun."

I called headquarters and sent a messenger to my apartment to look for
one of those long-dusty blue folders with the legal-length sheets inside
them, with orders to scorch it over to Braun without stopping to breathe
more than once. Then I went back myself.

The atmosphere had changed. Anderton was sitting by the big desk,
clenching his fists and sweating; his whole posture telegraphed his
controlled helplessness. Cheyney was bent over a seismograph,
echo-sounding for the egg through the river bottom. If that even had a
prayer of working, I knew, he'd have had the trains of the Hudson &
Manhattan stopped; their rumbling course through their tubes would have
blanked out any possible echo-pip from the egg.

"Wild goose chase?" Joan said, scanning my face.

"Not quite. I've got something, if I can just figure out what it is.
Remember One-Shot Braun?"

"Yes. What's he got to do with it?"

[Illustration]

"Nothing," I said. "But I want to bring him in. I don't think we'll lick
this project before deadline without him."

"What good is a professional gambler on a job like this? He'll just get
in the way."

I looked toward the television screen, which now showed an amorphous
black mass, jutting up from a foundation of even deeper black. "Is that
operation getting you anywhere?"

"Nothing's gotten us anywhere," Anderton interjected harshly. "We don't
even know if that's the egg--the whole area is littered with crates.
Harris, you've got to let me get that alert out!"

"Clark, how's the time going?"

Cheyney consulted the stopwatch. "Deadline in twenty-nine minutes," he
said.

"All right, let's use those minutes. I'm beginning to see this thing a
little clearer. Joan, what we've got here is a one-shot gamble; right?"

"In effect," she said cautiously.

"And it's my guess that we're never going to get the answer by diving
for it--not in time, anyhow. Remember when the Navy lost a barge-load of
shells in the harbor, back in '52? They scrabbled for them for a year
and never pulled up a one; they finally had to warn the public that if
it found anything funny-looking along the shore it shouldn't bang said
object, or shake it either. We're better equipped than the Navy was
then--but we're working against a deadline."

"If you'd admitted that earlier," Anderton said hoarsely, "we'd have
half a million people out of the city by now. Maybe even a million."

"We