water sounds and the irregular ticking of a Geiger counter seemed to
spring out from the audio speaker, four times as loud as before. I could
even hear the pen of the seismograph scribbling away, until I looked at
the instrument and saw that Clark had stopped it, probably long ago.

Droplets of sweat began to form along Braun's forehead and his upper
lip. The handkerchief remained crushed in his hand.

Anderton said, "Of all the fool--"

"Hush!" Joan said quietly.

* * * * *

Slowly, Braun opened his eyes. "All right," he said. "You guys wanted it
this way. _I say it's a bomb._" He stared at us for a moment more--and
then, all at once, the Timkin bearing burst. Words poured out of it.
"Now you guys do something, do your job like I did mine--get my wife and
kids out of there--empty the city--do something, _do something_!"

Anderton was already grabbing for the phone. "You're right, Mr. Braun.
If it isn't already too late--"

Cheyney shot out a hand and caught Anderton's telephone arm by the
wrist. "Wait a minute," he said.

"What d'you mean, 'wait a minute'? Haven't you already shot enough
time?"

Cheyney did not let go; instead, he looked inquiringly at Joan and said,
"One minute, Joan. You might as well go ahead."

She nodded and spoke into the mike. "Monig, unscrew the cap."

"Unscrew the cap?" the audio squawked. "But Dr. Hadamard, if that sets
it off--"

"It won't go off. That's the one thing you can be sure it won't do."

"What is this?" Anderton demanded. "And what's this deadline stuff,
anyhow?"

"The cap's off," Monig reported. "We're getting plenty of radiation now.
Just a minute-- Yeah. Dr. Hadamard, it's a bomb, all right. But it
hasn't got a fuse. Now how could they have made a fool mistake like
that?"

"In other words, it's a dud," Joan said.

"That's right, a dud."

Now, at last, Braun wiped his face, which was quite gray. "I told you
the truth," he said grimly. "My hunches don't work on stuff like this."

"But they do," I said. "I'm sorry we put you through the wringer--and
you too, colonel--but we couldn't let an opportunity like this slip. It
was too good a chance for us to test how our facilities would stand up
in a real bomb-drop."

"A real drop?" Anderton said. "Are you trying to say that CIA staged
this? You ought to be shot, the whole pack of you!"

"No, not exactly," I said. "The enemy's responsible for the drop, all
right. We got word last