picture in Home Hospital
ads. Anyway--how are we doing? Is there going to be a war? Certainly
seems like one brewing outside. I've seen two people lynched who were
only suspected of being Earthies."

"Looks don't mean a thing," Neel said, opening two beers. "Remember the
analogy of the pile. It boils liquid metal and cooks out energy from the
infrared right through to hard radiation. Yet it keeps on generating
power at a nice, steady rate. But your A-bomb at zero minus one second
looks as harmless as a fallen log. It's the k-factor that counts, not
surface appearance. This planet may look like a dictator's dream of
glory, but as long as we're reading in the negative things are fine."

"And how are things? How's our little k-factor?"

"Coming out soon," Neel said, pointing at the humming computer. "Can't
tell about it yet. You never can until the computation is complete.
There's a temptation to try and guess from the first figures, but
they're meaningless. Like trying to predict the winner of a horse race
by looking at the starters lined up at the gate."

"Lots of people think they can."

"Let them. There are few enough pleasures in this life without taking
away all delusions."

Behind them the computer thunked and was suddenly still.

"This is it," Neel said, and pulled out the tape. He ran it quickly
through his fingers, mumbling under his breath. Just once he stopped and
set some figures into his hand computer. The result flashed in the
window and he stared at it, unmoving.

"Good? Bad? What is it?"

Neel raised his head and his eyes were ten years older.

"Positive. Bad. Much worse than it was when we left Earth."

"How much time do we have?"

"Don't know for certain," Neel shrugged. "I can set it up and get an
approximation. But there is no definite point on the scale where war
_has_ to break out. Just a going and going until, somewhere along the
line--"

"I know. Gone." Costa said, reaching for his gun. He slid it into his
side pocket. "Now it's time to stop looking and start doing. What do I
do?"

"Going to kill War Marshal Lommeord?" Neel asked distastefully. "I
thought we had settled that you can't stop a war by assassinating the
top man."

"We also settled that _something_ can be done to change the k-factor.
The gun is for my own protection. While you're radioing results back to
Earth and they're feeling bad about it, I'm going to be doing something.
Now _you_ tell me what that something is