d it was a tube, but you didn't make it look hollow when you drew
it."

"It isn't; it's solid. Does a tube have to be hollow? Yeah, I guess it
does, doesn't it? Well, then, it isn't a tube."

Colonel Spaulding picked up the phone and dialed a number.

"Colonel Spaulding here," he said after a moment. "Let me speak to Dr.
Davenport." And, after a wait: "This is Colonel Spaulding, doctor. I think
we may have something for you."

"Good morning, colonel. I'm glad to hear that. What is it?"

"The Q-shaped gadget--the one that you said was supposed to be painted
emerald green. Are you _sure_ that's the right translation of the
Russian?"

"Well ... uh--" Davenport hesitated. "I can't be sure on my own say-so, of
course. _I_ don't understand Russian. But I assure you that Mr. Berensky
is perfectly reliable."

"Oh, I have no doubt of that," Colonel Spaulding said easily. "But, tell
me, does Mr. Berensky know how to read a circuit diagram?"

"He does," Davenport said, somewhat testily. "Of course, he wasn't shown
the diagram itself. We had the Russian labels copied, and he translated
from a list."

"I had a sneaking suspicion that was it," said Spaulding. "Tell me,
doctor, what does L-E-A-D spell?"

"Lead," said the doctor promptly, pronouncing it _leed_. Then, after a
pause, he said: "Or lead," this time pronouncing it _led_. "It would
depend on the context."

"Suppose it was on a circuit diagram," the colonel prompted.

"Then it would probably be _leed_. What's all this leading up to,
colonel?"

"Bear with me. Suppose you had a cable coming from a storage battery, and
you wanted to make sure that the cable was reasonably resistant to
corrosion, so you order it made out of the metal, lead. It would be a _led
leed_, wouldn't it?"

"Um-m-m ... I suppose so."

"You might get pretty confused if you didn't have a circuit diagram in
front of you to tell you what the label was talking about, mightn't you?"

"I see what you mean," the scientist said slowly. "But we can't show those
circuit diagrams to Berensky. The Secretary of Defense himself has
classified them as Class Triple-A Ultra-Hyper Top Secret. That puts them
just below the Burn-The-Contents-Before-Reading class, and Berensky
doesn't have that kind of clearance."

"Then get somebody else," Colonel Spaulding said tiredly. "All you need is
a man who can understand technical Russian and has a top-level secrecy
clearance. If we haven't got at least one man in