hat's enough," the Manager of Defense said. At his signal, two of
the honor guards gently took hold of the veteran's arms and walked him
out of the room along with the others.

"I order that he not be punished," Wong said sharply.

"He won't be," the Manager of Defense said. "Do you take me for a
barbarian? I had hoped, though, that your interest might change their
attitude. As you can imagine, it's raising hell with the morale of the
recruits."

"By the way," the President asked, "where is Veganea, and how many men
_did_ we send there?"

"It's about twenty-four years away, near Vega. The action started
before my time and I don't know how many men were involved--probably
not more than a few million. The Police Action ended successfully, but
our ships were in the first wave and were wiped out."

* * * * *

The President sat down wearily. His hand strayed over to the order he
had signed that morning for a police action, then drifted aimlessly
away.

"What's next?" he asked Al. He slipped a few energy pills into his
mouth as Al consulted his book.

"There's the matter of the conversion bomb," Al said. "The Manager of
Scientific Research and the Manager of Defense would like you to make
a decision about it."

"The conversion bomb?" President Wong said, puzzled. "I've never heard
of it."

"It is highest level top secret," the Manager of Defense explained.
"Instead of breaking down atoms and releasing some energy as in the
standard fission weapons, it converts matter entirely into energy.
Given the matter-energy equation, the energy released by a small
amount of matter is fantastic."

Al had risen and gone to the door. He returned with an old,
gray-haired, stoop-shouldered man. The President recognized the famous
Manager of Research.

The Manager launched immediately into his argument without
preliminaries. "Mr. President, while my department has finally found a
way to convert matter directly into energy, I believe that any use of
this process would be disastrous. First, there is absolutely no
safeguard that could prevent a matter-conversion powered machine, used
for peaceful purposes, from being changed into a lethal weapon by the
simplest of alterations. And as a weapon, the conversion bomb, unlike
atomic bombs, could not only destroy planets but stars with their
entire systems. We all know that the law of the Galaxy is to prevent
its domination by any one system--and given th