parent discovery until the information is
released through the proper channels? I'm asking for your opinion."

"Colonel Thayer," Ronald Black's voice said, still pleasantly, "my
opinion is that the only way you could keep the matter quiet is to
arrest every civilian present, including myself, and hold us
incommunicado. You have your duty, and we have ours. Ours does not
include withholding information from the public which may signal the
greatest shift in the conduct of the Geest War in the past two decades."

"I understand," Thayer said. He was silent for some seconds, and perhaps
he, too, was gazing during that time at a Fort Roye of the future--a
Class A military base under his command, with Earth's great war vessels
lined up along the length of the peninsula.

"Mr. Black," he said, "please be so good as to give your colleagues this
word from me. I shall make the most thorough possible investigation of
what has occurred and forward a prompt report, along with any material
evidence obtained, to my superiors on Earth. None of you will receive
any other statement from me or from anyone under my command. An attempt
to obtain such a statement will, in fact, result in the arrest of the
person or persons involved. Is that clear?"

"Quite clear, Colonel Thayer," Ronald Black said softly. "And entirely
satisfactory."

* * * * *

"We have known for the past eight weeks," the man named Cranehart said,
"that this was not what it appears to be ... that is, a section of a
Geest weapon."

He shoved the object in question across the desk towards Commissioner
Sanford and Ronald Black. Neither of the two attempted to pick it up;
they glanced at it, then returned their eyes attentively to Cranehart's
face.

"It is, of course, an excellent copy," Cranehart went on, "produced with
a professional forger's equipment. As I imagine you're aware, that
should have made it impossible to distinguish from the original weapon.
However ... there's no real harm in telling you this now ... Geest
technology has taken somewhat different turns than our own. In their
weapons they employ traces of certain elements which we are only
beginning to learn to maintain in stable form. That is a matter your
government has kept from public knowledge because we don't wish the
Geests to learn from human prisoners how much information we are gaining
from them.

"The instrument which made this copy naturally did not have such