v's thin eyebrows went up but he waited for the other to
go on.

Ilya said impatiently, "It was the ordinary. They featured complete
freedom of opinion and expression in their weekly get-togethers. They
began by criticizing without extremism, local affairs, matters concerned
with their duties, that sort of thing. In the beginning, they even sent a
few letters of protest to the local press, signing the name of the club.
After their ideas went further out, they didn't dare do that, of course."

He took up his second drink and belted it back, not wanting to give it
time to lose its chill.

His chief filled in. "And they delved further and further into matters
that should be discussed only within the party--if even there--until they
arrived at what point?"

Colonel Simonov shrugged. "Until they finally got to the point of
discussing how best to overthrow the Soviet State and what socio-economic
system should follow it. The usual thing. I've run into possible two dozen
such outfits in the past five years."

His chief grunted and tossed back his own drink. "My dear Ilya," he
rumbled sourly, "I've _run into_, as you say, more than two hundred."

Simonov was taken back by the figure but he only looked at the other.

Blagonravov said, "What did you do about it?"

"Several of them were popular locally. In view of Comrade Zverev's recent
pronouncements of increased freedom of press and speech, I thought it best
not to make a public display. Instead, I took measures to charge
individual members with inefficiency in their work, with corruption or
graft, or with other crimes having nothing to do with the reality of the
situation. Six or seven in all were imprisoned, others demoted. Ten or
twelve I had switched to other cities, principally into more backward
areas in the virgin lands."

"And the ringleaders?" the security head asked.

"There were two of them, one a research chemist of some prominence, the
other a steel plane manager. They were both, ah, unfortunately killed in
an automobile accident while under the influence of drink."

"I see," Blagonravov nodded. "So actually the whole rat's nest was stamped
out without attention being brought to it so far as the Magnitogorsk
public is concerned." He nodded heavily again. "You can almost always be
depended upon to do the right thing, Ilya. If you weren't so confoundedly
good a field man, I'd make you my deputy."

Which was exactly what Simonov would have hated, but he s