, and he was puffing on his
own, when the others finally realized what he had told them.

"That's impossible!" somebody down the table shouted, as though that
would make it so. Another--one of the civil administration
crowd--almost exactly repeated Jules Keaveney's words at Skilk: "What
the hell was Intelligence doing, sleeping?"

"General von Schlichten," Colonel Grinell took oblique cognizance of
the question, "you've just made, by implication, a most grave charge
against my department. If you're not mistaken in what you've just
said, I deserve to be court-martialed."

"I couldn't bring charges against you, colonel; if it were a
court-martial matter, I'd belong in the dock with you," von Schlichten
told him. "It seems, though, that a piece of vital information was
possessed by those who were unable to evaluate it, and until this
afternoon, I was ignorant of its existence. Colonel Quinton, suppose
you repeat what you told me, on the way down from Skilk."

"Well, general, don't you think we ought to have Dr. Gomes do that?"
Paula asked. "After all, he constructed those bombs on Niflheim, and
it'll be he who'll have to build ours."

"That's right." He looked around. "Where's Dr. Lourenco Gomes, the
nuclear engineer who came in on the _Pretoria_, two weeks ago? Send
out for him, and get him in here at once."

There was another awkward silence. Then Kent Pickering, the chief of
the Gongonk Island power-plant, cleared his throat.

"Why, general, didn't you know? Dr. Gomes is dead. He was killed
during the first half hour of the uprising."

XIII.

A Bag of Tricks We Don't Have

He flinched inwardly, and tightened his eye-muscles on the edge of the
monocle to keep from flinching physically as well, trying to freeze
out of his face the consternation he felt.

"That's bad, Kent," he said. "Very bad. I'd been counting heavily on
Dr. Gomes to design a bomb of our own."

"Well, general, if you please." That was Air-Commodore Leslie
Hargreaves. "You say you suspect that King Orgzild has developed a
nuclear bomb. If that's true, it's a horrible danger to all of us. But
I find it hard to believe that the Keegarkans could have done so, with
their resources and at their technological level. Now, if it had been
the Kragans, that would have been different, but...."

"Paula, you'd better carry on and explain what you told me, and add
anything else you can think of that might be relevant.... Is that
sound-recorder