turned on? Then turn it on, somebody; we want this
taped."

Paula rose and began talking: "I suppose you all understand what
conditions are on Niflheim, and how these Ulleran native workers are
employed; however, I'd better begin by explaining the purpose for
which these nuclear bombs were designed and used...."

He smiled; she realized that he needed time to think, and she was
stalling to provide it. He drew a pencil and pad toward him and began
doodling in a bored manner, deliberately closing his mind to what she
was saying. There were two assumptions, he considered: first, that
King Orgzild already possessed a nuclear bomb which he could use when
he chose, and, second, that in the absence of Dr. Gomes, such a bomb
could only be produced on Gongonk Island after lengthy experimental
work. If both of these assumptions were true, he had just heard the
death-sentence of every Terran on Uller. The first he did not for a
moment doubt. The reasons for making it were too good. He dismissed it
from further consideration and concentrated on the second.

"... what's known as a Nagasaki-type bomb, the first type of
plutonium-bomb developed," Paula was saying. "Really, it's a
technological antique, but it was good enough for the purpose, and Dr.
Gomes could build it with locally available materials...."

That was the crux of it. The plutonium bomb, from a military
standpoint, was as obsolete as the flintlock musket had been at the
time of the Second World War. He reviewed, quickly, the history of
weapons-development since the beginning of the Atomic Era. The
emphasis, since the end of the Second World War, had all been on
nuclear weapons and rocket-missiles. There had been the H-bomb, itself
obsolescent, and the Bethe-cyle bomb, and the subneutron bomb, and the
omega-ray bomb, and the nega-matter bomb, and then the end of
civilization in the Northern Hemisphere and the rise of the new
civilization in South America and South Africa and Australia. Today,
the small-arms and artillery his troops were using were merely slight
refinements on the weapons of the First Century, and all the modern
nuclear weapons used by the Terran Federation were produced at the
Space Navy base on Mars, by a small force of experts whose skills were
almost as closed to the general scientific and technical world as the
secrets of a medieval guild. The old A-bomb was an historical
curiosity, and there was nobody on Uller who had more than a layman's
know