rocyon_ after a chase across the mountains northeast of Keegark the
day before. And, remote from the other ships, to the south, a tiny
speck of blue-gray, almost invisible against the sky, and a smaller
twinkle of reflected sunlight--a garbage-scow, unflatteringly but
somewhat aptly rechristened _Hildegarde Hernandez_, which had been
altered as a bomb-carrier, and the gun-cutter _Elmoran_. With the
glasses, he could see a bulky cylinder being handled off the scow and
loaded onto the improvised bomb-catapult on the _Elmoran_'s stern.
Shortly thereafter, the gun-cutter broke loose from the tender and
began to approach the fleet.

"General, I must protest against your doing this," Air-Commodore
Hargreaves said. "There's simply no sense in it. That bomb can be
dropped without your personal supervision aboard, sir, and you're
endangering yourself unnecessarily. That infernal machine hasn't been
tested or anything; it might even let go on the catapult when you try
to drop it. And we simply can't afford to lose you, now."

"No, what would become of us, if you go out there and blow yourself up
with that contraption?" Buhrmann supported him. "My God, I thought Don
Quixote was a Spaniard, instead of a German!"

"Argentino," von Schlichten corrected. "And don't try to sell me that
Irreplaceable Man line, either. Them M'zangwe can replace me, Hid
O'Leary can replace him, Barney Mordkovitz can replace him, and so on
down to where you make a second lieutenant out of some sergeant. We've
been all over this last evening. Admitted we can't take time for a
long string of test-shots, and admitted we have to use an untested
weapon; I'm not sending men out under those circumstances and staying
here on this ship and watch them blow themselves up. If that bomb's
our only hope, it's got to be dropped right, and I'm not going to take
a chance on having it dropped by a crew who think they've been sent
out on a suicide mission. What happened to the _Gaucho_ when she blew
the _Smuts_ up is too fresh in everybody's mind. But if I, who ordered
the mission, accompany it, they'll know I have some confidence that
they'll come back alive."

"Well I'm coming along, too, general," Kent Pickering spoke up. "I
made the damned thing, and I ought to be along when it's dropped, on
the principle that a restaurant-proprietor ought to be seen eating his
own food once in a while."

"I still don't see why we couldn't have made at least one test shot,
first,"