read through them carefully. Then
he looked up at Farnsworth. "They seem to be in order. Uh--about Martin.
You know what's the matter with him--I mean, aside from the radiation.
Do you think he'll be able to handle his part of the job after--after
the operations?"

"I'm quite sure he will. The operations, plus the therapy we'll give
him afterward should put him in fine shape."

"Well." He looked thoughtful. "Five more years. And then I'll have the
twin brother that I never really had at all. Somehow that part of it
just doesn't really register, I guess."

"Don't worry about it, Stanton," said Dr. Farnsworth. "We have a complex
enough job ahead of us without your worrying in the bargain. We'll want
your mind perfectly relaxed. You have your own ordeal to undergo."

"Thanks for reminding me," the young man said, but there was a smile on
his face when he said it. He looked at the release forms again. "All
nice and legal, huh? Well ..." He hesitated for a moment, then he took
the pen and wrote _Bartholomew Stanton_ in a firm, clear hand.

_[21]_

Captain Davidson Greer sat in a chair before an array of TV screens, his
gray-green eyes watchful. In the center of one of the screens, the
Nipe's image sat immobile, surrounded by the paraphernalia in his hidden
nest. Other screens showed various sections of the long tunnel that led
south from the opening in the northern end of the island. At the
captain's fingertips was a bank of controls that would allow him to
switch from one pickup to another if necessary, so that he could see
anything anywhere in the tunnels. He hoped that wouldn't be necessary.
He did not want any of the action to take place anywhere but in the
places where it was expected--but he was prepared for alterations in the
plan. In other rooms, nearly a hundred other men were linked into the
special controls that allowed them to operate the little rat spies that
scuttled through the underground darkness, and the captain's system
would allow him to see through the eyes of any one of those rats at an
instant's notice.

The screen which he was watching at the moment, however, was not
connected with an underground pickup. It was linked with a pickup in the
bottom of a basketball-sized sphere driven by a small inertial engine
that held the sphere hovering in the air above the game sanctuary on the
northern tip of Manhattan Island. In the screen, he had an aerial view
of the grassy, rocky mounds where the