Tarnhorst swallowed. "Yes. Fergus will be back in a moment."

"Who's Fergus?"

"He's the man who controls PMC 873."

Harry Morgan shoved his hand into his jacket pocket "Then I have a
gun. You saw it, didn't you?"

"Yes. Yes ... I saw it when you came in."

"Good. Call him."

When Sam Fergus came in, he looked as though he had had about three or
four too many slugs of whiskey. There was an odd fear an his face.

"Whats matter, Edway? I--" The fear increased when he saw Morgan.
"Whadda you here for?"

"I'm here to make a speech Fergus. Sit down." When Fergus still stood,
Morgan repeated what he had said with only a trace more emphasis. "Sit
down."

Fergus sat. So did Tarnhorst.

"Both of you pay special attention," Morgan said, a piratical gleam in
his eyes. "You killed a friend of mine. My best friend. But I'm not
going to kill either of you. Yet. Just listen and listen carefully."

Even Tarnhorst looked frightened. "Don't move, Sam. He's got a gun. I
saw it when he came in."

"What ... what do you want?" Fergus asked.

"I want to give you the information you want. The information that you
killed Jack for." There was cold hatred in his voice. "I am going to
tell you something that you have thought you wanted, but which you
really will wish you had never heard. I'm going to tell you about that
cable."

Neither Fergus nor Tarnhorst said a word.

"You want a cable. You've heard that we use a cable that has a tensile
strength of better than a hundred million pounds per square inch, and
you want to know how it's made. You tried to get the secret out of
Jack because he was sent here as a commercial dealer. And he wouldn't
talk, so one of your goons blackjacked him too hard and then you had
to drop him off a bridge to make it look like an accident.

"Then you got your hands on me. You were going to wring it out of me.
Well, there is no necessity of that." His grin became wolfish. "I'll
give you everything." He paused. "If you want it."

Fergus found his voice. "I want it. I'll pay a million--"

"You'll pay nothing," Morgan said flatly. "You'll listen."

Fergus nodded wordlessly.

"The composition is simple. Basically, it is a two-phase material-like
fiberglass. It consists of a strong, hard material imbedded in a
matrix of softer material. The difference is that, in this case, the
stronger fibers are borazon--boron nitride formed under tremendous
pressure--while the softer matrix is composed of tung