ercantile interests
in the Company are going to realize that, and see the necessity for
taking political control. And just to make sure, I'm sending Hid
O'Leary to Terra on the next ship, to make a full report on the
situation."

"You think it'll be cleared up by then? The _City of Montevideo_ is
due in from Niflheim in a little under three months."

"It'll have to be cleared up by then. We can't keep this war going
more than a month, at the present rate. Police-action, and mopping-up,
yes; full-scale war, no."

"Ammunition?" she asked.

* * * * *

He looked at her in pleased surprise. "Your education has been
progressing, at that," he said. "You know, a lot of professional
officers, even up to field rank in the combat branches, seem to think
that ammo comes down miraculously from Heaven, in contragravity
lorries, every time they pray into a radio for it. It doesn't; it has
to be produced as fast as it's expended, and we haven't been doing
that. So we'll have to lick these geeks before it runs out, because we
can't lick them with gun-butts and bayonets."

"Well, how about nuclear weapons?" Paula asked. "I hate to suggest
it--I know what they did on Mimir, and Fenris, and Midgard, and what
they did on Terra, during the First Century. But it may be our only
chance."

He finished his beer and shoved the bottle into the waste-receiver,
then got out his cigarettes. "There isn't a single nuclear bomb on the
planet. The Company's always refused to allow them to be manufactured
or stockpiled here."

"I don't think there'd be any criticism of your making them, now,
general. And there's certainly plenty of plutonium. You could make
A-bombs, at least."

"There isn't anybody here who even knows how to make one. Most of our
nuclear engineers could work one up, in about three months, when we'd
either not need one or not be alive."

"Dr. Gomes, who came in on the _Pretoria_, two weeks ago, can make
them," she contradicted. "He built at, least a dozen of them on
Niflheim, to use in activating volcanoes and bringing ore-bearing lava
to the surface."

Von Schlichten's hand, bringing his lighter to the tip of his
cigarette, paused for a second. Then he completed the operation,
snapped it shut, and put it away.

"When did all this happen?"

She took time out for mental arithmetic; even a spaceship officer had
to do that, when a question of interstellar time-relations arose.

"About three-