ther thing,
though. We want scout-vehicles to cover the Keegark area with
radiation-detectors. These geeks are quite well aware of
radiation-danger from fissionables, but they're accustomed to the
ordinary industrial-power reactors, which are either very lightly
shielded or unshielded on top. We want to find out where Orgzild's
bomb-plant is."

"Yes, general; as soon as we can get radiation detectors sent out to
Kankad's, we'll have a couple of fast aircars fitted with them for
that job."

"We have detectors, at our laboratory and reaction-plant," Kankad
said. "And my people can make more, as soon as you want them." He
thought for a moment. "Perhaps I should go to the town, now. I could
be of more use there than here."

Kent Pickering, who had been talking with his experts at a table
apart, returned.

"We've set up a program, general," he said. "It's going to be a lot
harder than I'd anticipated. None of us seem to know exactly what we
have to do in building one of those things. You see, the uranium or
plutonium fission-bomb's been obsolete for over four hundred years. It
was a classified-secret matter long after its obsolescence, because it
hadn't been rendered any the less deadly by being superseded--there
was that A-bomb that the Christian Anarchist Party put together at
Buenos Aires in 378 A.E., for instance. And then, after it was
declassified, it had been so far superseded that it was of only
antiquarian interest; the textbooks dealt with it only in general
terms. The principles, of course, are part of basic nuclear science;
the secret of the A-bomb was just a bag of engineering tricks that we
don't have, and which we will have to rediscover. Design of tampers,
design of the chemical-explosive charges to bring subcritical masses
together, case-design, detonating mechanism, things like that.

"The complete data on even the old Hiroshima and Nagasaki types is
still in existence, of course. You can get it at places like the
University of Montevideo Library, or Jan Smuts Memorial Library at
Cape Town. But we don't have it here. We're detailing a couple of
junior technicians to make a search of the library here on Gongonk
Island, but we're not optimistic. We just can't afford to pass up any
chance, even when it approaches zero-probability."

Von Schlichten nodded. "That's about what I'd expected," he said. "I
suppose Gomes got his data out of one of the dustier storage-stacks at
Jan Smuts or Montevideo, in the