first place.... Well, I still want
that bomb finished by yesterday afternoon, but since that's
impractical, you'll have to take a little--but as little as
possible--longer."

"What are we going to do about publicity on this?" Howlett, the
personnel man. asked. "We don't want this getting out in garbled
form--though how it could be made worse by garbling I couldn't
guess--and having the troops watching the sky over their shoulders and
going into a panic as soon as they saw something they didn't
understand."

"No, we don't. I've seen a couple of troop-panics," von Schlichten
said. "There can't be anything much worse than a panic."

"I think the Terrans ought to be told the worst," Hargreaves said.
"And told that our only hope is to get a bomb of our own built and
dropped first. As to the Kragans.... What do you think, King Kankad?"

"Tell them that we are building a bomb to destroy Keegark; that we are
running short of ammunition, and that it is our only hope of finishing
the war before the ammunition is gone," Kankad said. "Tell them
something of what sort of a bomb it is. But do not tell them that King
Orgzild already has such a bomb. Old Kankad, who made me out of
himself, told me about how our people fled in panic from the weapons
of the Terrans, when your people and mine were still enemies. This
thing is to the weapons they faced then as those weapons were to the
old Kragans' spears and bows.... And when the geeks from Grank come
here, tell them that we are winning and that if they fight well, they
can share the loot of Konkrook and Keegark."

Von Schlichten looked up at the big screen. Already, Themistocles
M'zangwe had ordered the Channel Battery to reduce fire; the big guns
were firing singly, in thirty-second-interval salvos. There was less
bombing, too; contragravity was being drawn out of the battle.

"Well, we all have things to do," he said, "and I think we've
discussed everything there is to discuss. Anybody think of anything
we've forgotten?... Then we're adjourned."

He and Paula Quinton took the elevator to the roof, and sat side by
side, silently watching the conflagration that was raging across the
channel and the nearer flashes of the big guns along the island's city
side.

"Wednesday night, I thought we were all cooked," Paula told him.
"Cleaning up the North in two days seemed like an impossibility, too.
Maybe you'll do it again."

"If I pull this one out of the fire, I won't be a genera