rn.
Shortly thereafter, the gun-cutter broke loose from the tender and
began to approach the fleet.

"General, I must protest again against your doing this," Air-Commodore
Hargreaves said. "There's simply no sense in it. That bomb can be
dropped without your personal supervision aboard, sir, and you're
endangering yourself unnecessarily. That infernal-machine hasn't been
tested or anything; it might even let go on the catapult when you try
to drop it. And we simply can't afford to lose you, now."

"No, what would become of us, if you go out there and blow yourself up
with that contraption?" Buhrmann supported him. "My God, I thought Don
Quixote was a Spaniard, instead of a German!"

"Argentino," von Schlichten corrected. "And don't try to sell me that
Irreplaceable-Man, either. Them M'zangwe can replace me, Hid O'Leary
can replace him, Barney Mordkovitz can replace him, and so on down to
where you make a second lieutenant out of some sergeant. We've been
all over this last evening. Admitted we can't take time for a long
string of test-shots, and admitted we have to use an untested weapon;
I'm not sending men out under those circumstances and staying here on
this ship and watch them blow themselves up. If that bomb's our only
hope, it's got to be dropped right, and I'm not going to take a chance
on having it dropped by a crew who think they've been sent out on a
suicide mission. What happened to the _Gaucho_ when she blew the
_Smuts_ up is too fresh in everybody's mind. But if I, who ordered
the mission, accompany it, they'll know I have some confidence that
they'll come back alive."

* * * * *

"Well, I'm coming along, too, general," Kent Pickering spoke up. "I
made the damned thing, and I ought to be along when it's dropped, on
the principle that a restaurant-proprietor ought to be seen eating his
own food once in a while."

"I still don't see why we couldn't have made at least one test shot,
first," Hans Meyerstein, the Banking Cartel man, objected.

"Well, I'll tell you why," Paula Quinton spoke up. "There's a good
chance that the geeks don't know we have a bomb of our own. They may
believe that it was something invented on Niflheim for mining
purposes, and that we haven't realized its military application.
There's more than a good chance that the loss of the _Jan Smuts_ has
temporarily demoralized them. Personally, I believe that both King
Orgzild and Prince Gorkrink were aboa