emble as she steadied
herself against the desk, and sat down beside him. He felt a great
confusion, suddenly, a vast sympathy for this girl, and he wanted to
take her in his arms, hold her close, _protect_ her, somehow. She didn't
know, she _couldn't_ know about this horrible thing. She couldn't have
been a party to it, a part of it. He knew the evidence said yes, she
knows the whole story, she _helped_ them, but he also knew that the
evidence, somehow, was wrong, that somehow, he still didn't have the
whole picture--

She looked at him, her voice trembling. "You're wrong, Tom," she said.

He shook his head, helplessly. "I'm sorry. It's horrible, I know. But
I'm not wrong. This war was planned. We've been puppets on strings, and
one man engineered it, from the very start. Your father."

Her eyes were filled with tears, and she shook her head, running a tired
hand across her forehead. "You didn't know him, Tom. If you did, you'd
know how wrong you are. He was a great man, fine man, but above all he
was a _good_ man. Only a monster could have done what you're thinking.
Dad hated war, he fought it all his life. He couldn't be the monster you
think."

Tom's voice was soft in the darkened room, his eyes catching the
downcast face of the trembling girl, fighting to believe in a phantom,
and his hatred for the power that could trample a faith like that
suddenly swelled up in bitter hopeless rage. "It's here, on paper, it
can't be denied. It's hateful, but it's here, it's what I set out to
learn. It's not a lie this time, Ann, it's the truth, and this time it's
_got to be told_. I've written my last false story. This one is going to
the people the way it is. This one is going to be the truth."

He stopped, staring at her. The puzzling, twisted hole in the puzzle was
suddenly there, staring him in the face, falling down into place in his
mind with blazing clarity. Staring, he dived into the pile of papers
again, searching, frantically searching for the missing piece, something
he had seen, and passed over, the one single piece in the story that
didn't make sense. And he found it, on the lists of materials shipped to
the Nevada plant. Pig Iron. Raw magnesium. Raw copper. Steel, electron
tubes, plastics, from all parts of the country, all being shipped to the
Dartmouth Plant in Nevada--

_Where they made only_ shells--

At first he thought it was only a rumble in his mind, the shocking
realization storming through. Then he