ainly! This is magnificent, Soames!_"

"If you can get it working and in production before hell breaks loose,"
said Soames, "you may deserve well of the republic."

"_Where are you, Soames? We need you on several matters--_"

Soames hung up. His call, of course, could be traced. He'd travelled two
hundred miles so that tracing it would do no good. He returned to where
Fran dangled his legs from the back saddle of the motorbike, and they
headed back to Calumet Lake for a few more days of peace and quiet.

CHAPTER 10

Soames made his long-distance call on a Monday, when war seemed likely
to come perhaps within hours. All day Monday the tension continued.
Traffic jams became the normal thing outside the larger cities, which
would be logical targets for long-range missiles. Every means of travel
away from the great population centers was loaded far beyond capacity.

On Tuesday afternoon national guard troops had been called out in ten
states to keep traffic moving.

At Calumet Lake, however, there was no notable change. Soames and Fran
still went fishing. In the boat Fran sometimes shut his eyes and pressed
the end of one of the tiny sensory-perception communicators he had made.
He turned it on for no longer than a second at a time. If he made
contact with one of the other children he was prepared to speak
swiftly--so they could hear his voice as he did--to assure them that he
was safe and to ask for news of Zani and Mal and Hod, and Gail. He could
do it very quickly indeed. Soames had insisted on only instants of
communicator-use.

"Maybe those gadgets can be directionally spotted," he said. "Security
wants you, Fran. If there's a way to get a directional fix on you,
they'll find it! So, make it short!"

On Thursday morning all broadcasts broke off to report that the DEW line
of radars across Canada had reported objects in the air moving across
the North Pole toward the United States. America clenched its fists and
waited for missiles to strike or be blasted by counter-missiles, as fate
or chance might determine. Twenty minutes later a correction came. The
radar-detected objects had not been missiles, but aircraft flying in
formation. They'd changed course and returned to their bases. They were
probably foreign fighter-planes patrolling far beyond their usual range.

Soames had held his breath with the rest of the country. He was just
beginning to breathe freely again when Fran came running from the
week