hile he looked at it. "Well," he said hesitatingly,
"I don't want to say for certain. After all these details aren't in my
department, I'm just responsible for final assembly, not unit work. But
this surely looks like the thing they installed. Big thing. Lots of
power leads--"

It was a battleship all right, no doubt of that now. I was mentally
reaching around to pat myself on the back when the meaning of his words
sank in.

"Installed!" I shouted. "Did you say installed?"

Rocca collapsed away from my roar and gnawed his nails. "Yes--" he said,
"not too long ago. I remember there was some trouble...."

"And what else!" I interrupted him. Cold moisture was beginning to
collect along my spine now. "The drives, controls--are they in, too?"

"Why, yes," he said. "How did you know? The normal scheduling was
changed around, causing a great deal of unnecessary trouble."

The cold sweat was now a running river of fear. I was beginning to have
the feeling that I had been missing the boat all along the line. The
original estimated date of completion was nearly a year away. But there
was no real reason why that couldn't be changed, too.

"Cars! Guns!" I bellowed. "To the spaceyard. If that ship is anywhere
near completion, we are in big, _big_ trouble!"

* * * * *

All the bored guards had a great time with the sirens, lights,
accelerators on the floor and that sort of thing. We blasted a screaming
hole through the night right to the spaceyard and through the gate.

It didn't make any difference, we were still too late. A uniformed
watchman frantically waved to us and the whole convoy jerked to a stop.

The ship was gone.

Rocca couldn't believe it, neither could the president. They wandered up
and down the empty ways where it had been built. I just crunched down in
the back of the car, chewing my cigar to pieces and cursing myself for
being a fool.

I had missed the obvious fact, being carried away by the thought of a
planetary government building a warship. The government was involved for
sure--but only as a pawn. No little planet-bound political mind could
have dreamed up as big a scheme as this. I smelled a rat--a stainless
steel one. Someone who operated the way I had done before my conversion.

Now that the rodent was well out of the bag I knew just where to look,
and had a pretty good idea of what I would find. Rocca, the spaceyard
manager, had staggered back and was pulling a