nt like a giant computer,
but the voice ignored my questions on that point and didn't fall into
the couple of crude conversational traps I tried to set. We were to drop
the cubes when told, that was all. Pop had the box of them closed again
and rigged to the parachute--he took over that job because Alice and me
were busy with other things when the instructions on that came
through--and he was told how to open the door of the plane for the drop
(you just held your hand steadily on a point beside the door), but, as I
say, that was all.

Naturally it occurred to me that once we had made the drop, Atla-Hi
would have no more use for us and might simply let us be destroyed by
Savannah or otherwise--perhaps _want_ us to be destroyed--so that it
might be wisest for us to refuse to make the drop when the signal came
and hang onto those myriad steel cubes as our only bargaining point.
Still, I could see no advantage to refusing _before_ the signal came.
I'd have liked to discuss the point with Alice and maybe Pop too, but
apparently everything we said, even whispered, could be overheard by
Atla-Hi. (We never did determine, incidentally, whether Atla-Hi could
_see_ into the cabin of the plane also. I don't believe they could,
though they sure had it bugged for sound.)

All in all, we found out almost nothing about Atla-Hi. In fact, three
witless germs traveling in a cabin in an iron filing wasn't a bad
description of us at all. As I often say of my deductive
faculties--think--shmink! But Atla-Hi (always meaning, of course, the
personality behind the voice from the screen) found out all it wanted
about us--and apparently knew a good deal to start with. For one thing,
they must have been tracking our plane for some time, because they
guessed it was on automatic and that we could reverse its course but
nothing else. Though they seemed under the impression that we could
reverse its course to Los Alamos, not the cracking plant. Here obviously
I did get a nugget of new data, though it was just about the only one.
For a moment the voice from the screen got real unguarded--anxious as it
asked, "Do you know if it is true that they have stopped dying at Los
Alamos, or are they merely broadcasting that to cheer us up?"

I answered, "Oh yes, they're all fine," to that, but I couldn't have
made it very convincing, because the next thing I knew the voice was
getting me to admit that we'd only boarded the plane somewhere in the
Central Deathl