the ugly-handsome face that had
been battered up by football and boxing in college, trying to fathom the
thoughts beneath the broad forehead and the receding hairline.

"You got any idea what this _really_ means, Matt?" he asked after a
second.

Fisher's blue-gray eyes widened almost imperceptibly, and his gaze
sharpened. "Not until just this moment," he said.

Cannon looked suddenly puzzled. "What do you mean?"

"Well," Fisher said thoughtfully, "you wouldn't ask me unless it meant
something more than appears on the surface." He grinned rather
apologetically. "I'm sorry, Jim; it takes a second or two to reconstruct
exactly what _did_ go through my mind." His grin faded into a thoughtful
frown. "Anyway, you asked me, and since you're head of the Committee on
SPACE Travel and Exploration--" He spread his hands in a gesture that
managed to convey both futility and apology. "The mystery spacecraft is
ours," he said decisively.

James Cannon wiped a palm over his forehead and sat down heavily on one
of the beds. "Right. Sit down. Fine. Now; listen: We--the United
States--have a space drive that compares to the rocket in the same way
that the jet engine compares to the horse. We've been keeping it under
wraps that are comparable to those the Manhattan Project was kept under
'way back during World War II. Maybe more so. But--" He stopped,
watching Fisher's face. Then: "Can you see it from there?"

"I think so," Fisher said. "The Soviet Government knows that we have
something ... in fact, they've known it for a long time. They don't know
what, though." He found a heavy briar in his pocket, pulled it out, and
began absently stuffing it with tobacco from a pouch he'd pulled out
with the pipe. "Our ship didn't shoot at their base. Couldn't, wouldn't
have. Um. They shot it down to try to look it over. Purposely made a
near-miss with an atomic warhead." He struck a match and puffed the pipe
alight.

"Hm-m-m. The Soviet Government," he went on, "must have known that we
had something 'way back when they signed the Greenston Agreement."
Fisher blew out a cloud of smoke. "They wanted to change the wording of
that, as I remember."

"That's right," Cannon said. "We wanted it to read that 'any advances in
_rocket engineering_ shall be shared equally among the Members of the
United Nations', but the Soviet delegation wanted to change that to 'any
advances in _space travel_'. We only beat them out by a verbal quibble;
we insisted