cket and
showed it to them.

"This is a weapon strange to you. But it is effective at this range.
Please don't make me use it."

"But what do you want?" Copperd asked.

"I want you to take a ride with me. In your car."

I let them put on their coats and then we walked out onto the porch and
down the stairs. Across the street the security agent barely glanced at
us. Then we got into Copperd's car, Beth and he in the front seat and I
in the back. I told him in which direction to go.

At the outskirts of town we lost the car that was following us. I had
planned this part of it perfectly. We pulled into a side road and turned
off our lights. The agent went right past us.

"What is it you want of me?" Copperd said as we started up again.

"We want to have a long discussion with you about some matters on which
you are an authority."

"And that's what this whole affair with me was for? So that you could
get to my father!" Beth said accusingly. I saw her shoulders shake.

"Yes. Now turn off here."

We turned off the main road and followed a rutted trail onto an old
farm.

The farmhouse was a wreck, but the barn still good. Our ship was in
there.

The door opened as we walked toward the barn. Ristal's tall figure was
framed in the doorway, and behind him stood Kresh, broad and ungainly.
The others crowded up behind them.

"Good work, Marko," Ristal said. We went into the ship, which filled the
whole interior of the barn.

"This is Commander Ristal, of the Venusian Intelligence," I told Copperd
and Beth.

"What's _your_ official title?" Beth asked bitterly.

"I am a special agent and language expert," I told her. Then I explained
why I had brought them here.

"Our civilization is in some way far in advance of yours. As you see, we
have mastered interplanetary travel. But it is essentially a peaceful
civilization. Our weapons, such as we have, are of limited range and
power.

"When it became known that Earth was developing monstrous weapons of
aggression we realized that we must be prepared for the worst. There was
only one way to discover what you already had and what you were working
on. Once we arrived here we found that a man named Copperd was the prime
figure in his country's atomic weapons research. It became our duty to
seek him out."

"I see," Copperd grunted. "And now you expect me to reveal secrets which
I am bound by oath to protect with my very life?"

"You will reveal them," Ristal told him