the
surface; from the plans, I'd say they just dug a big pit, built the
headquarters in it, and filled it in. There are two entrances, a
vertical shaft and a horizontal tunnel."

"When they pulled out, they probably filled the shaft and vitrified
the rock at the outer ends," his father added. "That was what they did
at Tenth Army."

Another idea hit him. "Mr. Mayor, do you think you could set up some
kind of a public-works program here in Litchfield? We can't start this
till after the wine-pressing's over, and we'll need a lot of labor, as
I pointed out. Now, it's important that we keep all our projects a
secret until we can get our claims filed. If we start this municipal
fix-up-and-clean-up program, we can give work to a lot of these
drifters who haven't been able to get jobs on the plantations, get
them organized into gangs, and keep them together till we're ready for
the Force Command job."

Lorenzo Menardes supported the idea. "And while they were boondoggling
around in Litchfield, we could pick out the best workers, get rid of
the incompetents, and train a few supervisors. That's going to be one
of our worst headaches; getting capable supervisors."

"You telling me?" Rodney Maxwell asked. "That was what I was wondering
about: where we'd get gang-bosses. And another thing; this municipal
housecleaning would mask our real preparations."

"Well, we need something like that," Fawzi said. "We've needed it for
a long time. I guess it took Conn, coming home from Terra, to see how
badly we've let the town get run down. Franz, suppose you and Tom
Brangwyn and Lorenzo form a committee on that. Look around, see what
needs fixing up worst, and set up a project. Who's city engineer now?"

"Abe O'Leary; he died six years ago," Dawes said. "You never appointed
his successor."

"Well, I guess I never got around to that," the mayor of Litchfield
admitted.

When the meeting finally adjourned, they went up and got in the car;
his father lifted it straight up to thirty thousand feet and started
circling. An aircar was one place where they could talk safely.

"Conn, I was kind of worried, down there. You were being a little too
positive. You know, you're only twenty-three. As long as you agree
with those people, you're a brilliant young man; you start getting
ideas of your own, and you're just a half-baked kid. You let the older
and wiser heads run things. You can't begin to hope to foul things up
the way they can. Look a