t all the experience they've had."

"But we've got to have a ship. Everything depends on that."

"I know it does. We'll get a ship. Let Kurt Fawzi and Klem Zareff and
the rest of them have this duplicate Force Command thing first,
though. Keep them happy. As soon as we have that opened, you can take
a gang and run over to Barathrum and grab your spaceport. Wait till
they find out that Merlin isn't at Force Command Duplicate. Then you
can convince them it's really on Koshchei."

VI

The car Rodney Maxwell got out of the hangar the next morning wasn't
the one he and Conn had gone to the meeting in; it was the one he had
flown in from Tenth Army HQ at noon of the previous day. An Army
reconnaissance job, slim and needlelike, completely enclosed, looking
more like a missile than a vehicle, and armored in dazzling,
iridescent collapsium. There was something to living on Poictesme, at
that; only a millionaire on Terra could have owned a car like that.

"Nice," Conn said. "Where did you dig it?"

"Where we're going, Tenth Army."

"I'll bet she'll do Mach Three."

"Better than that. I've never had her above 2.5, but the airspeed
gauge is marked up to four. And she has everything: all kinds of
detection instruments, cameras, audiovisual pickups, armament. And
the armor; you can take her through any kind of radiation."

The armor was only a couple of micromicrons thick, but it would stop
anything. It was collapsed matter, the electron shells of the atoms
collapsed upon the nuclei, the atoms in actual contact. That plating
made eighth-inch sheet steel as heavy as twelve-inch armor plate, and
in texture and shielding properties, lead was like sponge by
comparison.

They climbed in, and Rodney Maxwell snapped on the screens that served
as windows. Conn leaned back and looked at the underside view in a
screen on the roof of the car, as his father started the lift-engine.

"Still think it's worth the price, son?" his father asked.

The price had begun to rise; even so, he was afraid that what they had
paid so far was only the down payment. Dinner last evening. Flora, who
had evidently been talking to Wade Lucas, shouting accusations at
them; his mother fleeing from the table in tears. As the car rose, he
reached out and turned on and adjusted the telescreen for the
under-view.

"Keep your eye on that, Father," he said. "That's what we're paying to
get rid of."

A distillery, bigger than the Menardes plant, lo