ly: "When
will your work crew get here?"

"Early--but not yet," said Joe. "Not for some time yet."

"Go with the pilot," said the Major. "You'd recognize what Braun meant
as soon as anybody. See what you see."

Joe stood up.

"You--think the tip is straight?"

"This isn't the first time," said Major Holt detachedly, "that a man has
been blackmailed into trying sabotage. If he's got a family somewhere
abroad, and they're threatened with death or torture unless he does
such-and-such here, he's in a bad fix. It's happened. Of course he can't
tell me! He's watched. But he sometimes finds an out."

Joe was puzzled. His face showed it.

"He can try to do the sabotage," said the Major precisely, "or he can
arrange to be caught trying to do it. If he's caught--he tried; and the
blackmail threat is no threat at all so long as he keeps his mouth shut.
Which he does. And--ah--you would be surprised how often a man who
wasn't born in the United States would rather go to prison for sabotage
than commit it--here."

Joe blinked.

"If your friend Braun is caught," said the Major, "he will be punished.
Severely. Officially. But privately, someone will--ah--mention this tip
and say 'thanks.' And he'll be told that he will be released from prison
just as soon as he thinks it's safe. And he will be. That's all."

He turned to his papers. Joe went out. On the way to meet the pilot
who'd check on his tip, he thought things over. He began to feel a sort
of formless but very definite pride. He wasn't quite sure what he was
proud of, but it had something to do with being part of a country toward
which men of wholly different upbringing could feel deep loyalty. If a
man who was threatened unless he turned traitor, a man who might not
even be a citizen, arranged to be caught and punished for an apparent
crime against a country rather than commit it--that wasn't bad. There
can be a lot of things wrong with a nation, but if somebody from another
one entirely can come to feel that kind of loyalty toward it--well--it's
not too bad a country to belong to.

Joe had a security guard with him this time, instead of Sally, as he
went across the vast, arc-lit interior of the Shed and past the
shimmering growing monster that was the Platform. He went all the way to
the great swinging doors that let in materials trucks. And there were
guards there, and they checked each driver very carefully before they
admitted his truck. But somehow it wasn't