uldn't with him married, and all
that. It's not right. But it's different, with Susan such a mean
thing. Poor Petey...._

Riuku prodded. He found it so much easier since the Shielding boost.
If only these Earthmen were more telepathic, so that they could be
controlled directly. Still, perhaps with this new integration he could
accomplish the same results. He prodded again.

"Pete," Alice said suddenly. "What are we working on, anyway?"

"What do you mean, working on?" He frowned at her.

"At the plant. All I ever do is sit there soldering plugs, and no one
ever tells me what for."

"Course not. You're not supposed to talk about any part of the job
except your own. You know that. The slip of a lip--"

"Can cost Earth a ship. I know. Quit spouting poster talk at me, Pete
Ganley. The enemy isn't even human. And there aren't any around here."

Pete looked over at her. She was pouting, the upper lip drawn under
the lower. Someone must have told her that was cute. Well, so what--it
was cute.

"What makes you think I know anything more than you do?" he said.

"Well, gee." She looked up at him, so near to her in the moonlight
that she wondered why she wanted to talk about the plant anyway.
"You're in Final Assembly, aren't you? You check the whatsits before
they go out."

"Sure," he said. No harm in telling her. No spies now, not in this
kind of war. Besides, she was too dumb to know anything.

"It's a simple enough gadget," Pete Ganley said. "A new type of force
field weapon that the enemy can't spot until it hits them. They don't
even know there's an Earth ship within a million miles, until
_Bingo_!..."

She drank it in, and in her mind Riuku did too. Wonderful integration,
wonderful. Partial thought control. And now, he'd learn the secret....

"You really want to know how it works?" Pete Ganley said. When she
nodded he couldn't help grinning. "Well, it's analogous to the field
set up by animal neurones, in a way. You've just got to damp that
field, and not only damp it but blot it out, so that the frequency
shows nothing at all there, and then--well, that's where those
Corcoran assemblies you're soldering on come in. You produce the
field...."

Alice Hendricks listened. For some reason she wanted to listen. She
was really curious about the field. But, gee, how did he expect her to
understand all that stuff? He sounded like her algebra teacher, or was
it chemistry? Lord, how she'd hated school. Maybe she sho