“I’m not permitted to know anything,” he said at last. “But is curiosity allowed? An extra five hundred men aren’t much. I suppose given a few airplanes and so on, a thousand of us could plant atomic bombs where enemy cities will be. Or could we? Can’t locate them without astronomical studies first, and it’s always clouded here. So it would be practical to booby trap only with mass-action weapons. A few husky cobalt bombs, say. But there are missiles available to deliver those in the twentieth century. So…what is the purpose?”

“You will learn the facts in due course,” answered Symonds. “At present, the government has certain military necessities.”

“Haw!” said Herries. He folded his arms and leaned against the roofpost. It sagged a bit…shoddy work, shoddy world, shoddy destiny. “Military horses’ necks! I’d like to get one of those prawn-eyed brass hats down here, just for a week, to run his precious security check on a lovesick brontosaur. But I’ll probably get another visit from Senator Lardhead, the one who took up two days of my time walking around asking about the possibilities of farming. Farming!”

“Senator Wien is from an agricultural state. Naturally he would be interested—”

“—in making sure that nobody here starts raising food and shipping it back home to bring grocery prices down to where people can afford an occasional steak. Sure. I’ll bet it cost us a thousand man-hours to make his soil tests and tell him, yes, given the proper machinery this land could be farmed. Of course, maybe I do him an injustice. Senator Wien is also on the Military Affairs Committee, isn’t he? He may have visited us in that capacity, and soon we’ll all get a directive to start our own little Victory gardens.”

“Your language is close to being subversive,” declared Symonds out of prune-wrinkled lips. “Senator Wien is a famous statesman.”

For a moment the legislator’s face rose in Herries’ memory; and it had been the oldest and most weary face he had ever known. Something had burned out in the man who had fought a decade for honorable peace; the knowledge that there was no peace and could be none became a kind of death, and Senator Wien dropped out of his Free World Union organization to arm his land for Ragnarok. Briefly, his anger fading, Herries pitied Senator Wien. And the President, and the Chief of Staff, and the Secretary of State, for their work must be like a nightmare where you strangled your mother and could not stop your hands. It was easier to fight dinosaurs.

He even pitied Symonds, until he asked if his request for an atomic weapon had finally been okayed, and Symonds replied, “Certainly not.” Then he spat at the clerk’s feet and walked out into the rain.

* * *

After the shipment and guards were seen to, Herries dismissed his men. There was an uneasy buzz among them at the abnormality of what had arrived; but today was mail day, after all, and they did not ponder it long. He would not make the announcement about the new orders until tomorrow. He got the magazines and newspapers to which he subscribed (no one up there “now” cared enough to write to him, though his parents had existed in a section of spacetime which ended only a year before he took this job) and wandered off to the boss barge to read a little.