It’s a blueprint of a German parts list, reproduced so crummy he can hardly read the words—“Vorrichtung für die Isolierung, 0011-5565/43,” now what’s this? He knows the number by heart, it’s the original contract number for the A4 rocket as a whole. What’s an “insulation device” doing with the Aggregat’s contract number? And a DE rating too, the highest Nazi priority there is? Not good. Either a clerk at OKW fucked up, which is not unheard-of, or else he just didn’t know the number, and put the rocket’s in as the next best thing. Claim, part and work numbers all have the same flagnote, which directs Slothrop to a Document SG-1. Flagnote on the flagnote sez “Geheime Kommandosache! This is a state secret, in the meaning of § 35 R5138.”

“Say,” he greets General Wivern nipping in through the door, “like to get ahold of a copy of that Document SG-1.”

“Haw, haw,” replies the General. “So would our chaps, I imagine.”

“Quit fooling.” Every piece of Allied intelligence on the A4, however classified, gets stuffed into a secret funnel back in London and all comes out in Slothrop’s fancy cell at the Casino. So far they’ve held back nothing.

“Slothrop, there are no ‘SG’ documents.”

First impulse is to rattle the parts list in the man’s face, but today he is the shrewd Yankee foxing the redcoats. “Oh. Well, maybe I read it wrong,” making believe look around the paper-littered room, “maybe it was a ‘56’ or something, jeepers it was just here… .”

The General goes away again. Leaving Slothrop with a puzzle, kind of a, well not an obsession really… not yet… Opposite the parts listing, over in the Materials column now, here’s “Imipolex G.” Oh really. Insulation device made of Imipolex G eh? He kicks around the room looking for his handbook of German trade names. Nothing even close to it there… he locates next a master materials list for the A4 and all its support equipment, and there’s sure no Imipolex G in that either. Scales and claws, and footfalls no one else seems to hear… .

“Something wrong?” Hilary Bounce again, with his nose in the doorway.

“It’s about this liquid oxygen, need some more of that specific impulse data, there.”

“Specific… do you mean specific thrust?”

“Oops, thrust, thrust,” English English to the rescue, Bounce diverted:

“For LOX and alcohol it’s about 200. What more do you need to know?”

“But didn’t you chaps use petrol at Langhurst?”

“Among other things, yes.”

“Well it’s about those other things. Don’t you know there’s a war on? You can’t be proprietary about stuff like that.”

“But all our company reports are back in London, Perhaps my next time out—”

“Shit, this red tape. I need it now, Cap’n!” He goes around assuming they’ve assigned him a limitless Need To Know, and Bounce confirms it:

“I could send back by teletype, I suppose… .”