Slothrop swings the long keychain of his zoot, in some agitation. A few things are immediately obvious. There is even more being zeroed in on him from out there than he’d thought, even in his most paranoid spells. Imipolex G shows up on a mysterious “insulation device” on a rocket being fired with the help of a transmitter on the roof of the headquarters of Dutch Shell, who is co-licensee for marketing the Imipolex—a rocket whose propulsion system bears an uncanny resemblance to one developed by British Shell at around the same time… and oh, oh boy, it just occurs to Slothrop now where all the rocket intelligence is being gathered—into the office of who but Mr. Duncan Sandys, Churchill’s own son-in-law, who works out of the Ministry of Supply located where but at Shell Mex House, for Christ’s sake… .

Here Slothrop stages a brilliant Commando raid, along with faithful companion Blodgett Waxwing, on Shell Mex House itself—right into the heart of the Rocket’s own branch office in London. Mowing down platoons of heavy security with his little Sten, kicking aside nubile and screaming WRAC secretaries (how else is there to react, even in play?), savagely looting files, throwing Molotov cocktails, the Zootsuit Zanies at last crashing into the final sanctum with their trousers up around their armpits, smelling of singed hair, spilled blood, to find not Mr. Duncan Sandys cowering before their righteousness, nor open window, gypsy flight, scattered fortune cards, nor even a test of wills with the great Consortium itself—but only a rather dull room, business machines arrayed around the walls calmly blinking, files of cards pierced frail as sugar faces, frail as the last German walls standing without support after the bombs have been and now twisting high above, threatening to fold down out of the sky from the force of the wind that has blown the smoke away… . The smell of firearms is in the air, and there’s not an office dame in sight. The machines chatter and ring to each other. It’s time to snap down your brims, share a postviolence cigarette and think about escape… do you remember the way in, all the twists and turns? No. You weren’t looking. Any of these doors might open you to safety, but there may not be time… .

But Duncan Sandys is only a name, a function in this, “How high does it go?” is not even the right kind of question to be asking, because the organization charts have all been set up by Them, the titles and names filled in by Them, because

Proverbs for Paranoids, 3: If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about answers.

Slothrop finds he has paused in front of the blue parts list that started all this. How high does it go… ahhhh. The treacherous question is not meant to apply to people after all, but to the hardware! Squinting, moving a finger carefully down the columns, Slothrop finds that Vorrichtung für die Isolierung’s Next Higher Assembly.