“How long will it take you to test, construct, and install the system?”

Donner didn’t hesitate. “Sixteen months, one week.”

“How far can you proceed without byzanium?”

“Right up to the final stage,” Donner answered.

The President tilted back in his chair and gazed at a ship’s clock that sat on his massive desk. He said nothing for nearly a full minute. Finally he said, “As I see it, gentlemen, you want me to bankroll you into building a multimillion dollar, unproven, untested, complex system that won’t operate because we lack the primary ingredient which we may have to steal from an unfriendly nation.”

Seagram fidgeted with his briefcase while Donner merely nodded.

“Suppose you tell me,” the President continued, “how I explain a maze of these installations stretching around the country’s perimeters to some tight-fisted liberal in Congress who gets it in his head to investigate?”

“That’s the beauty of the system,” said Seagram. “It’s small and it’s compact. The computers tell us that a building constructed along the lines of a small power station will do the job nicely. Neither the Russian spy satellites nor a farmer living next door will detect anything out of the ordinary.”

The President rubbed his chin. “Why do you want to jump the gun on the Sicilian Project before you’re one hundred-per-cent ready?”

“We’re gambling, sir,” said Donner. “We’re gambling that in the next sixteen months we can either make a breakthrough and produce byzanium in the laboratory or find a deposit we can extract somewhere on earth.”

“Even if it takes us ten years,” Seagram blurted, “the installations would be in and waiting. Our only loss would be time.”

The President stood up. “Gentlemen, I’ll go along with your science-fiction scheme, but on one condition. You have exactly eighteen months and ten days. That’s when the new man, whoever he may be, takes over my job. So if you want to keep your sugar daddy happy until then, get me some results.”

The two men across the desk went limp.

At last Seagram managed to speak. “Thank you, Mr. President. Somehow, some way, the team will bring in the mother lode. You can count on it.”

“Good. Now if you’ll excuse me. I have to pose in the Rose Garden with a bunch of fat old Daughters of the American Revolution.” He held out his hand. “Good luck, and remember, don’t screw up your undercover operations. I don’t want another Eisenhower U-2 spy mission to blow up in my face. Understood?”

Before Seagram and Donner could answer, he had turned walked out a side door.

Donner’s Chevrolet was passed through the White House gates. He eased into the mainstream of traffic and headed across the Potomac into Virginia. He was almost afraid to look in the rear view mirror for fear that the President might change his mind and send a messenger to chase them down with a rejection. He rolled down the window and breathed in the humid summer air.