"Finished." The head of the team waved for Fromm to look. The stainless-steel blank came off the machine easily, and he handed it to Fromm. It was thirty centimeters in length. The shape was complex, what one would get from taking a large water tumbler and bending its top outside and down towards the base. It would not hold water because of a hole in the center of what might have been the bottom - actually it would, Fromm told himself a second later, just in the wrong way. The blank weighed about three kilograms, and every surface was mirror-smooth. He held it up to the light to check for imperfections and irregularities. His eyes were not that good. The quality of the finish was easier to understand mathematically than visually. The surface, so said the machine, was accurate to a thousandth of a micron, or a fraction of a single wavelength of light.

"It is a jewel," Ghosn observed, standing behind Fromm. The machinist beamed.

"Adequate." was Fromm's judgment. He looked at the machinist. "When you've made five more equally as good, I will be satisfied. Every metal segment must be of this quality. Begin another," he told the machinist. Fromm handed the blank to Ghosn and walked away.

"Infidel," the machinist growled under his breath.

"Yes, he is," Ghosn agreed. "But he is the most skilled man I have ever met."

"I'd rather work for a Jew."

"This is magnificent work," Ghosn said, to change the subject.

"I would not have believed it possible to polish metal so precisely. This machine is incredible. I could make anything with it."

"That is good. Make another of these," Ghosn told him with a smile.

"As you say."

Ghosn walked to Qati's room. The Commander was looking at a plate of simple foods, but unable to touch it for fear of retching.

"Perhaps this will make you feel better," Ghosn told him.

"That is?" Qati said, taking it.

"That is what the plutonium will look like."

"Like glass "

"Smoother than that. Smooth enough for a laser mirror. I could tell you the accuracy of the surface, but you've never seen anything that small in your life anyway. Fromm is a genius."

"He's an arrogant, overbearing -"

"Yes, Commander, he is all of that, but he is exactly the man we need. I could never have done this myself. Perhaps, given a year or two, perhaps I might have been able to rework that Israeli bomb into something that would work - the problems were far more complex than I knew only a few weeks ago. But this Fromm what I am learning from him! By the time we are finished, I will be able to do it again on my own!"

"Really?"

"Commander, do you know what engineering is?" Ghosn asked. "It is like cooking. If you have the right recipe, the right book, and the right ingredients, anyone can do it. Certainly this task is a hard one, but the principle holds. You must know how to use the various mathematical formulae, but they are all in books also. It is merely a question of education. With computers, the proper tools - and a good teacher, which this Fromm bastard is "