"Do you have confidence in him?" Mancuso asked.

"Technically he's very good. Engineering-wise, he's brilliant. He just doesn't know people and he doesn't know tactics."

"He told me he wants to prove otherwise. Can he?"

"Sir, you're going too far now. I don't know that I have the right to answer that."

Mancuso knew it was true, but pressed on anyway. "You're supposed to be qualified for command, Dutch. Get used to making some hard calls."

"Can he do it? Yes, sir. We have a good boat and a good crew. What he can't do the rest of us will do for him."

The Commodore nodded and went silent for a moment. "If you have any trouble with your next FitRep, I want to know about it. I think you may be a better XO than he's entitled to, Commander."

"Sir, he's not a bad guy. I hear he's a good father and all that. His wife's a sweetie. It's just that he never learned to handle people, and nobody ever bothered teaching him right. Despite that he is a capable officer. If he'd only give an inch on the humanity side, he'd be a real star."

"Are you comfortable with your op-orders?"

"If we sniff out an Akula to go in and track him - safe distance and all that. Am I comfortable? Hell, yes. Come on, Commodore, we're so quiet there's not a thing to worry about. I was surprised Washington approved this thing, and all, but that's bureaucratic stuff. The short version is, anybody can drive this boat. Okay, maybe Cap'n Ricks isn't perfect, but unless our boat breaks, Popeye could do the mission."

They put the Secondary assembly in before the Primary. The collection of lithium compounds was contained in a metal cylinder roughly the size of a 105mm artillery casing, sixty-five centimeters high and eleven centimeters in diameter. It even had a rim machined on the bottom end so that it would fit exactly the right spot. There was a small curved tube at the bottom that attached to what would soon be the tritium reservoir. On the outside of the casing were the fins made of spent 238U. They looked like rows of thick, black soda crackers, Fromm thought. Their mission, of course, was to be immolated to plasma. Beneath the cylinder were the first bundles of 'soda-straws' - even Fromm was calling them that now, though they actually were not; they were of the wrong diameter. Sixty centimeters in length, each bundle of a hundred was held together by thin but strong plastic spacers, and the bottom of each had been given a half-turn to make each bundle into a helix, a shape rather like that of a spiral staircase. The hard part in this segment of the design was to arrange the helixes to nest together perfectly. Seemingly trivial, it had taken fully two days for Fromm to figure out, but as with all aspects of his design, the pieces all fit into proper place until that portion of the design seemed a perfectly assembled mass of soda straws. It almost made the German laugh. With tape measure, micrometer, and an expert eye - gradation marks had been machined into many of the parts, a small detail that had impressed Ghosn very greatly indeed. When Fromm was satisfied, they went on. First came the plastic foam blocks, each cut to precise specifications. They fit into the elliptical bomb-case. Ghosn and Fromm were now doing all the work. Slowly, carefully, they eased the first block into place within the flanges on the interior of the case. The straw bundles came next, one at a time, nesting perfectly with those immediately under them. At every step both men stopped to check the work. Fromm and Ghosn both checked the work, checked the plans, checked the work again, and checked the plans again.