'Seeing they stayed at home in both world wars they're about due for a token blood letting,' he replied callously. 'Besides, if the egg were dropped among those mountains its effects would be localized. A small town or two, some villages, a few thousand yodellers and tourists would take the rap; but that'd be no price at all to pay if it deprived the East and the West of the power to blow one another to pieces.'

'Looked at that way,' Mary admitted after a moment, 'perhaps there would be a case for martyring several thousand people. After all, hundreds of thousands were massacred by the Nazis with no benefit to anyone. Perhaps if one could definitely save all the great cities of Europe and America, and the millions and millions of people who live in them from a terrible death, it would be justifiable. All the same, to kill men, women and children en-masse like that would be an awful thing to do.'

'I've no inhibitions about killing,' he asserted cheerfully. 'And remember, if the two big boys do get to pulling their guns there'll be mighty little left in the world that'll be worth having. Those of us who aren't disintegrated instanter or scheduled to stagger around for a few days, without teeth and our hair dropped out, will be left pretty near where you Anglo-Saxons started. For a generation or two maybe worse; anyway, for a time it's certain to be as simple as dog eat dog.'

Mary sighed. 'What a gloomy picture! And it doesn't seem that your imaginative idea for preventing an atomic war would lead in the long run to a situation that was much better. It would simply open the gate for the Russians to walk in.'

'Sure, but wouldn't that be better than death or going back to nature?'

'I'm not certain that it would.'

'It certainly would for ninety per cent of the folk who make up the population of the Western Powers. The other ten would be for the high jump or Siberia, but that's their funeral.'

'As an Air Force Colonel you'd be among them.'

'Not me, honey. As a servant of the Lord of this World I've an international ticket to the easy life in any country. That would go for you too. The Brothers of the Ram would see to it that little Sister Circe didn't lack for potatoes.'

She gave him a smile. 'Well, if it ever looks like happening, that will be nice to know. You seem to have forgotten one thing, though. This career you're so keen on would be finished; that is, unless you could get yourself taken on in the Soviet Air Force.'

'My career's finished anyhow, I'm on my way out now.' He spoke with such sudden bitterness that she momentarily felt a touch of sympathy for him, and said: