"Curiosity has very little to do with it. As you'll see in the folder, the man's an amateur evidently a volunteer from the Party, Rosenberg, rather than a paid expert. He practically led me by the nose."

"Yes, I see he's clumsy," Gunn agreed. "And he's been reported to us before, Colonel Russell. As a matter of fact, on several occasions we've had to protect him from his own clumsiness."

"But why?" Paige demanded. "Why haven't you cracked down on him?"

"Because we can't afford to," Gunn said. "A spy scandal in the plant now would kill the work just where it stands. Oh, we'll report him sooner or later, and the work you've done here on him will be very useful then to all of us, yourself included. But there's no hurry."

"No hurry!"

"No," Gunn said. "The material he's ferrying out now is of no particular consequence. When we actually have the drug"

"But he'll already know the production method by that time. Identifying the drug is a routine job for any team of chemists your Dr. Agnew taught me that much."

"I suppose that's so," Gunn said. "Well, I'll think it over, Colonel. Don't worry about it, we'll deal with it when the time seems ripe."

And that was every bit of satisfaction that Paige could extract from Gunn. It was small recompense for his lost sleep, his lost dates, the care he had taken to inform Pfitzner first, or the soul-searching it had cost him to put the interests of the project ahead of his officer's oath and of his own safety. That evening he said as much to Anne Abbott and with considerable force.

"Calm down," Anne said. "If you're going to mix into the politics of this work, Paige, you're going to get burned right up to the armpits. When we do find what we're looking for, it's going to create the biggest political explosion in history. I'd advise you to stand well back."

"I've been burned already," Paige said hotly. "How the hell can I stand back now? And tolerating a spy isn't just politics. It's treason not only by rumor, but in fact. Are you deliberately putting everyone's head in the noose?"

"Quite deliberately. Paige, this project is for everyone every man, woman and child on the Earth and in space. The fact that the West is putting up the money is incidental. What we're doing, here is in every respect just as anti-West as it is anti-Soviet. We're out to lick death for human beings, not just for the armed forces of some one military coalition. What do we care who gets it first? We want everyone to have it."

"Does Gunn agree with that?"

"It's company policy. It may even have been Hal's own idea, though he has different reasons, different justifications. Have you any idea what will happen when a death curing drug hits a totalitarian society a drug available in limited quantities only? It won't prove fatal to the Soviets, of course, but it ought to make the struggle for succession over there considerably bloodier than it is already. That's essentially the way Hal seems to look at it."