“I can’t, not by myself. That’s for fucking sure. Nobody would pay any attention to me if I tried. I’d just be some grad student who’s messed up with acid and talking crazy talk. But what are they most afraid of right now? Publicity, that’s what!” Jerry brought it out as confidently as Mr. McGuire had said “Plastics!” in The Graduate. “You’re the world’s leading expert on what goes into making planets with aliens on them possible, and—”

“No, I’m not. Not even close,” Steve broke in. In his own way, different from Jerry’s, he was also a modest man. “I could name a dozen people who—”

“Okay, fine. Have it your way.” Jerry interrupted right back. “You’re one of the world’s leading experts on planets with aliens on them. If somebody like you said the CIA was doing strange things with a couple of them and with their starship, people would pay attention.” He wanted to say, The Russians would pay attention. He didn’t. He wasn’t a Red, and didn’t want Steve thinking he was. He was just somebody who believed in the balance of power. What lay in the moon pool seemed too important to belong to only one country.

The older man took off his glasses, polished them with a soft cotton handkerchief, and put them back on his nose. His look said he understood where Jerry was coming from. Gently, he answered, “You need to remember, son, I signed the same nondisclosure agreement you did.”

“Did you sign it thinking you’d be looking at a couple of centaurs in suspended-animation tanks?”

“I knew the possibility was there. They showed me some of the pictures the Halibut took to help enlist me.”

They trusted you a lot further than they did me, Jerry thought resentfully. But why wouldn’t they? Steve already worked for RAND, and RAND and the CIA were in each other’s pockets half the time. He wasn’t a freaky, freaked-out, unreliable grad student. Muttering, Jerry said, “They can’t swing this by themselves, dammit. They aren’t big enough. Ford isn’t big enough. Kissinger isn’t, either.”

“Well, I won’t tell you you’re wrong, but do you think Brezhnev and Gromyko are?”

“Hell, no, not by themselves. Added in with our people, maybe. But the way things are, it doesn’t look like we’ll get the chance to find out, does it?”

Steve puckered his lips and blew air out through them. “Remember the clause you noticed in the agreement? The one that talks about termination with extreme prejudice?”

“I’m not likely to forget it! I was remembering it earlier today, in fact.”