The comedians on the entertainment programs let the whole story alone for the most part. There were no clever skits, no farcical takeoffs on the subject of Stanley Martin and the Nipe. One comedian, who was playing the part of a henpecked husband, did remark: "If my wife gets any meaner, I'm going to send Stan Martin after _her_!" But it didn't get much of a laugh. And the Government organization had nothing to do with that kind of censorship; it was self-imposed. Every one of the really great comics recognized, either consciously or subconsciously, that the Nipe was not a subject for humor. Such jokes would have made them about as popular as the Borscht Circuit comedian who told a funny story about Dachau in 1946. Aside from the subtle coloring given it by the small, Mannheim-trained group of propaganda experts, the news went out straight. The detective himself, after that one single interview, vanished from sight. No one knew where he was, though, again, there were all kinds of speculations, all of them erroneous. Actually, he was a carefully guarded and willing prisoner in a suite in one of the big hotels in Government City. On the fourth day, the big operation began without fanfare. The actual maneuvering to capture the alien that had terrorized a planet began shortly after noon. At a few minutes before three that afternoon, the man whom the world knew as Stanley Martin suddenly suffered a dizzy spell and nearly fainted. Then, almost like a child, he began to weep. _FINAL INTERLUDE_ Colonel Walther Mannheim said: "It will take five years, Stanton." He was looking at the young man seated in one of the three chairs in the small, comfortable room. There was a clublike atmosphere about the room, but none of the three men were relaxed. "Five years?" said the young man. He looked at the third man. Dr. Farnsworth nodded. "More or less. More if it's a partial failure--less if it's a complete failure." "Then there _is_ a chance of failure?" the young man asked. "There is always a chance of failure in any major surgical undertaking," Dr. Farnsworth said. "Even in the most routine cases, things can go wrong. We're only men, Mr. Stanton. We're neither magicians nor gods." "I know that, Doctor," the young man said. "Nobody's perfect, and I don't expect perfection. Can you give me a--an estimate on the chances?" "I can't even give you any kind of guess," said Farnsworth. He smiled rather grimly. "So far, we have had no failures. Our mortality rate is a flat zero. We have never lost a patient because we've never had one. As I told you, this will be the first time the operation has ever been performed on a human being. Or, rather," he corrected himself, "I should say series of operations. This is not one single--er--cut-and-suture job, like an appendectomy." "All right, then, call it a series of operations," the young man said. "I assume each of them has been performed individually?"