"Even the small print Daddy-o, over...." "No words twice so baby make marks--" Thorn's hand flashed to the card-punch and magnetic-tape unit switches, flicked them to ON-RECORD. "--been surprised, but not taken completely off balance; retaliation now in progress as you have probably already observed or will observe in course of orbital passage. Plan Able Zebra effective immediately...." The words were coming so fast they were slurred, and Knight was exaggerating his own Alabama accent. "Expect report once each turn...." He would not have needed the recording or even words twice. Each of Knight's directions was graven into him as it was spoken. To cease all scientific observation and recording at once; to begin military observation of the Enemy and his puppet-states, and all possibly-discernible activities, immediately. To remember that as the coast of California appeared on his horizon he was to begin transmitting in code, and that he would finish transmitting before the Atlantic coast disappeared over the horizon behind him. To remember that his stores of fuel were for orbit-correction only, to be used for effecting an Earthside landing only upon explicit and properly-coded order, or upon threat of otherwise unavoidable destruction. To calculate present stores of food concentrate and air to the hour if possible, not forgetting that with Streeter gone the time-lapse between rendezvous with the supply rocket should be at least doubled. To remember a thousand things; things he already knew by rote ... but the tape and card-punch units clicked softly away, recording, recording.... "... and Mrs. Grundy here's a morsel for you--you may have a new neighbor in your block but not like you at all--there's probably a world between you--don't take any wooden nickels baby. Say good-bye to Daddy-o baby, over...." "Home Plate this is Mrs. Grundy sees all and heard everything, out." The whole transmission had taken less than two minutes. Now the UHF was off and there was one break, anyway. If, somehow, the Enemy had succeeded in getting up a satellite of his own, he had at least--according to Knight--sacrificed the ability to directly monitor Thorn's radio for invisibility. Vanguard-I was aloft for geophysical purposes only, according to the propaganda-pitch back home. But as far as Big Red knew, it was loaded to the locks with as much armament as a thing of its comparatively tiny size could carry. And as far as Thorn himself knew, nobody making geophysical observations had ever needed to do it through the tubes of missile-launchers like the ones that were cuddled snugly in Vanguard-I's blunt forehull....