"Granting for the moment that that big Irishman, unhappy and moody as he sometimes gets when he recalls his failure to qualify for a degree in science, might have the sudden desire to take it out on the world, to sell us out. Might even have, at the moment, the spark of genius it would take to make off with those microstats. Only how the devil would he know they even existed, much less were even in duplicate copy and on file here?" That was the nub of it, of course. Aside from myself and the three men before me, it was impossible that any other man in the station, or any man crewing a shuttle could know of the Pentagon's plan to get a full-sized, full-rigged satellite into Space, with real Military, which would leave the Comrades screaming about a busted treaty, but powerless to do anything about it. No, it wouldn't give us the edge, but at least it would put us on a par, and after twenty years of being second-rate, that at least would be some thing. The political end I didn't know much about, conference table double-talk that would invalidate a treaty that hadn't been morally valid in the first place, but had been agreed to by interests instead of by the people they allegedly represented. It had always been a shade too fast for me to follow. All I knew was that even though first-rate powers could command more resources to do a job than second-rate ones, intellectually free scientists could always come up with smarter answers than those whose inventiveness had been stifled by the demands and limitations of a police state, however all-powerful militarily and politically. Brains are brains; both sides have 'em. It's what you're motivated to do with them that counts. That, and the importance attached by people to the product of those brains. * * * * * Twenty years ago, the Comrades had really gotten motivated. After they got what they wanted, they forgot about motivation and sat back to let the newest Hundred-Year Plan take care of the rest. Twenty years ago, somebody on our side was short four billion bucks' worth of preventive medicine. Now, after a couple of decades second-besting it, our side wanted to make up for lost time. It was supposed to be a _coup d'etat_ sort of thing, a fast shuffle, both at the conference tables and out here in Space. Now you see it, now you don't. As topkick on the Space end of it I was supposed to know what was going on; me, and my execs, down to the day, the hour and the split second. But only the four of us. And none of us, studying those damned plans night after night for the last two months, had ever let the things further than arm's reach away from the safe in my office. They'd never been out of it except in our collective presence.