It would have to stir popular fury on Earth on a very wide scale, be made so convincing that no one could possibly mistake it for a trumped-up shakedown in another grab for power. And that would take time--two or three weeks, at least. And right at the moment Wendel was almost certainly out of the hospital and back in the Wendel plant, getting ready to close in on the skyport with his army of goons. The problem that confronted me can be summarized in just one sentence. I had to get into my uniform, pin the silver bird into place and complete just two visits, or Wendel would dig my grave wide and deep. Not just my own grave, of course--but when you fight to stay alive you remember all of the things you want to protect and stay alive for. There are men, I suppose, who are chiefly concerned with survival on a more primitive plane, but I think I can honestly say I've never been that kind of man. My first visit was going to be to one hell of a live man--Joseph Sherwood. Sherwood had undisputed custody, by authority of the Board, of every nuclear weapon in the Colony with enough large-scale destructive potential to make open defiance of that authority an extremely risky undertaking. I was now his superior in rank, but I had no intention of making changes in his command or questioning the wisdom of the decisions he was more than qualified to make. The measures he had taken to protect the Colony I regarded as absolutely correct and he knew far more about nuclear armaments than I did. There were limits to what those measures could accomplish, because a large-scale thermonuclear weapon can destroy thousands of innocent victims, and the Wendel Combine knew precisely how far it could go without bringing down the thunder. All I had to do was convince Wendel that it had now gone too far and that the thunder was very close. Basically it would be quite a simple undertaking. I would simply have to walk into the Wendel plant and talk to him in a calm way, at the risk of being blown apart. I was standing before a full-length mirror in a small, windowless room which the skyport officials had assured me wasn't wired for sound. It sure had privacy. Not that I'd need it while I was putting on my uniform, because I'd be wearing it when I emerged and they would all see the silver bird. And Joan was the only woman in the building ... which made privacy a little absurd on more than one count. It was just that--well, when you stand before a mirror and pin that kind of insignia on a quite ordinary, regulation-fit uniform it does something to the wearer which changes the way he looks in a quite startling way.