"You said ten minutes," Wendel was breathing harshly now and the veins on his forehead were thick blue cords. "You'd have to let Sherwood know when to drop the bomb. You haven't been in communication with him since you arrived here. Suppose I refuse to dial? That's a very intricate, highly specialized communicator. You couldn't operate it." That made me change my mind about letting him do the dialing. I was pretty sure I'd experience no difficulty in getting in contact with Sherwood and I didn't want to give Wendel a chance to make the communicator even more specialized by ripping put some of the wiring. I turned to Lynton and indicated by tapping Wendel forcibly on the shoulder that I was about to relinquish my hold on the Combine's difficult president, and would he kindly take my place behind the chair. "Don't let him move," I cautioned, when we'd changed places. "Keep a tight grip on his shoulders." "Don't worry," Lynton said. "If he moves an inch I'll do what you said might not be a bad idea--break his neck." It didn't take me long to discover that Wendel had lied about the communicator, which meant, of course, that he had been hoping I'd give him a chance to do a quick job of sabotage on the wiring. It was just a run-of-the-mill, two-way televisual communicator, with nothing specialized about it. There was a humming sound for a few seconds right after I'd finished dialing and it gave me a chance to scrutinize Wendel's face to see how he was taking it. He was terrified, all right. But his lips were still set in defiant lines and I was sure that if he could have gotten a grip on my throat right at that moment getting his fingers unlocked wouldn't have been easy. I thought that when Sherwood's image appeared on the screen there would be just one minute of hard-to-live-through uncertainty--that he'd back up what I'd told Wendel with his hand on the rocket release button and look straight at me, as if awaiting a signal I had no intention of giving. But I suddenly realized I didn't know just how it was going to be. Would Wendel stay defiant right up to the end, would he defeat me through sheer stubbornness, even though he was mortally terrified? But there was one thing I did know. For the first time, as I waited for Sherwood's image to appear on the screen, I knew with absolute certainty, beyond any possibility of doubt, that I could never go through with it. The rocket had to be prepared and ready--the nuclear deterrent had to be a reality--or I could never have carried the bluff through with the kind of confidence that just the knowledge that you're holding the highest cards in the deck can give you. I had to feel that I _just might give the signal_.