"At ease, for God's sake!" Colonel Calm went to an old man who stared into the hood of a scope with the fascinated pleasure of a child seeing his first stereopticon slides. "Well, doctor? How is it going?" Sopho glanced up--and he smiled, too. That was the thing about the colonel's mouth and eyes: you saw and you also smiled. Even when the kamikaze had connected, when Number 3 engine was on fire--pluming smoke and the CO2 wasn't making headway, when flak splashed black flowers on the morning, when tracers rose like tennis balls, the deck was slick with gunners' blood, and when the inadequate, high, freezing air whistled through the ship--scaling fast, bits of plexiglass. Even then, he smiled--and you smiled back--and went on. "Wonderful gadget," Dr. Sopho said, pointing to the hood, within which the colonel could see a scanning light-streak and the radiant wake, following and fading perpetually. "After this trip," the scientist went on, "maybe we can go back to work. Real work. Maybe--" he pointed at the scope--"use that for saving a few lives, instead." "Hope so." The colonel thought of his tedious wife--of weary years in Washington--desiccated military establishments in Texas--the drain and drag of peacetime. "Hope so," he lied. "Everything set?" Sopho grinned. "Hope so." "There's a chance of a dud--?" "Some. Partial dud, anyhow." The colonel seemed agitated. "In that case, wouldn't they get the secret?" The old man had a goatee. He reached for it. "Yes. Yes, they might. And spend the next twenty years trying to put one together." Colonel Calm continued down a narrow passage and opened a small door. Freckles Mahoney was taking his ease at the breeches of his tail guns--rocked back--staring at the vault where the powdery light was least. Daydreaming of a gum-chewing, short-haired, underbreasted Kalamazoo High School babe--and keeping his eyes peeled. The door shut. The colonel nerved himself for the return passage. Worse than being born--so far as he could remember. Dragging a placenta of parachute and harness through an aluminum canal with an atomic bomb beneath. He gave the three gunners his smile and they did not know it was--this time--a smile of fighting himself. At any rate, he thought, after one more crawl through eternity he could stay in the control compartment, forward. Unless Sopho wanted him. He took hold of the ladder, sighted through the black tube to freedom's eye at the far end--and his blood turned to water. Three men besides the gunners? He felt horror between his shoulder blades--gun, knife, and worse. He checked crew and passengers.