He peered curiously at me. "Slovetski? Did you suppose it was Slovetski who planned it so?" He shook his head--and winced at the pain. He whispered, "Thomas, you do not understand. It was my project, not Slovetski's. That one, he proposed to destroy the Company's Home Office; it was his thought that killing them would bring an end to evil. I persuaded him there was no need to kill--only to gamble." I stared at him. "You're delirious!" "Oh, no." He shook his head and succeeded in a tiny smile. "Do you not see it, Thomas? The great explosion goes off, the world is showered with particles of death. And then--what then?" "We die!" "Die? No! Have you forgotten the vaults of the clinics?" It staggered me. I'd been reciting all the pat phrases from early schooling about the bomb! If it had gone off in the Short War, of course, it would have ended the human race! But I'd been a fool. The vaults had been built to handle the extreme emergencies that couldn't be foreseen--even one that knocked out nearly the whole race. They hadn't expected that a cobalt-cased bomb would ever be used. Only the conspirators would have tried, and how could they get fissionables? But they were ready for even that. I'd been expecting universal doom. "The clinics," Benedetto repeated as I stared at him. * * * * * It was the answer. Even radio-poisons of cobalt do not live forever. Five years, and nearly half of them would be gone; eleven years, and more than three-quarters would be dissipated. In fifty years, the residual activity would be down to a fraction of one per cent--and the human race could come back to the surface. "But why?" I demanded. "Suppose the Company can handle the population of the whole world? Granted, they've space enough and one year is the same as fifty when you're on ice. But what's the use?" He smiled faintly. "Bankruptcy, Thomas," he whispered. "So you see, we do not wish to fall into the Company's hands right now. For there is a chance that we will live ... and perhaps the very faintest of chances that we will win!" * * * * * It wasn't even a faint chance--I kept telling myself that. But, if anything could hurt the Company, the area in which it was vulnerable was money. Benedetto had been intelligent in that. Bombing the Home Office would have been an inconvenience, no more. But to disrupt the world's work with a fifty-year hiatus, while the air purged itself of the radioactive cobalt from the bomb, would mean fifty years while the Company lay dormant; fifty years while the policies ran their course and became due. For that was the wonder of Benedetto's scheme: _The Company insured against everything_. If a man were to be exposed to radiation and needed to be put away, he automatically went on "disability" benefits, while his policy paid its own premiums! Multiply this single man by nearly four billion. The sum came out to a bankrupt Company.