He felt his scalp crawling. "All of it! Haven't your uncles heard that YM is an incredibly dangerous thing to play around with?" "Of course. But Miguel examined it very carefully after it was obtained. If reasonable precautions are taken, there is no way in which it _can_ become dangerous. The conclusion was that the Overgovernment has spread rumors as a bluff, to try to prevent the YM from being used." "What's happened around here," Dowland said, "might indicate it wasn't a bluff." "You're jumping to conclusions, Dowland. A great many other things may have gone wrong." "Perhaps. But an I.Q. of 136 keeps telling me that we're in considerable danger at the moment." Jill nodded. "That's very probably true." "Then how about giving me your full cooperation until we--you, I, your uncles--are all safely out of this?" "At the moment," Jill observed, "I don't appear to have a choice in the matter." "I don't mean that. The drug will wear off in a few hours. You'll be able to move around freely again, and whether you cooperate or not will depend on you. How will you feel about it then?" "That depends," Jill said, "on whether we have reached an agreement." "Agreement about what?" "A price for your silence, and for any assistance you can give in keeping things quiet. You can, of course, set the price as high as you wish. Terra will meet it." Dowland stared at her, somewhat astounded. It was as cold-blooded an attempt at bargaining as he'd run into, considering the circumstances. And--considering an I.Q. of 181--it seemed rather unrealistic. "Miss Trelawney," he said, "the only thing silence might get me is a twenty-year stretch in an IPA pen. I'm not quite that foolish." "You're also not aware of the true situation." "All right," Dowland said, "what is it?" "Miguel and Paul have earned the right to carry out the first of these tests. They may not complete it. But duplicates of their machine in the laboratory are concealed about the planet, waiting to be put into action by other teams of Freeholder scientists. You see? The tests will be continued until any problems connected with shifting back through time are recognized and overcome." Dowland said, "Then why is the entire haul of YM stacked away in the laboratory here?" "Because that's where it's to be used at present. You still don't understand the extent of this operation, Dowland. If we need more of the Overgovernment's YM, we'll simply take it. It can be done at any time. The only way the Overgovernment could really prevent future raids would be by destroying its supplies of YM-400. And it isn't going to do that--at least not before we've obtained as much as we can use." * * * * * As far as his own information went, she could be right, Dowland thought. He said, "So supposing some Freeholder scientists do succeed eventually in traveling back in time. What will that accomplish?"