I took a long drag at the bottle. "What about yourself, Colonel?" I smiled thinly at him. Silently, stone-faced, he showed his credentials. Pat frowned at me. She thought I was being unnecessarily cool to a guest. Rivalries in the service meant nothing to her. I grinned at him and the tension eased. "The old routine, Colonel. I wouldn't want to foul up with a security officer watching me." The stern exterior cracked as he relaxed. "I hate to butt in on your vacation like this. I had no choice. We have a deadline to meet." "Sounds familiar," I murmured. "Submit a complete report, in five copies, based on information you'll get tomorrow, to reach headquarters not later than yesterday. Well, give us the bad news." "First let me give you an estimate of the situation as we see it. That will put you in the picture." "You mean I'm being framed?" I joked. He actually smiled. "The weather and biological offensive against the Reds are now at their height," he began, "and are proving most successful. We anticipate they will exhaust their food reserves very soon and will be desperate for more. If they ask us, we will give them some this winter, under certain conditions." (He was referring to the use of the contraceptive drug in that food, as I learned later.) "That will give them a respite, which we can't very well avoid, and the war is expected to continue on into 1964. By early summer, some eight months from now, we estimate that continuation of our offensive will drive them to the wall, since we will then inform them that we cannot give them any more supplies from our store. It is then that we can anticipate the hidden war breaking out into the open. Even if they retaliate in weather and bacteriological warfare, they must know we can win because our hoarded supplies will keep us going while they starve. They have to plan a knockout blow and yet our G-2 people believe they will not use atomic power. They won't use it because of its dreadful after-effects on future populations. Even the so-called clean bombs must affect many survivors and, in an already decimated world, they cannot afford to have contaminated survivors from which to rebuild the race. Also, they are sure that we won't use it if they don't. Now, as far as we can foresee, that leaves only one other way to achieve the knockout ... by the use of nerve gases." * * * * * "But we have nerve gases too."