Eric frowned. What could be more than an initiation ceremony and his attainment of full thieving manhood? "There are things going on in Mankind, these days," Thomas the Trap-Smasher continued in a strange, urgent voice. "Big things. And you're going to be a part of them. This Theft of yours--if you handle it right, if you do what I tell you, it's likely to blow the lid off everything the chief has been sitting on." "The _chief_?" Eric felt confused. He was walking up a strange burrow now without a glow lamp. "What's the chief got to do with my Theft?" * * * * * His uncle examined both ends of the corridor again. "Eric, what's the most important thing we, or you, or anyone, can do? What is our life all about? What are we here for?" "That's easy," Eric chuckled. "That's the easiest question there is. A child could answer it: "_Hit back at the Monsters_," he quoted. "_Drive them from the planet, if we can. Regain Earth for Mankind, if we can. But above all, hit back at the Monsters. Make them suffer as they've made us suffer. Make them know we're still here, we're still fighting. Hit back at the Monsters._" "Hit back at the Monsters. Right. Now how have we been doing that?" Eric the Only stared at his uncle. That wasn't the next question in the catechism. He must have heard incorrectly. His uncle couldn't have made a mistake in such a basic ritual. "_We will do that_," he went on in the second reply, his voice sliding into the singsong of childhood lessons, "_by regaining the science and knowhow of our fore-fathers. Man was once Lord of all Creation: his science and knowhow made him supreme. Science and knowhow is what we need to hit back at the Monsters._" "Now, Eric," his uncle asked gently. "Please tell me this. What in hell is knowhow?" That was way off. They were a full corridor's length from the normal progression of the catechism now. "Knowhow is--knowhow is--" he stumbled over the unfamiliar verbal terrain. "Well, it's what our ancestors knew. And what they did with it, I guess. Knowhow is what you need before you can make hydrogen bombs or economic warfare or guided missiles, any of those really big weapons like our ancestors had." "Did those weapons do them any good? Against the Monsters, I mean. Did they stop the Monsters?" Eric looked completely blank for a moment, then brightened. Oh! He knew the way now. He knew how to get back to the catechism: "_The suddenness of the attack, the_--"