"I'm not staying out of it. It happens to be some of my business, too. Lacy, this may hurt, but it needs explaining. Lindsay, I'm not a soft-hearted bird. I'm not even soft-headed. But if any man ever needed the affection of a woman, Tom Lacy does, did, and will. And if I had mother, wife, or sister that refused to try to straighten Lacy out, I'd cut her throat! I've made a lot of crude jokes about the fact that she married you because of your money or friends, but they were just crude jokes that I'd not have made if she hadn't been so completely Mrs. Ralph Lindsay that mere mention of anything else was funny. And you can scream or you can laugh about it, but whatever she did down in the galley, I say, makes a better woman of her!" Then Grant smiled queerly and turned to Lacy. "You lucky dog," he grinned. "She never tried to kiss me!" Ralph Lindsay sat down wearily. "Was that it, Jenna?" She nodded; unable to speak. "I'm sorry," said Lindsay. "Look, Lindsay--" started Tom Lacy. Lindsay interrupted. "Lacy, I'm the one to be sorry. I mean it. Pity--is hard to take, even to give honestly. You don't want it, yet it is there. Yes," nodded Lindsay, "if there's anything, ever, that we can do to see you straightened out, we'll do it. Now--" The phone. Lindsay picked up the phone and said: "Garrard got it! Where's the next one?" Haynes said: "Take the one in the Ruhr Industrial District. How'd Garrard get it?" "We don't know. He went out unplanned, wondering if utter secrecy mightn't be the answer." "Too bad," said Haynes and hung up quickly. The general didn't like the tone of Lindsay's voice. * * * * * Lindsay faced them. "What do we know?" he asked. He felt that he'd been asking that question for year upon year, and that there had been no answer save a mystical, omnipotent rumbling that forboded ill--and that threatened dire consequences if asked to repeat. "Not a lot," said Grant. "They go off when we get within a hundred feet or so of them. That's all we know." "Garrard went out without running his intercom radio. He made no reports, thinking that maybe they listened in on our short-range jobs and fired them somehow by remote control when they feared we might succeed in inerting the things!" Lindsay growled in his throat. "Look," said Grant. "This is urgent. It is also knocking out our nerves. It's not much of a run from here to Ruhr Industrial, but I'm going to suggest that we all forget the problem completely for a few minutes. Me, I'm going in to take a shower." The value of relaxation did not need pressing. Jenna nodded. "None of us have had much of anything but coffee and toast," she said. "I'm going down and build a real, seven-course breakfast. Any takers?" They all nodded. "And Ralph, you come and break eggs for me," she laughed. "So far as I know, I'm the only one that's capable of taking your mind off of your troubles momentarily." Lindsay laughed and stood up.