"I think it does," von Schlichten differed. "As soon as Orgzild would hear about the possibility of making a plutonium bomb, he'd set up an A-bomb project, and don't think of it in terms of the old First Century Manhattan Project. There would be no problem of producing fissionables--we've been scattering refined plutonium over this planet like confetti." "Well, an A-bomb's a pretty complicated piece of mechanism, even if you have the plans for it," Kent Pickering said. "As I recall, there have to be several subcritical masses of plutonium, or U-235, or whatever, blown together by shaped charges of explosive, all of which have to be fired simultaneously. That would mean a lot of electrical fittings that I can't see these geeks making by hand." "I can," Paula said. "Have you ever seen the work these native jewelers do? And didn't you tell me about a clockwork thing they have at the university, here, to show the apparent movements of the sun...." "That's right," von Schlichten said. "And what they couldn't make, they could have bought from us; we've sold them a lot of electrical equipment." "All right, they could have built an A-bomb," Buhrmann said. "But did they?" "We assume they tried to. Gorkrink got back from Nif on the _Canberra_, three months ago," von Schlichten said. "If Orgzild decided to build an A-bomb, he wouldn't give the signal for this uprising until he either had one or knew he couldn't make one, and he wouldn't give up trying in only three months. Therefore, I think we can assume that he succeeded, and had succeeded at the time he sent Gorkrink here to get that four tons of plutonium we let him have, and, incidentally, to tell his ambassador to pass the word to have Sid Harrington poisoned according to plan." "Then why didn't he just use it on us at the start of the uprising?" Meyerstein wanted to know. "Why should he? Getting rid of us is only the first step in Orgzild's plan," Grinell said. "Back as far as geek history goes, the Kings of Keegark have been trying to conquer Konkrook and the Free Cities and make themselves masters of the whole Takkad Sea area. Let Konkrook wipe us out, and then he can move in his troops and take Konkrook. Or, if we beat off the geeks here, as we seem to be doing, he can bomb us out and then move in on Konkrook. I think that as long as we're fighting, here, he'll wait. The more damage we do to Konkrook, the easier it'll be for him." "Then we'd better start dragging our feet on the Konkrook front," Laviola said. "And get busy trying to build a bomb of our own." * * * * * Von Schlichten looked up at the big screen, on which the battle of Konkrook was being projected from an overhead pickup.