The _Elmoran_ ran alongside, with her Masai-warrior figure-head and the black cylinder on her catapult aft. Somebody had painted, on the bomb: DIRE DAWN _by Hildegarde Hernandez. Compliments of the author to H. M. King Orgzild of Keegark._ A canvas-entubed gangway was run out to connect the ship with the cutter. Von Schlichten and Kent Pickering went down the ladder from the bridge, the others accompanying them. As he stepped into the gangway, Paula Quinton fell in behind him. "Where do you think you're going?" he demanded. "Along with you," she replied. "I'm your adjutant, I believe." "You definitely are not going along. Personally, I don't believe there's any danger, but I'm not having you run any unnecessary risks...." "Von, I don't know much about the way Terrans think, except about fighting and about making things," Kankad told him. "And I don't know anything at all about the kind of Terrans who have young. But I believe this is something important to Paula. Let her go with you, because if you go alone and don't come back I don't think she will ever be happy again." He looked at Kankad curiously, wondering, as he had so often before, just what went on inside that lizard-skull. Then he looked at Paula, and, after a moment, he nodded. "All right, colonel; objection withdrawn," he said. Aboard the _Elmoran_, they gave the bomb a last-minute inspection and checked the catapult and the bomb-sight, and then went up on the bridge. "Ready for the bombing mission, sir?" the skipper, a Lieutenant (j.g.) Morrison, asked. "Ready if you are, Lieutenant. Carry on; we're just passengers." "Thank you, sir. We'd thought of going in over the city at about five thousand for a target-check, turning when we're half way back to the mountains, and coming back for our bombing-run at fifteen thousand. Is that all right, sir?" Von Schlichten nodded. "You're the skipper, lieutenant. You'd better make sure, though, that as soon as the bomb-off signal is flashed, your engineer hits his auxiliary rocket-propulsion button. We want to be about fifteen miles from where that thing goes off." The lieutenant (j.g.) muttered something that sounded unmilitarily like, "You ain't foolin', brother!" "No, I'm not," von Schlichten agreed. "I saw the _Jan Smuts_ on the TV-screen." * * * * *