hardly bigger than a foot locker, and that the rest of the battery hadn’t been used at all.

With no one aboard but the duty watch, and no one in the battery room at all, Captain Dean Lacey felt no compunction whatever in saying, as he gazed at the steel-clad, sealed box: “What a battery!”

The vessel’s captain, Lieutenant Commander Newton Wayne, looked up from the box into the Pentagon representative’s face. “Yes, sir, it is.” His voice sounded as though his brain were trying to catch up with it and hadn’t quite succeeded. “This certainly puts us well ahead of the Russians.”

Captain Lacey returned the look. “How right you are, commander. This means we can convert every ship in the Navy in a tenth the time we had figured.”

Then they both looked at the third man, a civilian.

He nodded complacently. “And at a tenth the cost, gentlemen,” he said mildly. “North American Carbide & Metals can produce these units cheaply, and at a rate that will enable us to convert every ship in the Navy within the year.”

117 

117

Captain Lacey shot a glance at Lieutenant Commander Wayne. “All this is strictly Top Secret you understand.”

“Yes, sir; I understand,” said Wayne.

“Very well.” He looked back at the civilian. “Are we ready, Mr. Thorn?”

“Anytime you are, captain,” the civilian said.

“Fine. You have your instructions, commander. Carry on.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” said Lieutenant Commander Wayne.

 A little less than an hour later, Captain Lacey and Mr. Thorn were in the dining room of one of the most exclusive clubs in New York. Most clubs in New York are labeled as “exclusive” because they exclude certain people who do not measure up to their standards of wealth. A man who makes less than, say, one hundred thousand dollars a year would not even qualify for scrutiny by the Executive Committee. There is one club in Manhattan which reaches what is probably close to the limit on that kind of exclusiveness: Members must be white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant Americans who can trace their ancestry 

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