than a human pilot would have required. Using the answers, the autopilot started to swing the ship about, using small compressed-gas jets for the purpose. Finally, satisfied with the ship's orientation, the autopilot rested. It patiently awaited the moment, precisely calculated by the computer on the ground, when it would fire the second stage.

Major Harry Lightfoot, fighter pilot, waited idly for the next move of his ship. He could only fume inwardly. This was no way for an Apache warrior to ride into battle. What would his grandfather think of a steed which directed itself into battle and which could kill its rider, not by accident, but in its normal operation? He should be actively hunting for that missile, instead of lying here, strapped into his couch so he wouldn't hurt himself, while the ship did all the work.

As for the missile, it was far to the north and slightly above the ship. Without purpose of its own, but obedient to the laws of Mr. Newton and to the wishes of its makers, it came on inexorably. It was a sleek aluminum cylinder, glinting in the sunlight it had just recently entered. On one end was a rocket-motor, now silent but still warm with the memory of flaming gas that had poured forth from it only minutes ago. On the other end was a sleek aerodynamic shape, the product of thousands of hours of design work. It was designed to enter the atmosphere at meteoric speed, but without burning up. It was intended to survive the passage through the air and convey its contents intact to the ground. The contents might have been virulent bacteria or toxic gas, according to the intentions of its makers. Among its brothers elsewhere in the sky this morning, there were such noxious loads. This one, however, was carrying the complex mechanism of a hydrogen bomb. Its destination was an American city; its object to replace that city with an expanding cloud of star-hot gas.

Suddenly the sleek cylinder disappeared in a puff of smoke, which quickly dissipated in the surrounding vacuum. What had been a precisely-built rocket had been reduced, by carefully-placed charges of explosive, to a collection of chunks of metal. Some were plates from the skin and fuel tanks. Others were large lumps from the computer-banks, gyro platform, fuel pumps, and other more massive components. This was not wanton destruction, however. It was more careful planning by the same brains which had devised the missile itself. To a radar set on the ground near the target, each fragment was indistinguishable from the nose cone carrying the warhead. In fact, since the fragments were separating only very slowly, they never would appear as 

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