all your money gone? Over..."

"Ready for a circus. Regret delay in acknowledging. I—was in Observation, over."

"Mrs. Grundy, your Daddy-o wants to talk to you so bye bye baby...."

General Knight himself. Knight himself to talk to him ... so it was that bad.

Of course it was that bad!

"Mrs. Grundy can you read, over...." Knight's voice. It sounded calm. It sounded unruffled. You had to know Knight, you had to have heard him often to know that it was not calm, that it was not at all unruffled....

"Even the small print Daddy-o, over...."

"No words twice so baby make marks—" Thorn's hand flashed to the card-punch and magnetic-tape unit switches, flicked them to ON-RECORD. "—been surprised, but not taken completely off balance; retaliation now in progress as you have probably already observed or will observe in course of orbital passage. Plan Able Zebra effective immediately...." The words were coming so fast they were slurred, and Knight was exaggerating his own Alabama accent. "Expect report once each turn...."

He would not have needed the recording or even words twice. Each of Knight's directions was graven into him as it was spoken.

To cease all scientific observation and recording at once; to begin military observation of the Enemy and his puppet-states, and all possibly-discernible activities, immediately. To remember that as the coast of California appeared on his horizon he was to begin transmitting in code, and that he would finish transmitting before the Atlantic coast disappeared over the horizon behind him. To remember that his stores of fuel were for orbit-correction only, to be used for effecting an Earthside landing only upon explicit and properly-coded order, or upon threat of otherwise unavoidable destruction. To calculate present stores of food concentrate and air to the hour if possible, not forgetting that with Streeter gone the time-lapse between rendezvous with the supply rocket should be at least doubled. To remember a thousand things; things he already knew by rote ... but the tape and card-punch units clicked softly away, recording, recording....

"... and Mrs. Grundy here's a morsel for 

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