you—you may have a new neighbor in your block but not like you at all—there's probably a world between you—don't take any wooden nickels baby. Say good-bye to Daddy-o baby, over...."

"Home Plate this is Mrs. Grundy sees all and heard everything, out."

The whole transmission had taken less than two minutes. Now the UHF was off and there was one break, anyway. If, somehow, the Enemy had succeeded in getting up a satellite of his own, he had at least—according to Knight—sacrificed the ability to directly monitor Thorn's radio for invisibility. Vanguard-I was aloft for geophysical purposes only, according to the propaganda-pitch back home. But as far as Big Red knew, it was loaded to the locks with as much armament as a thing of its comparatively tiny size could carry.

And as far as Thorn himself knew, nobody making geophysical observations had ever needed to do it through the tubes of missile-launchers like the ones that were cuddled snugly in Vanguard-I's blunt forehull....

Such little thoughts whipped quickly through his mind as he tried to make it regain balance for the immediate tasks besetting him, because they were little and simple and easy to grasp and discard. They could keep him from going crazy. It was the bigger thoughts—the bigger ones that might come later—they were the kind he had to keep out of his head.

Major Joshua Thorn began his work with the equipment, to modify it for use as Daddy-o had told him.

He could do it automatically, do it in his sleep, do it blind. Couldn't watch and do it, though. Watch later. Think of the little things now that were easy while the equipment got automatically modified. Little things to keep the big ones like what was happening down there from tipping him over into the whirlpool of madness that was trying so hard to pull at him.

Little things....

"Please be seated, Major Thorn."

"Yes sir."

"This will be your Final Security interrogation. To be followed, upon its favorable completion, by Final Briefing. Before we begin, do you have any questions, Major?"

The thick lenses of the glasses reflected the interrogation cubicle's harsh lighting and would not let him see accurately into the pale eyes that blinked behind them. But it was almost as though he and Brigadier Robert McQuine, USAF, Intelligence, were old friends. And the 

 Prev. P 3/16 next