"Do you mean that?"

"I do."

"I can't understand it. We had over two millions left."

"We lost all that through indirect purchases and—"

"And what?"

"Bribes, if you must know."

"Bribes?"

"My dear sir, you can't order cyclotrons without making people suspicious. If you so much as mention an atom today, you accuse yourself."

"Then we all stand accused here and now."

"I'm not denying that."

"What a terrible thing it is that the most precious part of our existence should be the most hated."

"You speak of—"

"The atom."

The speaker gazed before him meditatively, then sighed and turned into the shadowy depths of the spaceship.

I said: "All right, that's enough. Cut into the moment just before the black-out occurs. Take it inside the ship."

The integrators quickened and the sound track began its shrill babble again. Quick scenes of the interior of the mother ship flickered across the crystal. A control chamber, roofed with a transparent dome passed repeatedly before us, with the darting figures of men snapping through it. At last the Integrator fixed on that chamber and stopped. The scene was frozen into a still-photograph—a tableau of half a dozen half-naked men poised over the controls, heads tilted back to look through the dome.

Yarr said: "It doesn't take long. Watch closely."

I said: "Shoot."

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