gun, and it would hit the men in one direction; that might slow their neural currents up a little for a fraction of a second, but it wouldn't do anything like what we have here, even if it were strong enough."

All the time he had been talking, Mardis had been nodding his head in agreement. When Kiffer finished, Mardis said: "And besides that, we've tested the things, remember? We fired those projectors under every condition we could think of, and we didn't get any feedback lobotomies."

Taddibol nodded. "That's right. We mounted four projectors on the X-69, and melted asteroids for six months before we released the weapon to the fleet."

"Anybody got any more questions?" Roysland asked.

There were none.

"All right, I have some I want you to think over. First: Is this really an enemy weapon? Second: If so, how is it generated and projected at aJ ships? Third: If it isn't an enemy weapon, what is it? Fourth: Regardless of what it is, where is it generated? Fifth: If we—"

He didn't finish. The solidiphone signal was blinking. He activated the instrument, and Eckisster coalesced into the room, his chubby face dewy with perspiration.

"Ah!" he said. "I'm glad to find you at home. I'm glad to see you're working on this thing at last. Why didn't you call in your staff two days ago? Maybe they can figure something out, even if you can't; this thing has suddenly become dangerous."

Roysland looked dangerous, so the general director patted the air with a hand. "I've got the stuff for you right here, Roysland, so don't give me any of your lip. In the first place, there was a convoy attack yesterday out near the periphery. It turned out to be one of the biggest battles of the war so far. The enemy lost five ships to fire from aJ projectors, and four to torpedoes. We lost two ships to torpedo fire and six ships to the ... what did you call it? ... mindjammer.

"Fortunately, we had them out-numbered and were able to recover the crews and ships we'd lost to the mindjammer.

"But it doesn't look good. If they start using that weapon on a big scale, we'll be sunk. If they ever hit a planet with it—Well, you can imagine what it would be like to take care of a city full of morons."

Eckisster paused, squinted his eyes at Roysland, and jabbed at him with 

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