"Eh!" Lesbee was startled.
Browne parted his lips evidently intending to explain, and then he closed them again. Finally he said, "Make sure the intercom is off."
Lesbee did so. But he was realizing that Browne was up to something again. He said, and there was rage in his tone, "I don't get it, and you do. Is that right."
"Yes," said Browne. He spoke deliberately, but he was visibly suppressing excitement. "I know how to defeat this creature. That puts me in a bargaining position."
Lesbee's eyes were narrowed to slits. "Damn you, no bargain. Tell me, or else!"
Browne said, "I'm not really trying to be difficult. You either have to kill me, or come to some agreement. I want to know what that agreement is, because of course I'll do it."
Lesbee said, "I think we ought to have an election."
"I agree!" Browne spoke instantly. "You set it up." He broke off. "And now release me from these tractors and I'll show you the neatest space-time trick you've ever seen, and that'll be the end of Dzing."
Lesbee gazed at the man's face, saw there the same openness of countenance, the same frank honest that had preceded the execution order, and he thought, "What can he do?"
He considered many possibilities, and thought finally, desperately: "He's got the advantage over me of superior knowledge—the most undefeatable weapon in the world. The only thing I can really hope to use against it in the final issue is my knowledge of a multitude of technician-level details."