And shivered. And again, it wasn't his cold that was bothering him. He would have to call Sweeney right away—
... Light Space Brigade, Experimental. Temporary outpost, Callisto. Force: 20 Lancer-type J-88 destroyers. Complement: 600. Commanding: Col. Geofferey Steele—
He felt his insides turning to cold jelly. He would have to call Sweeney. God! Sweeney would skin him alive. Somehow, the tail ends of one of the double-wound reels must have stuck out a little, got sliced neatly off when he'd hastily jammed its pan-cover back on after inspecting it. Then the severed squares of microfilm had slipped down, unnoticed, through one of the desk-top cracks where the sonotyper fold-away unit was. And landed in the key-bed. Only Sweeney wouldn't understand it that way. And the Joint Chiefs—
Oh God no!
He had to think.
And he thought of that other name. On the microfilm record—Steele, it was, who commanded 600 men, twenty J-88s....
He thought of forty years of slavery.
And then he was doing a crazy thing—crazy—
While no one looked, Robert Manning sneezed and blew his nose and touched the flame of his cigarette lighter to the two squares of microfilm.