"Von, I don't know much about the way Terrans think, except about fighting and about making things," Kankad told him. "And I don't know anything at all about the kind of Terrans who have young. But I believe this is something important to Paula. Let her go with you, because if you go alone and don't come back, I don't think she will ever be happy again."
He looked at Kankad curiously, wondering, as he had so often before, just what went on inside that lizard-skull. Then he looked at Paula, and, after a moment, he nodded.
"All right, colonel, objection withdrawn," he said.
Aboard the Elmoran, they gave the bomb a last-minute inspection and checked the catapult and the bomb-sight, and then went up on the bridge.
"Ready for the bombing mission, sir?" the skipper, a Lieutenant (j.g.) Morrison, asked.
"Ready if you are, lieutenant. Carry on; we're just passengers."
"Thank you, sir. We'd thought of going in over the city at about five thousand for a target-check, turning when we're half-way back to the mountains, and coming back for our bombing-run at fifteen thousand. Is that all right, sir?"
Von Schlichten nodded. "You're the skipper, lieutenant. You'd better make sure, though, that as soon as the bomb-off signal is flashed, your engineer hits his auxiliary rocket-propulsion button. We want to be about fifteen miles from where that thing goes off."
The lieutenant (j.g.) muttered something that sounded unmilitarily like, "You ain't foolin', brother!"
"No, I'm not," von Schlichten agreed. "I saw the Jan Smuts on the TV-screen."