"I'd hate to have to make a decision like that, Paula," he told her. "The military use of nuclear energy is the last—well, the next-to-last—thing I'd want to see on Uller. Fortunately, or unfortunately, it's a decision I won't have to make. There isn't a single nuclear bomb on the planet. The Company's always refused to allow them to be manufactured or stockpiled here."
"I don't think there'd be any criticism of your making them, now, general. And there's certainly plenty of plutonium. You could make A-bombs, at least."
"There isn't anybody here who even knows how to make one. Most of our nuclear engineers could work one up, in about three months, when we'd either not need one or not be alive."
"Dr. Gomes, who came in on the Pretoria, two weeks ago, can make them," she contradicted. "He built at least a dozen of them on Niflheim, to use in activating volcanoes and bringing ore-bearing lava to the surface."
Von Schlichten's hand, bringing his lighter to the tip of his cigarette, paused for a second. Then he completed the operation, snapped it shut, and put it away.
"When did all this happen?"
She took time out for mental arithmetic; even a spaceship officer had to do that, when a question of interstellar time-relations arose.
"About three-fifty days ago, Galactic Standard. They'd put off the first shot, six bombs, before I got in from Terra. I saw the second shot a day or so before I left Niflheim on the Canberra. Dr. Gomes had to stay over till the Pretoria to put off the third shot. Why?"
"Did you run into a geek named Gorkrink, while you were on Nif?" he asked her. "And what sort of work was he doing?"
"Gorkrink? I don't seem to remember.... Oh, yes! He was helping Dr. Murillo, the seismologist. His year was up after the second shot; he came to Uller on the Canberra. Dr. Murillo was sorry to lose him. He understood Lingua Terra perfectly; Dr. Murillo could talk to him, the way you do with Kankad, without using a geek-speaker."