Danniels was incredibly tired. He had been listening and arguing for hours.
"You're a scientist," Joel persisted. "Help us."
"There are different kinds of scientists," Danniels repeated. "I'm not a nuclear physicist."
"Right there." Richard tapped the pink rubber of his pencil against the map of Cook County. "Right there. An Armory no one else knows anything about. Enough H-bombs to wipe out human life on the planet. And rockets to send them in."
"The councilman may be lying," Danniels said. "How do you think he should happen to find it and no one else?"
"The information was in the city records," Richard said patiently, "but buried and coded so it would take twenty years to locate. Bureaucracy is an insidious evil, Abe."
Danniels rubbed his face with his palms. "I'm not even sure if I understand what you mean to do. You want to rocket the H-bombs out almost but not quite beyond Earth's gravitation and explode them so the fallout will be evenly distributed over the surface of the planet. You think it will cause no more than injury and destruction—"
"That's all," Joel said sharply.
Richard gave an eager nod.
They had had to convince themselves of that, he knew. "But why do you want to do anything as desperate as that?"