"Happily, I don't feel in the same spot," Jim said. He got up and went to the picture window that took up one entire wall. It faced out over a mountain vista. He looked soberly into the sky.
Vovo joined him, glass in hand.
"Possibly your position isn't exactly the same as ours but there'll be some awfully great changes if that military based economy of yours suddenly had peace thrust upon it. You'd have a depression such as you've never dreamed of. Let's face reality, Jim, neither of us can afford peace."
"Well, we've both known that for a long time."
They both considered somberly, the planet Earth blazing away, a small sun there in the sky.
Jim said, "I sometimes think that the race would have been better off, when man was colonizing Venus and Mars, if it had been a joint enterprise rather than you people doing one, and we the other. If it had all been in the hands of that organization ..."
"The United Nations?" Vovo supplied.
"... Then when Bomb Day hit, perhaps these new worlds could have gone on to, well, better things."
"Perhaps," Vovo shrugged. "I've often wondered how Bomb Day started. Who struck the spark."