The President pressed the scrambler button and then spoke. The words came out of the amplifier. "Three tons of butter unloaded a fast curve day before tomorrow because the baby was yelling for its morning high-ball. The soap-suds are thick enough for whipping but who knows where or when."
The President leaned back and smiled. "That's an order to all sixteen thousand mutants over the country to be on the alert at their predetermined stations."
Hoshawk frowned. "But everybody's been evacuated."
"Not the mutants. You see General, we ourselves haven't trusted Forgacs."
Hoshawk's grim face lighted up. "Do you mean you have secretly made some fighting equipment?"
Wadsworth shook his head. "No. We could have. There's a loophole in the Twenty-one Eighteen Agreement. But we have observed the spirit—ah!"
Up on the ground-glass screen, purple lights had been flashing on at intervals over the United States, until now there were nineteen, and Wadsworth spoke: "Those represent transmitter stations equally spaced over the country. They are all manned by mutants."
Hoshawk actually snorted. "Transmitter stations! You can't fight with words! And, anyway, there won't be any power at all within a half hour."
"They each have their own power-plant," The President said quietly.
Hoshawk looked at the map again and groaned. The nation was almost covered by a canopy of orange lights marked with black crosses. "There must be at least a million bombers over us! They'll wipe out the whole country within an hour. If there's anything you can do, do it!"