"There's a chance of a dud—?"
"Some. Partial dud, anyhow."
The colonel seemed agitated. "In that case, wouldn't they get the secret?"
The old man had a goatee. He reached for it. "Yes. Yes, they might. And spend the next twenty years trying to put one together."
Colonel Calm continued down a narrow passage and opened a small door. Freckles Mahoney was taking his ease at the breeches of his tail guns—rocked back—staring at the vault where the powdery light was least. Daydreaming of a gum-chewing, short-haired, underbreasted Kalamazoo High School babe—and keeping his eyes peeled.
The door shut.
The colonel nerved himself for the return passage. Worse than being born—so far as he could remember. Dragging a placenta of parachute and harness through an aluminum canal with an atomic bomb beneath. He gave the three gunners his smile and they did not know it was—this time—a smile of fighting himself. At any rate, he thought, after one more crawl through eternity he could stay in the control compartment, forward. Unless Sopho wanted him.
He took hold of the ladder, sighted through the black tube to freedom's eye at the far end—and his blood turned to water.
Three men besides the gunners?
He felt horror between his shoulder blades—gun, knife, and worse. He checked crew and passengers.