Kane looked at him with smoldering eyes. "What would be left to fight for?"
"Wait and see," insisted the Russian implacably. "You will really begin to fight when there is no more America to be saved, only Germany to be destroyed."
Manning put in hastily, "Your men didn't locate the—space ship. How do you know it's even in the Black Forest?"
Kane frowned, then shrugged. "We don't. But there's nowhere else it can be. We've checked every spaceport in the Reich."
"Maybe it's outside Germany."
"There aren't any ports in the subject countries. And if one had been built, and the Siegfried landed there—well, it simply couldn't have been done inconspicuously. We have psychoelectronic communicators scattered over the whole world, and what's more important, the best grapevine connections. We'd have heard."
"What about the polar regions? Antarctica?"
"I guess it would be technically possible—though enormously difficult and expensive—to build a spaceport there. But it just isn't reasonable. They aren't that scared of our interference."
Manning bit his lip. "One little thing," he murmured, half to himself, "makes me think that ship isn't in the Schwarzwald at all. Herr Schwinzog gloated that your raid missed the refining plant; he must have forgotten for a moment that you're supposed to believe the space ship is there too...." Abruptly he raised his head. "Listen—maybe there's one part of Germany you didn't investigate."
"What do you mean?"