"I order that he not be punished," Wong said sharply.
"He won't be," the Manager of Defense said. "Do you take me for a barbarian? I had hoped, though, that your interest might change their attitude. As you can imagine, it's raising hell with the morale of the recruits."
"By the way," the President asked, "where is Veganea, and how many men did we send there?"
"It's about twenty-four years away, near Vega. The action started before my time and I don't know how many men were involved—probably not more than a few million. The Police Action ended successfully, but our ships were in the first wave and were wiped out."
he President sat down wearily. His hand strayed over to the order he had signed that morning for a police action, then drifted aimlessly away.
"What's next?" he asked Al. He slipped a few energy pills into his mouth as Al consulted his book.
"There's the matter of the conversion bomb," Al said. "The Manager of Scientific Research and the Manager of Defense would like you to make a decision about it."
"The conversion bomb?" President Wong said, puzzled. "I've never heard of it."