President Wong slumped back into his seat and stared dully at Al, only half noticing his friendly grin. "What would you do about the Gnii, Al, if you were in my place?" he asked.
"I'm sorry, sir," Al said, "but I really don't know. Better come along for some dinner. You've had a hard day, and you have a harder one ahead of you tomorrow. We saved a number of difficult problems that we didn't want to throw at you on your first day in office."
A ghost of a smile crept over the President's face, then disappeared quickly. "It's all right, Al. Go ahead and eat. I think I'll just stay here and go over these tapes."
As Al left, President Wong saw the order for the police action on his desk. He picked it up to call Al to take it with him, but his eyes caught the words 500,000 men ... sixteen years, and a picture of the terribly wounded veterans flashed before his eyes. Really, he would have to go through the files and find out if the expedition was necessary....
He opened the left-hand desk drawer and stared at the Gnii tapes, but he didn't take any of them out. It seemed like too much of an effort.
And then, the conversion bomb was so much more important.
He closed the first drawer and opened the one with the conversion bomb tapes.
But the Gnii had to be answered tomorrow—the bomb could wait. He slammed the drawer shut.
"Gnii," he muttered to himself, and opened the other drawer.
Then he noticed that he had put the police action order back into his outgoing basket. He slammed the drawer with the Gnii tapes shut again and opened the drawer below it and pushed the order inside, so that it wouldn't be picked up by mistake before he could check on it.