The Winds of Limbo

CHAPTER SIX

ALAN was astounded. For a moment his mood of cynicism held and he was aware of a cool feeling of disbelief as the House, hushed for a second, began to murmur.

Helen suddenly looked frightened. She stared rapidly around the House then up at Powys, whose stern manner could not disguise his triumph.

"Acting on my information, the police have discovered a cache of plutonium war-heads…" he continued.

"War-heads!" someone shouted. "We haven't got any! They were outlawed in forty-two!"

"Presumably the Fireclown or some of his friends manufactured them. It is well known that several scientists have been aiding him with his peculiar experiments with fire."

"But he would need fantastic resources!" - Simon Powys spread his hands, aware that his moment of power had come.

"Presumably," he said, "the Fireclown has them. I told you all that he was more than a mere irritation. His power is even more extensive than I at first guessed."

Helen sat down, her face pale. She made no attempt to question Powys' statement.

She was baffled, yet as convinced of the truth as everyone else in the House.

The crowd in the public gallery was muttering and shoving to get a closer look at Simon Powys.

The old man's leonine head was raised. Evidently he no longer felt the need for oratory. The House was his.

"If the police discover the war-head cache we shall hear the news in a few moments." He glanced towards the towering central doorway and sat-down.

As the tension built up, Alan felt he could take no more of it. He was preparing to turn back into the crowd behind him when a uniformed figure appeared at a side door and made his way down the tiers towards the platform.

It was Chief Sandai, his brown-yellow face shiny with sweat. Watched by everyone, he climbed up the few steps of the platform and approached President Benjosef respectfully.

The microphone picked up his voice and relayed it throughout the House:

"Mr. President, it is my duty to inform you that, acting upon my own initiative, I have declared a state of emergency in the City of Switzerland. A cache of plutonium war-heads equipped with remote control detonators of a type used for setting off bombs from space has been found hidden on the first level. My men have impounded them and await orders."

Benjosef glanced at Powys. "Are you sure you have found all the bombs?" he said.

"No, sir. All we know of are those we found. There could be others. These were stored in a disused war-house cavern."

"You are certain that there was no oversight when the war-house was cleared of its armaments in the past?"

"Perfectly certain, sir. These are new additions. They were being kept in containers previously used for the same purpose, that is all." Benjosef sighed.

"Well, Minister Powys, this is really your department now, isn't it? How did you find out about the bombs?"

"My secretary, Eugene Junnar, first reported his suspicions to me two days ago.

Later investigations proved them to be true. As soon as I knew I informed the police." Powys spoke slowly, savoring his triumph.

Benjosef addressed Chief Sandai. "And have you any evidence to show who was responsible for this illegal stockpile?"

"Yes, sir. It is almost certain that the man concerned is the individual known as the Fireclown. The chamber was guarded by men known to be in his employ. They at first tried to stop us from entering, but offered no physical resistance. One of them has since admitted himself to be a follower of the Fireclown."

"And the Fireclown?" Powys asked urgently. Chief Sandai swallowed and wiped his forehead. "Not in our custody yet, sir."

Angry impatience passed rapidly across Simon Powys' face before being replaced by a further jutting of the jaw and an expression of resolve. "You had better find him and his accomplices as soon as you can, Sandai. He may well have other bombs • already planted. Have you sealed spaceports and checked all means of exit from the City itself?"

"Naturally, sir." Sandai seemed aggrieved.

"Then hurry and find him, man. The existence of the world may depend on locating him and arresting him immediately!"

Sandai galloped down the steps and strode hastily from the House.

Alan didn't wait for any further development in the debate. Simon Powys had made his point, illustrated it perfectly and punched it home relentlessly to the assembly. It was practically certain the Presidency was his.

Pushing through the crowded gallery, he left to take an elevator down and an escalator out of the House. The news must already have leaked to the Press, for laservid reporters were swarming around Chief Sandai, who was obviously flustered and trying to shove his way past them.

Careless of who saw him and the inference that might be put on his act, Alan began to run across the turf towards the nearest elevator cone.

He was sure that his earlier judgment of the Fireclown could not have been so hopelessly wrong. It was only instinct that drove him, but he was so sure that his instinct was right that he was going back, for the second time, to the labyrinthine first level to look at the evidence for himself:

By the time he got to the lower levels another group of vociferous reporters were already on the scene. Police guards surrounded a stack of square, heavy metal boxes, unmarked, at the bottom of the ramp which led down to the first level.

Taking advantage of the police guards' occupation with the reporters, Alan worked his way round them and entered the tunnel which he had gone down earlier-the one which led to the Fireclown's laboratory.

Two guards stood on each side of the entrance. Alan produced his City Administration card and showed it to the men, who inspected it closely.

"Just want to look round, sergeant," he said coolly to one of them. "C.A. would like to know what" s going on here so we can take whatever precautions are necessary."

They let him through and he found himself in a big chamber, equipped with all kinds of instruments and devices. He couldn't recognize the purpose of many of them. The place was dark, lit only by an emergency bulb burning near the door.

It seemed to have been vacated very rapidly, for there was evidence that an experiment had been taking place and had been hastily abandoned. The door of a cooling chamber was open; broken test tubes crunched beneath his feet; chemicals glinted in the half-light, splashed across floor, benches and equipment. He didn't touch anything but made his way to another door. It was an old-fashioned steel door, nearly a foot thick, but it opened when he pushed. In the room the darkness was complete. He went back to find some means of lighting and finally settled for a portable emergency bulb, picking it up by its handle and gingerly advancing into the next room.

The acrid smell of the spilled chemicals was almost unbearable. His eyes watered. This must have been a storeroom. Most of the chemical jars were still intact, so were the boxes of spare parts, neatly labelled. Yet there was nothing to suggest any warlike purpose for the laboratory. There was little manufacturing equipment. It was certain the place had only been used for research. Yet, of course, it was possible that a small manufacturing plant might have been housed in another section of the first level.

He came out of the store-room and pushed another door on his left. At first he thought it was locked, but when he pushed again it gave. Whereas the store-room had smelled of chemicals this one smelled merely damp. It was an office. Files and notebooks were stacked around, although a microfile cabinet had been damaged and its contents removed. He noticed also a small, old fashioned, closed circuit television screen and wondered what the cameras were aimed at. He switched it on. The screen flickered and showed part of the corridor outside. He turned the control but each picture showed an uninteresting corridor, a cavern or a room, until he turned once more and the screen brightened to show a well-lighted room.

In it were two men and a woman.

The woman was unknown to Alan. But the men were unmistakable-the skinless Corso, his red, peeled body even more repulsive in good light, and the Fireclown, his great bulk seeming to undulate as he breathed, his face still painted.

Excitedly, Alan tried to get sound, but there appeared to be no sound control on the set. He had no idea where the trio were, but it was fairly certain that cameras were only trained on parts of the first level. Therefore they must be close by.

The woman came up to the Fireclown and pressed her body against him, her right arm spread up across his back, the fingers of the hand caressing him.

He smiled-somehow an extremely generous gesture considering he was now a hunted man-and gently pushed her away, saying something to her. She did not appear annoyed. Corso was more animated. He obviously felt a need for urgency which the Fireclown did not.

Alan suddenly heard a movement in the first chamber and hastily killed the set.

"Mr. Powys, sir?" the sergeant's voice shouted.

"What is it?" he replied, inwardly wishing the man dead.

"Wondered if you were all right, that's the only thing, sir-the smell in here is almost overpowering."

"I'm fine, sergeant, thanks." He heard the sergeant return to his post.

Now he noticed a smaller door leading off the room. It had no lock of any sort, just a projection at the top. He reached up to inspect it when the door wouldn't open. It was a small bar of metal sliding into a socket. He fiddled with it for a while, pulled at it and, at last, the right combination of chances released the mechanism and he pulled the door. Alan had never seen a bolt before.

The emergency bulb lit the place and showed him a narrow, low-roofed passage. A rusted sign hung suspended lopsidedly by one chain; the other had broken. Alan caught hold of it, disliking the touch of grimy rust on his fingers, and made out what it said: Restricted to all personnel! He let the sign go and it swung noisily against the wall as he continued along the tunnel. Finally he came to another door, but this one would not open at all. He went past it until he reached the end of the tunnel. This was half blocked by the fallen bulk of another massive steel door. He pulled himself over it, wondering if anyone had ever come this way since the lower levels, which had primarily been used for storing armaments, battle-machines and military personnel, had been abandoned with the Great Disarmament of 2042.

A noise ahead of him suddenly startled Alan and he automatically switched off the emergency bulb.

Voices sounded, at first indistinct and then clearer as Alan moved cautiously closer.

"We shouldn't have left those machines intact. If some fool fiddles about with them, heaven knows what* 11 happen."

"Let them find out." It was the Fireclown's voice, sounding like a pulse-beat.

"And who'll be blamed?" he heard Corso say tiredly. "You will. I wish you'd never talked me into this."

"You agreed with my discoveries, Corso. Have you changed your mind now?"

"I suppose not… Damn!" Alan heard someone stumble. A woman giggled and said:

"You're too hasty, Corso. What's the hurry? At present they're combing the corridors they know about. We have plenty of time."

"Unless they find the boat before we get there," Corso said querulously. Alan was creeping behind them now, following them as they moved along in the dark.

"I'm only worried about the fuel. Are you sure we've enough fuel, Corso?" The Fireclown spoke. Although this man had been accused of planning to blow up the world, Alan felt a glow as he listened to the rich, warm voice.

"We wouldn't make Luna, certainly, on what we've got. But we've got enough to take us as far as we want to go."

"Good."

Alan heard a low whine, a hissing noise, a thump, and then the voices were cut off suddenly. A few yards further on his hand touched metal.

He switched on the emergency bulb and discovered that he had come to a solid wall of steel. This was completely smooth and he could not guess how it opened.

He tried for almost an hour to get it to work, but finally, his body feeling hollow with frustration, he gave up and began to make his way back in the direction he had come.

A short time later the ground quivered for a few seconds and he had to stop, thinking insanely that the stock-pile of bombs had exploded. When it was over, he thought he could guess what had caused it. The Fireclown had made some reference to a boat-a space boat. Perhaps that had taken off, though how it was possible so deep underground he couldn't guess.

He was feeling intensely tired. His limbs and his head ached badly and he was incapable either of sustained thought or action. He had to keep stopping every few yards in order to rest, his body trembling with reaction. But reaction to what? To some new nervous or mental shock, or was it the cumulative effect of the past few days? He had been unable to sort out and analyze his emotions earlier, and was even less capable of doing so now.

An acute sense of melancholy possessed him as he stumbled miserably on, at last arriving back at the office. Wearily, he dumped the emergency bulb down in the main chamber, suddenly becoming conscious of a tremendous heat emanating from some source outside. When he reached the entrance the guards had gone. Somewhere in the distance he heard shouts and other noises. As he reached the opening on to the main corridor he saw that it was ablaze with light.

And the light-a weird, green-blue blaze-was coming from the Fireclown's great cavern.

A policeman ran past him and Alan shouted: "What's happening?"

"Fire!" the policeman continued to run.

Now, pouring like a torrent, the flames were eddying down the corridor, a surging, swift moving inferno. There was nothing for the fire to feed on, yet it moved just the same, as if of its own volition.

Fascinated, Alan watched it approach. The heat was soon unbearable and he backed into the chamber.

Only at that moment did it dawn on him that he should have run towards the ramps. He was completely trapped. Also, the laboratory contained inflammable chemicals which would ignite as soon as the blaze reached them.

He ran towards the entrance again, stupefied by the heat, and saw that it was too late. The wall of heaving flame had almost reached him.

He still felt no panic. Part of him almost welcomed the flames. But the air was becoming less and less breathable.

He wrenched open doors, looking for another exit. The only possible one seemed to be that which he'd just come back from.

It occurred to him that the Fireclown had been misjudged all round-by everyone except his grandfather who had realized the danger.

The Fireclown had released an inferno on the City of Switzerland. But how? He had never seen or heard of any flames like those which now began to dart around the corridor. He coughed and rubbed the sweat out of his eyes.

At last his brain began to function again. But too late, now, for him to do anything constructive.

Suddenly the entrance was filled with a roaring mass of fire. He retreated from it, hit his back against the corner of a bench, stumbled towards the office. As he slammed the steel door behind him he heard an explosion as the flame touched some of the spilled chemicals.

Air was still flowing in from another source in the small tunnel. He kept the door open.

The other door, sealing off the flames, began to heat and he realized, with fantastic horror, that when it melted, as it inevitably must, he would die.

He would, he decided, leave the office and head into the tunnel at the last minute. Sitting in the darkness, his confused mind began to clear as the heat rose, and he faced death. A peculiar feeling of calm came upon him and belatedly, he began to think.

The thoughts were not particularly helpful in his present predicament. They told him of no way of escape, but they helped him face the inevitable. He thought he understood, now, the philosophic calm which came to men facing death.

For some days, he realized, he had been moving in a kind of half-dream, grasping out for something that might have been-he hesitated and then let the thought come-love. His emotions had ruled him; he had been their toy, unaware of his motives.

He had always been, to a degree, unstable in this way, perhaps because of his tendency to suppress the unpleasant ideas which sometimes came to him. Having no parents, unloved by his grandfather, his childhood had been spent in a perpetual quest for attention; at school he had been broken of his exhibitionism, and the nature of his job gave him no means of expressing these feelings. Now he sought, perhaps, that needed love in the Fireclown with his constant evoking of parent images. Certainly he had sought it in Helen, so much so that a similar need in her had clashed with his own. And now, spurred on by his grandfather's bitter references to his illegitimacy, he had embarked on a search which had led him to this-death!

He got up, abstractedly watching the door slowly turning red hot.

Had many others, like him, identified the Fireclown with some need to feel wanted?

He smiled. It was too pat, really-too cheap. But he had hit upon a clue to the Fireclown's popularity even if he was not yet near to the exact truth.

Looking at it from another angle, he assembled the facts. They were few and obvious. The Fireclown's own psychological need had created the creed that he had preached, and it had found an echo in the hearts of a large percentage of the world's population. But the creed had not really supplied an answer to their ills, had only enabled them to find expression.

The door turned to smoky white and he smelled the steel smoldering. A slight glow filled the room and his mouth was dry of saliva, his body drained of sweat.

The world had reached some kind of crisis point. Perhaps it was, as the Fireclown had said, because man had removed himself from his roots and lived an increasingly artificial life.

Yet Alan couldn't completely accept this. An observer from another star, for instance, might see the rise and fall of man-made constructions as nothing more than a natural change-process. Did human beings consider an ant-hill "unnatural?" Wasn't the City of Switzerland itself merely a huge ant-hill?

He saw with surprise that the door had faded from white to red hot and the heat in the room was decreasing. Immediately there was some hope. He forgot his reverie and watched the change intently. Soon the door was only warm to his touch. He pushed at it but it wouldn't budge. Then he realized that the heat had expanded the metal. He waited impatiently, giving an experimental push every now and then until, at last the door gave and he stepped into the ruined laboratory.

The fire had destroyed much, but now the room swam with liquid. An occasional spurt from the walls close to the ceiling told him the source of his salvation.

Evidently the old section of the City had had to protect itself against fire more than any other part-the old automatic extinguishers had finally functioned and engulfed the fire.

In the passage outside it was the same. The extinguishers had not been tested-not even known about-for years but, activated by the extreme heat, they had finally done the job they had been designed for.

With relief, he began to run up the pitch-dark corridor, at last finding his way to the ramp. A small heap of containers was still there, but there were not so many as he had seen earlier. Had the police managed to take them, or had they been salvaged by the Fireclown? It was, of course, virtually impossible for fire to destroy the P-bombs' shielding, but how many knew that these days? How much panic, Alan wondered, had been the result of the Fireclown's holocaust?

Levels all the way up had been swept by fire. He was forced to push his body on and on, climbing the emergency stairways, avoiding charred corpses and wreckage.

Naked flame had not been used in the city for many years and fire precautions had been lax-there had been no need for them until now.

Alan wondered wryly if the Fireclown's popularity was as great as it had been yesterday.

The first group of men he met were on the fifteenth level. They were forcing open a door in a residential corridor, obviously equipped as a rescue team.

They stared at him, astonished.

"Where did you come from?" one of them asked, rubbing a dirty sleeve over his soot-blackened face.

"I was trapped down below-old fire extinguishers put out the fire."

"They may have put out the fire that the initial fire started," another said,

"but they wouldn't have worked on the first lot. We tried. Nothing puts it out once it's under way."

"Then why is it out now?"

"Just thank the stars it is out. We don't know why. It suddenly subsided and disappeared between the fifteenth and sixteenth levels. We can only guess that the stuff it's made of doesn't last forever. We don't know why it burns and we don't know what it burns. To think we trusted the Fireclown and he did this to our homes…"

"You're sure it was the Fireclown?"

"Who else? He had the P-bomb cache, didn't he? It stands to reason he had other weapons, too-flame-weapons he'd made himself."

Alan passed on.

The semi-melted corridors gave way to untouched corridors full of disturbed people, milling around men organizing them into rescue teams. Emergency hospital stations had been set up and doctors were treating shock and burn victims, the lucky survivors. The lowest level had been built to withstand destruction of this kind, but the newer levels had not been. If he had been on the tenth level, or even the ninth where a few families had still lived before the blaze, he wouldn't be alive now.

Though climbing the emergency stairs and ramps was hard going, Alan chose these instead of the overcrowded, fear-filled elevators. On he climbed, grateful for the peace and quiet of the stairs in contrast to the turbulence in the corridors.

He was crossing the corridor of the thirtieth level when he saw that one of the shopfronts-it was a consumer corridor-bore a gaudy slogan. A FREER LIFE WITH THE RLM, it said. The place was the election headquarters of the Radical Liberal Movement. Another poster-a tri-di build-up-showed the smiling face of Helen Curtis. At the top, above the picture, it said Curtis, and at the bottom, below the picture, it said President. The troublesome for had been left out.

He stopped and spoke to the door of the place.

"May I come in?"

The door opened. He walked into a poster-lined passage and into a large room stacked with election literature. Bundles of leaflets and posters, all brightly colored, were stacked everywhere. There didn't seem to be anyone around.

He picked up a plastipaper poster of Helen. An audiostrip in its lining began to whisper softly: Curtis for President, Curtis for President, Curtis for President. He flung it down and as it crumpled the whispering stopped.

"I see that's another vote I've lost," said Helen's voice behind him.

"I had a feeling I was going to meet you," he said quietly, still staring at the fallen poster.

"It would be likely, in my own election headquarters. This is only the store-room. Do you want to see the offices? They're smart." Her voice, unlike her words, was not a bit cheerful.

"What are you going to do with all this now?" he said, waving a tired arm around the room.

"Use it, of course. What did you expect?"

"I should have thought a campaign wouldn't have been worth your time now."

"You think because I supported the Fireclown when he was popular I won't have a chance now he's unpopular-is that it?"

"Yes." He was surprised. Her spirit, it seemed, was still there. She didn't have a chance of winning the elections now. Was she hiding the fact from herself? he wondered.

"Look, Alan," she said forcefully, "I could have walked into the Presidency without a fight if this hadn't happened. Now it's going to be a tough fight-and I'm rather glad."

"You always liked a fight."

"Certainly-if the opposition's strong enough."

He smiled. "Was that levelled at me by any chance? I've heard it said that if a man doesn't love a woman enough she thinks he's strong; if he loves her too much she thinks he's weak. Was the opposition weak, Helen?"

"You're very sensitive today." Her voice was deliberately cool. "No, I wasn't levelling anything at you. I was talking about your grandfather's happy turn of luck. Our positions are completely reversed now, aren't they?"

"I don't know how I feel about it," he said, stopping the tendency to sulk.

Helen's retort had stung him. "I'm not really in support of either of you. I think, on the whole, I favor the RLMs. They could still win the constituency elections, couldn't they, even if you didn't get the Presidency? That would give you a strong voice in the House."

"If they kept me as leader, Alan." Her face softened as she admitted a truth which previously she had been hiding from. "Not everyone who approved of my stand yesterday approves of it today."

"I hate to say I warned you of it. You should have known better, Helen, than to go around whipping up mobs. People have to trust politicians as well as like them. They want a modern, up-to-date President, certainly-but they also want a respectable one. When the voters sit down and think about it, even if this Fireclown business hadn't taken the turn it has, they'll choose the candidate they can feel confidence in. Fiery politics of your sort only work for short spells, Helen. Even I know that much. Admittedly, after showing yourself as a 'Woman of the People' you could have stuck to parliamentary debate to make your points and probably danced home. But now you've identified yourself so strongly with the Fireclown that you haven't a hope of winning. I should give it up." He looked at her wistfully.

She laughed shortly, striding up and down between the bales of posters. "I haven't a dog's chance-you're right. But I'll keep on fighting. Lucky old Simon, eh? He's now the man who warned the people of their danger. Who else could they vote for?"

"Don't get bitter, Helen. Why don't you start painting again? You know what you're doing in that field. Really, even I know more about politics than you do.

You should never have entered them. There are people who are natural born politicians, but you're just not one of them. I've asked you this a dozen times previously, but I'd still like to know what makes you go on with it."

"One of the strongest reasons is because the more people disapprove of my actions, the harder I pursue them. Fair enough?" She turned, staring at him quizzically with her head cocked on one side.

He smiled. "In a word, you're just plain obstinate. Maybe if I’d encouraged you in your political work you might have been a well-known painter by now-and well rid of all this trouble."

"Maybe. But it's more than that, Alan." She spoke softly, levering herself up on to one of the bales. She sat there swinging her legs, looking very beautiful.

She no longer wore the make-up she'd had on earlier. "But I've got myself into this now, and I'm going to stick at it until the end. Sink or swim."

He told her about his visit to the first level-omitting that he'd heard the Fireclown and his friends leaving-and of his narrow escape.

"I thought I was going to be killed," he said, "and I thought of you. I wondered, in fact, if we weren't both searching for the same thing."

"Searching? I didn't know you were the searching kind, Alan."

"Until this Fireclown business blew up, I was the hiding kind. I hid a lot from myself. But something grandfather said must have triggered something else in me." He paused. "Was it only three days ago?" he mused wonderingly.

"What did he say?"

"Oh," Alan answered lightly, "he made a rather pointed reference to the fact that my ancestry isn't all it might be."

"That was cruel of him."

"Maybe it did me good. Maybe it brought something into the open. Anyway, I started getting curious about the Fireclown. Then you visited me and I was even more curious. Perhaps because you associated yourself with the Fireclown's creed, I associated him with you and it led on from there. I went to see the Fireclown the same night, you know."

"Did you speak to him personally?" She sounded envious.

"No. I never got to see him, actually. But I attended yesterday's 'audience.' I thought I understood why you supported him. In his own heavy way he made sense of a kind." He frowned. "But the same could be said for Grandfather, I suppose.

That was a good speech this morning."

"Yes, it was." She was staring at him, her mouth slightly open, her breasts moving beneath her lacy bodice as she breathed.

"I'm glad all this has happened," he continued. "It's done a lot of good for me, I think."

"You're glad about the P-bombs being found-about the fire, too?"

"No. I couldn't really believe the Fireclown was guilty until I saw the evidence for myself. And I still don't hate him for what he tried to do-for what he still might try to do, for that matter. I feel sorry for him. In his own way he is the naive and generous giant you tried to tell me about."

"That's what I think. You were down there-were you satisfied that the Fireclown was responsible for stockpiling those bombs and starting the fire?"

"The evidence was plain, I’m afraid."

"It's idiotic," she said angrily. "Why should he do a thing like that? A man so full of love!"

"Love-or hate, Helen?"

"What do you mean?"

"He professed to love mankind-but he hated mankind's works. He hated what he thought were our faults. Not exactly true love, eh?"

"We'll never know. I wonder if he escaped. I hope he has-so long as he doesn't try any more sabotage."

For the second time in the last few days Alan found himself concealing something from his ex-mistress. He didn't tell her that he knew the Fireclown had managed a getaway, at least from Earth. Instead, he said: "Should he escape? After all, he was responsible for the deaths of least a hundred people. The residential corridors on nine and ten all the way up to fifteen were full of corpses.

Probably a great many more were roasted in their homes. A nasty death, Helen. I know. I came close to it myself. Should he escape without punishment?"

"A man like the Fireclown is probably not conscious of his crime, Alan. So who's to say?"

"He's intelligent. I don't think he's insane, in any way we can understand.

Warped, perhaps…?' "Oh, well, let*s stop talking about the Fireclown. There's a world-wide search out for him now. The fact that he vanished seems to prove his guilt, at least for Simon Powys and the public. I've noticed a few remained loyal to the Fire-clown for some time after they found out about the bombs, If the fire hadn't started he'd probably still have strong support from people who thought the bombs were planted."

"You can't plant a stack of P-bombs, Helen. The Fire-clown must have made them.

He's the only one with the resources."

"That's what everyone thinks. But a few of us politicians know better, Alan."

"Nuclear weapons have been banned for years. What are you talking about?"

"Not everyone gave up all their stockpile in the early days of the Great Disarmament, Alan. There were quite a few who hung on to some secret arms piles until they saw how things were going. Of course, when the Solar Government was found to work and the threat of war dwindled away to nothing, they forgot about them or got rid of them."

"Good God! Nuclear bombs. I'm not superstitious. War's a thing of the past. But it seems dreadful that the weapons should still be around."

"There are plenty," she said ironically. "At least enough to fight a major solar war!"