Stalin seemed amiable enough at the moment, offering him vodka, a glass of tea (it was made from leaves flavored with blackberry extract, and pretty vile), cakes sweetened with honey, and cigarettes of coarse Russian tobacco.The condemned man ate a hearty meal, ran through Molotov’s mind. Stalin could be most appalling just after he’d been most polite.

Now he drank and ate and blew smoke up toward the ceiling of the little Kremlin room he used as his own. At last, quite casually, he remarked, “I have learned something interesting about the explosive-metal bombs the Germans and Americans used against the Lizards.”

“And what is that, Iosef Vissarionovich?” Molotov asked. “That they were made with metal that damned German managed to smuggle back through Poland? A pity, I know, but we couldn’t reasonably have expected him to survive.”

“Reasonably.” Stalin said it as if it were a swear word; his throaty Georgian accent made the term sound even more menacing. But then he went on, “No, we’ve known he got through for some time; nothing we can do about that now but make sure no similar mistakes happen in future.” Molotov wondered how many men had died or gone to thegulag expiating such mistakes. Stalin continued, “No, this thing I have learned has nothing to do with that. It was obtained by our diligent wireless operators monitoring Lizard frequencies.”

“This is good,” Molotov said, nodding. “We cannot place inconspicuous intelligence operatives among them, so we had better learn something by monitoring their communications.” He waited. Stalin did not go on. At last, he had to ask, “What did the diligent wireless operators learn from the Lizards?”

In the space of a heartbeat, Stalin’s face went from mild and serene to coldly furious. A film seemed to draw itself over his eyes, giving his gaze the menacing steadiness of a serpent’s. Molotov had seen the transition many times; it never failed to alarm him. When that unwinking stare appeared on the General Secretary’s countenance, dreadful things followed.

Hissing out the words, Stalin said, “Vyacheslav Mikhailovich, they learned the bombs the Hitlerites and capitalists used were made partly from the explosive metal stolen from the Lizards and partly from that which they manufactured themselves.”

“This is not surprising,” Molotov said. “Our physicists told us neither of the other parties with the explosive metal had enough for a bomb of his own-that is how we exploded ours first last summer.” He stopped in chagrin; for once, his mouth had outrun his brains. In an entirely different tone of voice, he said, “Oh. I see the difficulty, Comrade General Secretary.”

“Do you?” Stalin’s gaze was even more hooded than before.“Khorosho. Ochen khorosho. I thought I should have to draw you an illustration. The Nazis have made this explosive metal for themselves. The Americans have made this explosive metal for themselves.” His voice grew soft and deadly. “Why have we not made this explosive metal for ourselves?”

Molotov gulped. “Iosef Vissarionovich, our physicists warned from the outset that this would be a slow project, requiring well over a year, not merely a time measured in months.” They’d spoken of two or three years or even more, but he hadn’t dared tell Stalin that. “We had so much to do to bring the Soviet Union to a point where it could hope to resist the onslaughts of the fascists and capitalists that in such matters as abstract research we lagged behind them. We have made great strides in catching up, but we cannot have everything at once.”

“But this is something the Soviet Union requires,” Stalin said, as if demanding explosive metal could make it spring into being on the table next to the cakes. “If the incompetents now laboring to accomplish the task cannot succeed, we should uproot them and bring in others with great understanding of the subject.”

Molotov had been dreading that pronouncement since Igor Kurchatov told him they would for the time being have no more than one bomb. He saw nothing but disaster in dismantling the team Kurchatov had assembled: for all practical purposes, everyone in the Soviet Union who knew anything about nuclear physics was gathered at the carefully disguised farm outside Moscow. If that set of physicists was liquidated, only charlatans would be left to try to build an explosive-metal bomb. The Soviet Union could not afford that.

Cautiously, as if he were walking through a minefield, he said, “They need more time to do what they said they would. Displacing them, I think, might have a disruptive effect on our progress.” Displacing them would wreck the project as effectively as if an explosive-metal bomb had gone off on that disguised farm, but he couldn’t tell Stalin that. Disagreeing with the Soviet ruler, even indirectly, made his heart thud and sweat spring out on his high forehead.

Stalin looked petulant. “They have shown themselves to be bunglers, and you want to give them more time to prove it?”

“They are not altogether bunglers, Comrade General Secretary,” Molotov answered, sweating harder. “Had it not been for the bomb they did succeed in detonating, Moscow would now be overrun.” He wondered if they could have carried on the fight against the Lizards from Kuibishev. He might yet be faced with the prospect of finding out.

“That was one bomb,” Stalin said. “We need more. The Hitlerites will have more, which means therodina will be endangered even leaving the Lizards out of the account.”

“Hitler will not use the bombs against us while the Lizards lie between Germany and the Soviet Union,” Molotov said. “We shall have our own by the time they are cleared from Poland.” He briefly contemplated the irony of a Georgian talking about the Russian motherland, but did not come close to having the nerve to remark on it.

Stalin said, “The devil’s uncle take Poland.” He used Russian expressions, all right, sometimes with a sardonic twist that showed he knew how strange they could sound in his mouth, others, as now, as if he really felt himself to be a Russian. “How, without more bombs, are we going to clear the Lizards from our own land?”

“Winter is our ally,” Molotov insisted. “We have gained a good many kilometers south of Moscow, and our forces are also advancing in the Ukraine. And in the west and north, the Lizards have reduced the forces opposing us to concentrate on the Germans.”

“Which means only that they hold us in contempt,” Stalin snapped. “The Nazis, they think, are more dangerous to them. But us? They can deal with us at any time. And why do they think this? Because the Nazis can make these bombs on their own and we, it seems, cannot. It all comes down to these bombs.”

Molotov thought about pointing out that the Lizards had reduced their forces in the north and west of Russia to attack Germany before they knew the Nazis had explosive-metal bombs, and that the one the Germans set off came as a complete and most unpleasant surprise to them.

He kept quiet, though. This once, it wasn’t because he feared what would happen if he contradicted Stalin-although that would be bad. In the end, though, the General Secretary was right. It did all come down to those bombs. If the Soviet Union could make more, it might survive. If it couldn’t, it would go under, if not to the Lizards, then to the Germans and Americans.

Kurchatov and his crewcould make more bombs; Molotov was certain of that. He was just as certain nobody else in the Soviet Union could in any conceivably useful amount of time.

Stalin glared at Molotov, in lieu of glaring at the entire world. “These bunglers you have gathered together, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich, have six months. If they have not made an explosive-metal bomb by then, they shall suffer the consequences-and so shall you.”

Molotov licked his lips. Stalin did not forget threats like that. Molotov took a deep breath. “Comrade General Secretary, if that is how you feel, call the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs and have them deal with me now. The Kurchatov group cannot make us a bomb within six months. No one else you can find will do better.”