A worried Zzt watched Terl and a swarm of mechanics working over the old bomber drone.

The huge underground garages and hangars resounded with the whine of drills and clang of hammers.

Since the last semiannual personnel intake, Zzt had gotten his mechanics back; aside from exchanging recon drones for refueling every three days (a drone he considered useless), his work was not backlogged. Terl had left the transport chief and section alone until now. Terl himself had serviced the twenty battle planes in the outside field. So aside from this present unexpected project, Zzt had little about which to complain.

But this idiocy! The bomber drone? He knew he had better speak.

Terl was in the huge plane's control room working with presets of buttons. He was covered with grease and sweat. He had a small remote keyboard in his hand, and he was punching settings into the main panels of the ship.

"Scotland...Sweden," Terl was saying, consulting his tables and notes and pushing ship buttons. There were no seats in the place for it would never be piloted, and Terl was hunched uncomfortably on a balance motor housing.

"...Russia...Alps...Italy...China...no. Alps...India...China...Italy...Africa..."

"Terl," said Zzt timidly.

“Shut up,” snapped Terl, not even looking up.

"...Amazon...Andes...Mexico...Rocky Mountains! Rocky Mountains one, two, and three!”

"Terl," repeated Zzt. “This bomber drone has not been flown in a thousand years. It 's a wreck.”

“We're rebuilding it, aren't we?” snarled Terl, finishing his presets and standing up.

“Terl, maybe you don't know that this was the original conquest drone. It was the one that gassed this planet before our takeover.”

“Well, I’m loading it with gas canisters, ain't I?"

“But Terl, we've already conquered this planet a thousand or more years ago. You release kill gas now, even in just a few places, and it might hit our own minesites."

“They use breathe-gas," snapped Terl, shouldering by Zzt and walking back into the huge plane. Workmen were trundling up big gas canisters from deep underground storage. They had to burnish them gingerly to get the crud of ages off them. Terl energetically directed the workers hooking them in place. “Fifteen canisters! You've only brought fourteen. Get another one!” Some workmen rushed off and Terl was hooking wires up to the canister release valves, muttering to himself, checking color coding.

“Terl, they only kept this drone as a curiosity piece. These things are dangerous. It 's one thing to remote-guide a recon drone with its small motors– they don't override the controls! But this thing has motors like a dozen ore freighters. The signals it sends back to a remote get overridden by its own motors. It could charge around and release gas almost anyplace. They're too erratic for competent use. And once you start them you can't stop them. Like transshipment firing, they're irreversible.”

“Shut up,” said Terl.

"In the regulations,” persisted Zzt, “it says these things only get used in 'most extreme emergency!' There is no emergency, Terl.”

“Shut up,” said Terl, going on with his wire matching.

“And you've ordered it permanently parked in front of the automatic firing bay. We need that for servicing ore freighters. This is a war drone, and they only use them for primary attack on a planet and never use them afterward except in a withdrawal. There is no war, and we're not withdrawing from this planet.”

Terl had had enough. He threw down his notes and loomed over Zzt. “lam the best judge of these things. Where there is no war department on a planet, the security chief has that post. My orders are final. This drone gets parked at the hangar firing door and don't you move it! As to control,” he shook the small one-foot-square box in front of Zzt's face, “all it needs is the date setting and fire buttons pushed in and there's nothing erratic after that! This drone will go and do what it's supposed to do! And it stays on standby!”

Zzt backed up. Dollies were moving the huge old relic over to the firing door where it would be in the way of everything and leave no other door to service freighters.

“Those were awfully funny locations you were punching in,” Zzt said faintly.

Terl was holding a big wrench. He walked closer to Zzt. “They're man-names for planet locations. They're the places where mar.-animals were left.”

“That little handful?” ventured Zzt.

Terl screamed something and threw the wrench at him. Zzt ducked and it went clanging across the hangar floor, making workers dodge.

“You're acting kind of insane, Terl,” said Zzt.

“Only alien races ever go insane!” screamed Terl.

Zzt stood aside as they dollied the ancient drone to the firing door.

“It’s going to stay right there,” yelled Terl at nobody in particular. “It’ll get fired anytime in the next four months.” And for sure on Day 93, he smiled to himself.

Zzt wondered for a moment whether he ought to shoot Terl when they were in some quiet place. Terl had restored weapons to the employees, refilled the weapon racks in compound halls, let them wear belt guns again. Then he remembered that Terl had an envelope parked somewhere “in case of death.”

Later, Zzt mentioned it privately to Numph. Zzt liked to hunt and the bomber drone would wipe out most of the game again. Numph had also liked to hunt once.

But Numph just sat there and looked woodenly at him.

The bomber drone, the one originally shipped in to gas and conquer the planet, remained standing at the firing door, in everybody's way, filled with lethal gas, preset, just requiring a few punches of the remote Terl kept in his own possession.

Zzt shuddered every time he passed it. Terl had obviously gone stark raving mad.

That night in his quarters Terl did feel spinny. Another day and he had gotten absolutely no clue as to what Jayed was up to, what the agent was looking for.

Terl followed the recon drone photos. The animals were burrowing underground now, which was smart. They might possibly make it, and if they didn't he had his answers.

He looked in on the females every evening, throwing wood and meat at them. Sometimes he found packages outside the cage door– he chose not to think about how they got there-and threw them in too. He'd fixed the water, but so it overflowed. The bigger one was sitting up again. He never saw them without being nagged by the puzzle of “psychic powers”; he wondered which one of them sent out the impulses and whether they could be read on a scope. Oh, well, as long as the animals up in the mountains worked, he'd keep these females alive. It was good leverage.

But on Day 93, ha! He could not count on the animals not talking. He could not count on the company or government not catching up with him. The animals had to go, and this time all of them.

Terl fell asleep floundering around in a half-conceived possibility. Jayed was denying him gold. It was Jayed's fault.

But how did one commit the perfect murder of a top agent of the I.B.I.? It made one's head spin to try to work it out. Meantime he would be the model of efficiency. He had to look like the greatest, most cautious and alert security chief the company had ever known.

Was he crazy, really? No. Just clever.