“Oh, I know he’s good. But I’m not that bad. Not queen odds. A queen!”

“Are you sure it isn’t something else? You seem to dislike him an awful lot, considering your motivations.”

Smathers paused for a moment to examine a tube. “And you,” he said without looking up. “You seem to like him an awful lot, considering your motivations.”

On the verge of anger, O’Brien suddenly remembered something and shut up. After all, it could be anyone. It could be Smathers.

Just before they’d left the United States to join the Russians in Benares they’d had a last, ultra-secret briefing session with Military Intelligence. There had been a review of the delicacy of the situation they were entering and its dangerous potentialities. On the one hand, it was necessary that the United States not be at all backward about the Indian suggestion, that before the eyes of the world it enter upon this joint scientific expedition with at least as much enthusiasm and cooperativeness as the Russians. On the other, it was equally important, possibly even more important, that the future enemy should not use this pooling of knowledge and skills to gain an advantage that might prove conclusive, like taking over the ship, say, on the return trip, and landing it in Baku instead of Benares.

Therefore, they were told, one among them had received training and a commission in the Military Intelligence Corps of the U. S. Army. His identity would remain a secret until such time as he decided that the Russians were about to pull something. Then he would announce himself with a special code sentence and from that time on all Americans on board were to act under his orders and not Ghose’s. Failure to do so would be adjudged prima face evidence of treason.

And the code sentence? Preston O’Brien had to grin as he remembered it. It was: “Fort Sumter has been fired upon.”