"Maybe they have." Jeff saw no reason to argue the point. "But we'll play safe until we know different." He looked them over. "What do you two want, anyway?"

"Some advice," Gleed shoved in quickly. "We're out on the spree. We'd like to know the best places for food and fun."

"How long have you got?"

"Until nightfall tomorrow."

"No use." Jeff Baines shook his head sorrowfully. "It would take you from now until then to plant enough obs to qualify for anything worth having. Besides, plenty of people would rather drop dead than let an Antigand dump an ob on them. They have their pride, see?"

Harrison asked, "Can't we get so much as a square meal?"

"Well, I don't know about that." Jeff thought it over while massaging his several chins. "You might manage it-but I can't help you this time. There's nothing I want of you and so you can't use any obs I've got stashed around."

"Can you offer any suggestions?"

"If you were local citizens it would be lots different. You could get all you want right now by taking on a load of obs to be wiped out sometime in the future as and when the chances come along. But I can't see anybody giving credit to Antigands who are here today and gone tomorrow."

"Not so much of the gone tomorrow talk," advised Gleed. "When an Imperial Ambassador arrives it means that Terrans are here for keeps."

"Who says so?"

"The Terran Empire says so. You're part of it, aren't you?"

"No," said Jeff positively. "We are not part of anything, don't want to be and don't intend to be. What's more, nobody's going to make us part of anything."

Leaning on the counter, Gleed gazed absently at a large can of pork. "Seeing that I'm out of uniform and not on duty, I sympathize with you though I still shouldn't say it. I wouldn't care myself to be taken over body and soul by a gang of otherworld bureaucrats. But you folk are going to have a mighty tough time beating us off. That's the way it is."

"Not with what we've got," opined Jeff confidently.

"You haven't got much," scoffed Gleed, more in friendly criticism than open contempt. He sought confirmation from Harrison. "Have they?"

"It wouldn't seem so," said Harrison.

"Don't go by appearances," warned Jeff. "We've more than you bums can handle."

"Such as what?"

"Well, just for a start, we've got the mightiest weapon ever thought up by the mind of man. We're Gands, see? So we don't need ships and guns and similar playthings. We've something better. It's effective. There's no defense against it."

"Man, I'd like to see it," Gleed challenged. Data concerning a new and exceptionally powerful weapon should be a good deal more valuable than the mayor's address. Grayder might be sufficiently impressed by the importance thereof to arrange a fabulous reward. With some sarcasm, he added, "But, of course, we can't expect you to give away precious secrets."

"There is nothing secret about it," said Jeff, very surprisingly. "You can have it free, gratis and for nothing any time you want. And Gand would give it to you for the mere asking. Like to know why?"

"You bet."

"Because it works one way only. We can use it against you-but you can't use it against us."

"Nonsense!" declared Gleed. "There is no such thing. There is no weapon inventable that the other fellow can't employ once he gets his hands on it and learns how to operate it."

"Are you sure about that?"

"I am positive. I've been in the space service for twenty years. You can't be a trooper that long without learning all about weapons of every conceivable kind from string bows to H-bombs. You're trying to kid me. Nothing doing. I'm too gray in the hair and sharp in the tooth. A one-way weapon is impossible. And that means im-poss-ible."

"Don't argue with him," Harrison told Baines. "He'll never be convinced until he's shown."

"I can see that." Jeff Baines' face creased into a massive grin. "I've told you that you can have our wonder-weapon for the asking. Why don't you ask?"

"All right, I'm asking." Gleed put it without any enthusiasm. A weapon that would be presented on request, without even the necessity of first planting a minor ob, couldn't be so mighty after all. His imaginary large reward shrank to a handful of small change and thence to nothing. "Hand it over and let me look at it."

Edging ponderously around on his stool, Jeff reached to the wall, removed a small, shiny plaque from its hook and passed it across the counter.

"You may keep it," he said. "And much good may it do you."

Gleed examined it, turning it over and over between his fingers. It was nothing more than an oblong strip of substance resembling ivory. One side was polished and bare. The other bore three letters deeply engraved in bold style: F.-I.W.

Glancing up at Baines, his features puzzled, he said, "You call this a weapon?"

"Certainly."

"Then I don't get it." He passed the plaque to Harrison. "Do you?"

"No." Harrison examined it with care. "What does this F.I.W. mean?"

"Initial-slang," informed Baines. "Made correct by common usage. It has become a worldwide motto. You'll see it all over the place if you haven't noticed it already."

"I have seen it here and there but attached no importance to it and thought nothing more about it. I remember now that it was inscribed in several places including Seth's and the fire depot."

"It was on the sides of that bus we couldn't empty," put in Gleed. "It didn't mean anything to me."

"It means plenty," said Jeff. "Freedom I Won't!"

"That kills me," Gleed responded. "I'm stone dead already. I've dropped in my tracks." He watched Harrison thoughtfully pocketing the plaque. "A piece of abracadabra. What a weapon!"

"Ignorance is bliss," asserted Baines, strangely sure of himself. "Especially when you don't know that what you're playing with is the safety catch of something that goes bang."

"All right," challenged Gleed, taking him up on that. "Tell us how it works."

"I won't." Baines' grin reappeared. He seemed to be highly satisfied about something.

"That's a fat lot of help." Gleed felt let down, especially over that momentary hoped-for reward. "You brag and boast about a one-way weapon, toss across a slip of stuff with three letters on it and then go dumb. Any folly will do for braggarts and any braggart can talk through the seat of his pants. How about backing up your talk?"

"I won't," repeated Baines, his grin broader than ever. He gave the onlooking Harrison a fat, significant wink.

It made something spark vividly within Harrison's mind. His jaw dropped, he dragged the plaque from his pocket and stared at it as if seeing it for the first time.

"Give it back to me," requested Baines, watching him.

Replacing it in his pocket, Harrison said very firmly, "I won't."

Baines chuckled. "Some people catch on quicker than others."

Resenting that, Gleed held his hand out to Harrison. "Let me have another look at that thing."

"I won't," said Harrison, meeting him eye to eye.

"Hey, don't start being awkward with me. That's not the way-" Gleed's protesting voice petered out. He stood there a moment, his optics slightly glassy, while his brain performed several loops. Then in hushed tones he said, "Good grief!"

"Precisely," approved Baines. "Grief and plenty of it. You were a bit slow on the uptake."

Overcome by the flood of insubordinate ideas now pouring upon him, Gleed said hoarsely to Harrison, "Come on, let's get out of here. I've got to think. I want to sit somewhere nice and quiet while I think."

There was a tiny park with seats and lawns and flowers and a little fountain around which a small group of children were playing. Choosing a place facing a colorful carpet of exotic un-Terran blooms, they sat and brooded for quite a time.

Eventually, Gleed commented, "For one solitary, mulish character it would be martyrdom, but for a whole world--"

His voice drifted off, came back. "I've been taking this as far as I can make it go and the results give me the leaping fantods."

Harrison said nothing.

"For instance," Gleed continued. "Suppose that when I go back to the ship that snorting rhinoceros Bidworthy gives me an order. And I give him the frozen eye and say, I won't.' What happens? It follows as an inviolable law of Nature that he either drops dead or throws me in the clink."

"That would do you a lot of good."

"Wait a bit-I haven't finished yet. I'm in the pokey, demoted and a disgrace to the service, but the job still needs doing. So Bidworthy picks on somebody else. The victim, being a soul-mate of mine, also donates the icy optic and says, I won't' Into the jug he goes and I've got company."

Bidworthy tries again. And again and again and again. There are more of us crammed in the brig. It will hold only twenty. So they take over the engineers' mess."

"Leave our mess out of this," requested Harrison.

"They take over the mess," insisted Gleed, thoroughly determined to penalize the engineers. "Pretty soon it's filled to the roof with I-won'ters. Bidworthy is still raking them in as fast as he can go-if by then he hasn't burst a dozen blood vessels. So they take over the Blieder dormitories."

"Why keep picking on my crowd?"

"And pile them ceiling-high with bodies," Gleed said, deriving sadistic pleasure from the picture. "Until in the end Bidworthy has to get buckets and brushes and go down on his knees and do his own deck-scrubbing while Grayder, Shelton and the rest take turn for guard-duty. By that time His Loftiness the Ambassador is in the galley busily cooking for the prisoners and is being assisted by a disconcerted bunch of yessing pen-pushers." He had another look at this mental scene. "Holy smoke!"

A colored ball rolled his way. Stooping, he picked it up, held on to it. Promptly a boy of about seven ran near, eyed him gravely.

"Give me my ball, please."

"I won't" said Gleed, his fingers firmly around it.

There were no protest, no anger, no tears. The child merely registered disappointment and turned away.

"Here you are, sonny." He tossed the ball.

"Thanks." Grabbing it, the other chased off.

Harrison said, "What if every living being in the Terran Empire, from Prometheus

to Kaldor Four, across eighteen hundred light-years of space, should get an income-tax demand, tear it up and say, I won't.' What happens then?"

"No tax. Authority does without it because it darned well has to."

"There would be chaos." Harrison nodded toward the fountain and the children playing around it. "But it doesn't look anything like chaos here. Not to my eyes.

Evidently they don't overdo this blank refusal business. They apply it judiciously on some mutually recognized basis. But what that basis might be beats me completely."

"Me, too."

An elderly man paused near them, surveyed them hesitantly, decided to pick on a passing youth.

"Can you tell me where I can find the roller for Martins-town?"

"Other end of Eighth," directed the youth. "One every hour. They'll fix your

manacles before they start."

"Manacles?" The oldster raised white eyebrows. "Whatever for?"

"That route runs past the spaceship. The Antigands may try to drag you out."

"Oh, yes, of course." He ambled on, glanced again at Gleed and Harrison,

remarked in passing, "These Antigands-such a nuisance."

"Definitely," supported Gleed. "We keep telling them to clear out and they keep saying, 'We won't.'"

The old gentleman missed a step, recovered, gave him a peculiar look, continued on his way.

"One or two seem to cotton on to our accent," Harrison said. "Though nobody baulked at mine when I was having that meal in Seth's."

Gleed perked up with sudden interest. "Where you've had one feed you should be able to get another. Come on, let's try. What have we to lose?"

"Our patience." Harrison got off his seat, stretched himself. "Well pick on Seth. If he won't play we'll have a try at somebody else. And if nobody will play we'll scoot back to the ship before we starve to death."