the drone planes ready?"

"The Air Force just finished checking; they're ready. Captain Urquiola
flew one of the planes over the course and made a guidance-tape; that's
been duplicated and all the planes are equipped with copies."

"How's the wind?" Richardson asked.

"Still steady. We won't have any trouble about fallout or with the
balloons."

"Then we'd better go back to the bunker and make sure everybody there is
on the job."

The loudspeaker was counting down to Two Hours One Minute.

"Could you spare a few minutes to talk to the press?" Eugenio Galvez
asked. "And perhaps say a few words for telecast? This last is most
important; we can't explain too many times the purpose of this
experiment. There is still much hostility, arising from fear that we are
testing a nuclear weapon."

The press and telecast services were well represented; there were close
to a hundred correspondents, from all over South America, from South
Africa and Australia, even one from Ceylon. They had three trucks, with
mobile telecast pickups, and when they saw who was approaching, they
released the two rocketry experts they had been quizzing and pounced on
the new victims.

Was there any possibility that negative-proton matter might be used as a