Part 2 (2/2)

Hilton said, finally. ”That big strip-mining operation ... that's it ...

hold it!” Then, via throat-mike, ”Attention, all scientists! You all know what to do. Start doing it.”

Sandra's blonde head was very close to Hilton's brown one as they both stared into Hilton's plate. ”Why, they look like giant armadillos!” she exclaimed.

”More like tanks,” he disagreed, ”except that they've got legs, wheels _and_ treads--and arms, cutters, diggers, probes and conveyors--and _look_ at the way those buckets dip solid rock!”

The fantastic machine was moving very slowly along a bench or shelf that it was making for itself as it went along. Below it, to its left, dropped other benches being made by other mining machines. The machines were not using explosives. Hard though the ore was, the tools were so much harder and were driven with such tremendous power that the stuff might just have well have been slightly-clayed sand.

Every bit of loosened ore, down to the finest dust, was forced into a conveyor and thence into the armored body of the machine. There it went into a mechanism whose basic principles Hilton could not understand.

From this monstrosity emerged two streams of product.

One of these, comprising ninety-nine point nine plus percent of the input, went out through another conveyor into the vast hold of a vehicle which, when full and replaced by a duplicate of itself, went careening madly cross-country to a dump.

The other product, a slow, very small stream of tiny, glistening black pellets, fell into a one-gallon container being held watchfully by a small machine, more or less like a three-wheeled motor scooter, which was moving carefully along beside the giant miner. When this can was almost full another scooter rolled up and, without losing a single pellet, took over place and function. The first scooter then covered its bucket, clamped it solidly into a recess designed for the purpose and dashed away toward the city.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Hilton stared slack-jawed at Sandra. She stared back.

”Do you make anything of that, Jarve?”

”Nothing. They're taking _pure_ uranexite and _concentrating_--or converting--it a thousand to one. I _hope_ we'll be able to do something about it.”

”I hope so, too, Chief; and I'm _sure_ we will.”

”Well, that's enough for now. You may take us up now, Captain Sawtelle.

And Sandy, will you please call all department heads and their a.s.sistants into the conference room?”

At the head of the long conference table, Hilton studied his fourteen department heads, all husky young men, and their a.s.sistants, all surprisingly attractive and well-built young women. Bud Carroll and Sylvia Bannister of Sociology sat together. He was almost as big as Karns; she was a green-eyed redhead whose five-ten and one-fifty would have looked big except for the arrangement thereof. There were Bernadine and Hermione van der Moen, the leggy, breasty, platinum-blonde twins--both of whom were Cowper medalists in physics. There was Etienne de Vaux, the mathematical wizard; and Rebecca Eisenstein, the black-haired, flas.h.i.+ng-eyed ex-infant-prodigy theoretical astronomer.

There was Beverly Bell, who made mathematically impossible chemical syntheses--who swam channels for days on end and computed planetary orbits in her sleekly-coiffured head.

”First, we'll have a get-together,” Hilton said. ”Nothing recorded; just to get acquainted. You all know that our fourteen departments cover science, from astronomy to zoology.”

He paused, again his eyes swept the group. Stella Wing, who would have been a grand-opera star except for her drive to know everything about language. Theodora (Teddy) Blake, who would prove gleefully that she was the world's best model--but was in fact the most brilliantly promising theoretician who had ever lived.

”No other force like this has ever been a.s.sembled,” Hilton went on. ”In more ways than one. Sawtelle wanted Jeffers to head this group, instead of me. Everybody thought he _would_ head it.”

”And Hilton wanted Eggleston and got _me_,” Sandra said.

”That's right. And quite a few of you didn't want to come at all, but were told by the Board to come or else.”

The group stirred. Eyes met eyes, and there were smiles.

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