Part 15 (2/2)

Joe drew back. The midget's seamed face was very earnest. He said in his odd voice: ”Here's something to think about. Somebody worked mighty hard to keep you from getting those gyros here. They might work hard to keep them from getting repaired. That's why we asked for a special shop to work in. It's occurred to me that a good way to stop these repairs would be to stop us. Not everybody would've figured out how to rebalance this thing. You get me?”

”Sure!” said Joe. ”You three had better look out for yourselves.”

Mike stared at him and grimaced.

”You don't get it,” he said brittlely. ”All right. I may be crazy, at that.”

Joe rejoined Sally. The idea of a picnic was brand new to him, but he approved of it completely. They went to the small exit that led to the security building. They were admitted. There was remarkable calm and efficiency here, even though routine had been upset by the need to stop all work. As they went toward Major Holt's office, Joe heard somebody dictating in a matter-of-fact voice: ”... this attempt at atomic sabotage was defeated outside the Shed, but it never had a chance of success. Geiger counters would have instantly shown any attempt to smuggle radioactive material into the Shed....”

Joe glanced sidewise at Sally.

”That's for a publicity release?” he asked.

She nodded.

”It's true, too. Nothing goes in or out of the Shed without pa.s.sing close to a Geiger counter. Even radium-dial watches show up, though they don't set the sirens to screaming.”

Joe said: ”I'll get my order for new parts off on the facsimile machine.”

But he had to get Major Holt's secretary to show him where to feed in the list. It would go east to the nearest facsimile receiver, and then be rushed by special messenger to the plant. Miss Ross gloomily set the machine and initialed the delivery requisition which was part of the doc.u.ment. It flashed through the scanning process and came out again.

”You and Sally,” remarked Sally's father's secretary with a morose sigh, ”can go and relax this afternoon. But there's no relaxation for Major Holt. Or for me.”

Joe said unhopefully: ”I'm sure Sally'd be glad if you came with us.”

Major Holt's plain, unglamorous a.s.sistant shook her head.

”I haven't had a day off since the work began here,” she said frowning.

”The Major depends on me. n.o.body else could do what I do! You're going to Red Canyon Lake?”

”Yes,” agreed Joe. ”Sally thought it might be pleasant.”

”It's terribly dry and arid here,” said Miss Ross sadly. ”That's the only body of water in a hundred miles or more. I hope it's pretty there.

I've never seen it.”

She handed Joe back his original memo from the facsimile machine. An exact copy of his written list, in his handwriting, was now in existence more than fifteen hundred miles away, and would arrive at the Kenmore Precision Tool plant within a matter of hours. There could be no question of errors in transmission! It had to be right!

Sally came out, smiled at her father's secretary, and led Joe down to the entrance.

”I have the car,” she said cheerfully, ”and there'll be a lunch basket waiting for us at the house. I agreed that the lake was too cold for swimming, though. It is. Snow water feeds it. But it's nice to look at.”

They went out the door, and the workers on the Platform were just beginning to pile into the waiting fleet of busses. But the black car was waiting, too. Joe opened the door and Sally handed him the key. She regarded the men swarming on the busses.

”There'll be bulletins all over Bootstrap,” she observed, ”saying that Braun tried to dust-bomb the Shed. They'll say that he may have carried the cobalt about with him, and so he may have burned other people--in a restaurant, a movie theater, anywhere--while he was carrying the dust and dying without knowing it. So everybody's supposed to report to the hospital for a check-up for radiation burns. Some people may really have them. But Dad thinks that since you weren't burned, Braun didn't carry it around. If anyone is burned, it'll be the person who brought the cobalt here to give him. And--well--he'll turn up because everybody does, and because he's burned he'll be asked plenty of questions.”

Joe stepped on the starter. Then he pressed the accelerator and the car sped forward.

They stopped at the house in the officers'-quarters area on the other side of the Shed. Sally picked up the lunch basket that her father's housekeeper had packed on telephoned instructions. They drove away.

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