Part 2

When they had put the model completely back together, they folded their hands and looked at Klythe. Klythe jammed his finger down on the stop button and set the machine to erase the tape they had just made.

He scowled at the men. "I have seen more fumble-fingered recorders," he said acidly, "but they were trainees." He sighed as though his burden was too much. "All right. Rip her down and let's try it again."

The next time through, he was even more vituperative. If a man made an error the second time, Klythe was not above insults--personal ones.

An emergency call came in for Crayley. Something wrong on the second level. He stepped out the door in the middle of one of Klythe's high-tension blasts at a technician.

All the way down to the second level, Crayley was happy.

* * * * *

It took three days of hard work to pound all the kinks out of the recorders' technique. Not all, actually; Klythe still expressed dissatisfaction.

Crayley was in Klythe's office on the morning of the fourth day, sitting on Klythe's desk and smoking one of Klythe's cigarettes.

"The whole damned crew are butterfingers," Klythe was complaining. "I think they've all got arthritis. Why, oh, why couldn't they let me use my own crew?"

"Speed things up, I suppose," Crayley said cautiously.

"Oh, hell yes! Speed things up! Sure, I'll admit that it would have taken my boys a little time in disassembly to get the hang of this new generator, but we'd have made it up in recording time. That's the way the goddam military mind works! Nuts!"

Crayley rubbed the tip of his nose with a finger. "Is the team ready for recording today?"

Klythe grinned. "As close as they'll ever be. It takes time to get a team accustomed to my way of doing things. They hate my guts for the way I've yelled at them. But it's as much my fault as theirs. If their own engineer were to take over one of my crews, he wouldn't have any better results. The military just has to do things differently, that's all."

They recorded that afternoon. This time, when Klythe pressed the starter, he said nothing. Only his hands and eyes directed the men through their tasks. And every motion of the men's fingers and arms sent their special impulses to the recording tape that hummed through the machinery.

Crayley looked out from behind his face and smiled secretly.

When the recording was finished, Klythe nodded with satisfaction. "I think we could have shaved a few more seconds off that," he said, "but it'll do. Now disassemble it and we'll run her through on the tape."

They took the model down below to the radiation-proofed assembly tables for the test. The thing was pulled to pieces and each piece positioned. Then Klythe threw the switch that started the waldoes.

The tape purred through the pickup head, transmitting the little bits of information it had received, squirting little pulses of energy to the steel-and-plastic arms that jutted out of the domes atop the pillars. In exact duplication of the men's motions, the waldoes picked up the pieces and put them in their proper places.

It was like a great four-dimensional jigsaw puzzle. Each piece not only had to be located properly in space, but placed there at just exactly the right time. If there were any bugs in the recording, now was the time to find out. When the real thing was assembled, mistakes could be costly.

But there were no flaws in the recording. The model was rebuilt exactly as the men themselves had rebuilt it. That was Klythe's genius; he worked for perfection and got it.

Klythe looked at the model after the last pair of hands had fallen inert, and nodded slowly. Then he climbed all over the model, checking for errors. The interior circuits were tested electrically, one by one and in co-ordination with each other. The test machines showed it clear.

Finally, Klythe said: "I think it'll do. But now we'll disassemble it again by hand--slowly, this time--and see if we've screwed up anywhere."

That night, Crayley went out and got drunk. He sat by himself, grinning and thinking secret thoughts in a booth at the _Peg & Wassail_, dropping coins in the slot and dialing one beer after another. He managed to maneuver himself home at three o'clock in the morning, singing softly to himself.

He woke up with a horrible headache, but he felt wonderful inside.

* * * * *

Sure enough, Berin was in his usual state of "first-run jitters." Crayley had been a little afraid that Klythe's enthusiasm wouldn't be up to par on this project, but it evidently was.

He was rubbing his hands together, a nervous smile playing around his mouth, coming and going unpredictably.

"Well, we'll see today. Major Stratford will be here with the Space Force Research Staff at fourteen hundred to watch the first one off. I hope the bugs aren't too rough on us."

"Nothing will go wrong," Crayley assured him.

"That's easy to say," Klythe grumbled, "but you know how things can go at the last minute. I'm worried about those tensile differences."

Crayley stroked his mustache and nodded. The material used in the interior of the model was supposed to approximate the highly radioactive material in the real thing as closely as possible, but there might be just enough difference in critical spots to require some small adjustments in the tape. If a man's hand applied just enough pressure and torque to twist a piece of copper wire just so, it might be too much or too little for a radioactive alloy wire that would be used in the same place in the production piece.

After the suppressor field had been switched on in the hull of the finished generator, the energy generated by the workings of the intensely radioactive interior would be compressed to the sub-nucleonic level, where it could be controlled. Unfortunately, the machine couldn't be built inside a suppressor field; that would be like trying to build a ship in a bottle when the bottle's neck was sealed shut.

Crayley said, "I've got a lot of stuff to do on Line Number Two this morning, but I'd like to see the run-off."

"Sure," said Klythe abstractedly, "come ahead."

Crayley didn't go to Number Two. He headed directly for the recording room. All he needed was ten minutes alone in there. Provided, of course, that it was empty.

* * * * *

It was. Crayley took a quick look up and down the corridor and stepped inside. He locked the door behind him. If anyone tried to come in, he'd be able to cover. It was better to have someone wonder why the door was locked than to be caught messing with the tapes when he shouldn't be. Of course, if someone did try the door, it would mean that his chance of getting Klythe this time would be gone. But there would always be another time.

First, the tape. He flipped open the cover to the receiving reel. Sure enough, it was still there from yesterday's trial run, a huge reel of foot-wide blue plastic ribbon. Good enough.

He punched the "fast" button and ran it through to the last few minutes of the recording. He glanced at the monitor screen. The model was still on the assembly table in the tunnel deep underground.

He cut off the current to the secondaries and switched on the manual controls. Then he put his hands into one set of gloves and wiggled his fingers. The secondaries in the room below remained motionless.

Number Nineteen Experimental ought to be empty. He withdrew his hand and turned the selector knob on the monitor screen to Nineteen. No one there. He switched on the power, letting the last few minutes of the taped recording feed into the secondaries in Nineteen.

The waldoes in the screen went through the motions of finishing the assembly--meaningless gestures in the empty air--then fell into the "ready" position. Crayley hit the stop button, then switched back to the tunnel where the model lay.

He took a deep breath. Now came the touchy part. He hadn't handled a pair of primary waldoes for years, and this thing had to be done just right.

He had already decided which of the positions he would have to use and what he would have to do. Now, if only his timing was good. It didn't have to be perfect; that was the beauty of the plan. But it did have to be pretty close.

He turned on the waldoes without turning on the recorder and slipped his hands into the gloves. Then, using the foot switch, he kicked on the close-up screen for the position he was occupying. The screen showed the secondaries of the hands he was using. He wiggled his fingers. The secondaries wiggled theirs.

Then he reached out and gingerly touched the model. The secondaries touched the steel plate, and the feedbacks sent back a signal. Crayley's gloves felt the resistance just as though the model were right there in the room.

Several times, he reached out his right hand to one particular spot on the model, practicing to make sure he could hit it every time. Fine, fine.

Then he took his left hand out of the glove, eyed the wall clock, and turned on the recorder. The tape began to move through the recording heads. For five minutes he waited.

Then, suddenly, he reached out with his right hand and grabbed the regulator coil housing on the side of the model. As soon as his fingers touched it, he hit the cut-off for the secondaries, knowing the primaries would continue to record. He didn't want to ruin the model. Simultaneously, he punched the high-power switch.

His right hand, in the primary, grasped at mid-air and jerked down violently.

The thing was done. Had he forgotten anything? He thought for a moment. No. All was well.

He cut off the recorder and started to shut off the primaries when his eyes went to the screen. The secondary arm was still frozen where he had left it, grasping the regulator coil housing!

He shuddered. If he'd missed that....

Quickly, he lowered the secondary to the "ready" position.

Had he forgotten anything? Anything at all?

He thought not, but he went over the whole thing in his mind again, step by step, to make sure.

Nothing wrong, nothing missing. Fine. He wiped out the inside of the primary gloves and walked to the door. No need to worry about any other prints; he had been in that room often, and it might look funny if the whole place was wiped clean. As a matter of fact, he really didn't need to worry about the primaries; the grid inside them probably wouldn't take a print anyway. Still, there was nothing like being cautious.

He opened the door and stepped out as if he had every right to be there. No use peeking around corners; that would only rouse suspicion.

He strolled on down the corridor to the tube lift. He felt wonderful. He actually grinned with his face. There was no one around to see it.

* * * * *

The job he had to do in Number Two kept him busy until well after fourteen hundred, as he intended it should. He didn't want to get there early, but he wanted to have a good excuse for being late.

He actually walked into the monitor room for Number Nine Production Tunnel at fifteen-twenty. The Space Force officers were gathered around the screen watching the unit take shape under the deft, mindless fingers of the waldoes. The weird blue glow of radioactivity obscured the finer details a little, but the operation was worth watching.

Major Stratford turned as he came in. "Hello, Mr. Crayley. I thought you were down below with Mr. Klythe."

Crayley stroked his mustache and smiled a little. "I had some work to do," he said apologetically. "I didn't get through until a few minutes ago. I figured this would be as good a place to watch from as down below."

Stratford grinned. "I suppose so. One screen is as good as another."

They watched. Stratford introduced him around to the other Space Force officers, including a short little man with nervous eyes named Colonel Green who was evidently Stratford's superior. Then everything became silent as they watched the generator being built.

Crayley smiled inwardly as he saw that the hulking generator had already blocked off the view of the one waldo he'd gimmicked. No one would be able to see what happened on the screen, and those who saw it directly wouldn't tell anyone.

Exultant, Crayley watched the screen through the mask of his face. Very shortly, he would again be Director. When Klythe had gone to Denver to take the Big Gamble, he'd left Crayley as Acting Director, with the stipulation that he was to become Permanent Director if Klythe failed to live through the grueling torture of the Rejuvenation chambers. Naturally, Crayley had had every right to feel that the position was already his. He had never considered that Klythe might be one of those few who would live through the Big Gamble.

Even when Klythe had come back, Crayley hadn't immediately considered him as a block in his path; there was always the chance of the Breakdown.

Sometimes something went wrong with Rejuvenation, even when the patient lived through the year. Instead of being better than normal, the body went out of kilter. Some little thing, probably--they hadn't pinpointed it yet. A gland that malfunctioned, a nerve blockage, something. Whatever it was, the rejuvenee suddenly began to age rapidly after a few months, dying of acute senility within the year.

But when a year had passed and Berin Klythe was as healthy as ever, Lewis Crayley had begun to plot murder. And now the plans had matured; soon they would bear fruit. Soon he would be Director--_Permanent_ Director. As Director, it would be easy to erase the end of that tape before anyone else got their hands on it. He, himself, would be the one to head the investigation of the accident.

Crayley watched the assembly impatiently from behind his face.

The hands and arms and fingers of the waldoes in the screen worked together with precision as they put the last finishing touches to the generator unit. Finally they were finished; the arms assumed the "ready" position.

Crayley almost held his breath. Everything depended on Klythe now. Klythe, with his impatience, his pride in a piece of work well done, his eagerness to be sure of perfection; Klythe himself was the only weak link in the chain that led to his own death.

The tunnel was still flooded with radioactivity. In production, that wouldn't matter; the next set would slide into place and the hands would begin again. But this was a test run; the record would be allowed to run to the end instead of recycling, while the huge pumps replaced the argon atmosphere with air suitable for breathing. The radioactive stuff was pumped to a cooling chamber, where its silent violence would be allowed to expend itself below the danger point.

Five minutes. Crayley could see in his mind's eye that tape running through the pickup head, running through five minutes of nothing. Then a light flashed above the door to the tunnel as the detectors signalled the all-clear. It was safe to enter the tunnel now.

Crayley found himself clenching his teeth for a fraction of a second before Klythe opened the door and stepped through. There was a long, almost timeless instant as Crayley watched Klythe's face on the screen. Then there was a sudden sound, a brilliant light, and the screen went dead.

* * * * *

Crayley smiled inside himself as he yelled and sprinted out to the tube lift. The hidden hand of the secondary had reached up and ripped off the regulator coil--housing, innards, and all. The resulting explosion had been felt, even up here, as a dull rumble.

The lower level was a mess. The emergency door had slammed down to prevent the spread of contaminated air, and the huge pumps were going full blast to clear the area. At the first door, Lesker, one of the safety engineers, stopped him.

"You can't go in there, Lew. One whiff of that stuff, and you'd be gone."

"What happened?" Crayley asked briskly.

Lesker shrugged. "Who knows? That new generator blew, somehow. Not much harm done, really; as far as we can tell, the only real damage was in the tunnel itself. The temperature must have averaged better than a thousand Centigrade for a few seconds, though it was a lot hotter than that at the center of the blaze. It's cooled down a little now, but that generator must still be burning." He stopped for a second, then: "Nobody got out of it alive. We're sending in the mobiles now. The secondaries in there won't work. It's going to be a rough job because we'll have to use cables; we couldn't possibly get a UHF beam through that static."

The safety men were setting up a monitor screen bank for the mobile waldoes. Two of them, four-foot wheeled robots with TV cameras mounted where human heads would be, rolled up to the closed door.

"It's safe in that first section," Lesker said. "Roll 'em in." He turned back to Crayley. "You'd better get on a radiation suit if you want to watch this. We've got to seal off this section from the rest and open up the corridor all the way down to let the cables through. There's still a lot of hot air in there in spite of the pumps."

Crayley climbed into a suit and adjusted the air flow. Then he walked over to where the safety technicians were putting on the primary gloves for the mobile waldoes. From each control board, a long snake of cable ran to the mobile it controlled. The safety men switched on the power and the mobiles rolled down the corridor out of sight.

Crayley watched their progress over the shoulder of one of the safety techs. The screen showed the walls of the corridor sliding by. Then there was a shifting as the camera panned to the left. After several more turns, the robot came to the door of Tunnel Nine. The door itself lay crumpled against the far wall. Two bodies lay near it. The robot glided into the tunnel itself.

The inside of the tunnel was still fiercely hot; the new generator glowed a yellow orange, and the waldo secondaries had been warped and ruined by the heat.

And on the floor, human in shape only, lay what had once been Berin Klythe.

The mobiles went to work to take care of the glowing hulk of the ruined generator.

Crayley looked at the safety engineer. "There's not much I can do down here," he said. "You take care of the bodies, will you?"

Lesker nodded. He seemed suddenly to realize that he was speaking to the new Director. "You can shuck your suit in the next section. I'll let you know how things are going."

Crayley felt quite light-hearted by the time he reached the upper levels again. In fact, he was almost ready to sing. It had been so easy, so simple! They had called Berin Klythe a genius and given him a chance at the Big Gamble; well, let them see who was the genius now! The plan itself had been a stroke of genius.

There was only one thing left to do; slip into the control room and erase the tail end of that tape. The explosion would go down as "unexplained." Berin Klythe had died in an industrial accident--and Lewis Crayley would replace him.

* * * * *

When he opened the control room door, only his mask of a face saved him. The room was full of men.

"What's going on here?" he asked softly.

One of the younger engineers turned toward him. "These men say they're going to confiscate the tape, Mr. Crayley." He waved in the direction of the uniformed Space Force men.

Crayley looked mildly at Major Stratford. "I'm Acting Director here, Major. I'm afraid I can't let you take our property."

The major turned to the smaller man standing nearby. "Colonel, perhaps you'd better--"

"I'll take care of it," the smaller man said choppily. "We're not confiscating it, exactly, Mr. Crayley. The tape will remain where it is. Immediately after the accident, I phoned the Executive Secretary at the capital. He is sending down an investigating board by special jet."

"May I ask why this rather high-handed action, Colonel Green?"

The colonel patted the air with a nervous hand. "Calm yourself, Mr. Crayley. I am Fenwick Greene; the 'colonel' is merely a military title I have to put up with."

"_Fenwick_ Greene!" It was one of the few times in his life that Crayley's screen, his wall, his defense, collapsed. "My--my apologies, sir! I didn't realize--I mean, I had no idea it was you--in the Space Force!"

He had never seen Fenwick Greene's picture, of course. No newspaper would dare commit such a flagrant violation of privacy.

Greene accepted Crayley's hand for a few seconds, then withdrew his own hand. "I was--ah--drafted," he explained.

Major Stratford smiled. "When the Space Force needs men, they pick the best."

Crayley nodded dumbly. Fenwick Greene was undoubtedly the greatest co-ordination engineer who had ever lived. The late Berin Klythe couldn't hold a candle to him. His waldo recordings were like symphonies of precision and speed. Someone had once said that, given enough recording technicians and enough time to train them his way, Fenwick Greene could build a spaceship faster than parts could be made for it. It was an exaggeration, of course, but it showed what the trade thought of Fenwick Greene.

Greene tapped his teeth with his thumbnail. "We aren't confiscating the tape; we simply want it run. We're guarding it."

"Why?" Crayley asked bluntly.

Greene pulled a folded sheet of paper from his pocket. "This is a communication from Berin Klythe to the Construction Command of the Space Force. In it, he notified us that the test would be run today. He also says--" Greene held up the paper. "Quote: 'due to the fact that the Space Force has insisted that I use their technicians for the recording of this unit, I hardly feel I can claim that the recording is up to my usual standards. Had I been permitted to use my own men, I am sure better construction would have been obtained.'" Greene replaced the paper in his pocket.

"Naturally," he continued, "we don't think there is anything really wrong with the recording. Klythe, like myself, was a perfectionist. However, we would like to have the tape played before an examining board in order to clear ourselves and possibly clear Berin's own name. I watched the construction from beginning to end, and I could find no fault with it. However, we want a qualified board to check it. You see--" He coughed apologetically. "--I trained those technicians myself."

Crayley nodded. "I see."

There was nothing he could do. If he objected, they'd know who gimmicked the tape. Well, no matter. They'd know how Berin Klythe had died, but they wouldn't know who had done it.

He was in hot water, and he knew it, but he wasn't licked yet.

* * * * *

If only he hadn't tried to play his part so well! If only he'd gone straight to the control room instead of down below! Nothing to do about it now, he told himself. He couldn't waste time wishing he'd done something else; he had to see what could be done next.

Two hours later, the big jet job carrying the special Executive inquiry board landed on the roof of North American Sub-nucleonics. Crayley himself had to do all the honors. As Acting Director, he had to play host to the men who were--although they did not know it yet--investigating the murder of Berin Klythe.

That was the way Crayley thought of it. The fact that four other men had died with Klythe was immaterial; it meant nothing in the final analysis.

Crayley decided that his best bet was to mislead them. When they saw the extra operation at the end of the tape, he'd do his best to make them think it was a case of sabotage. Someone--probably South Asian Generators, Unltd.--had sent a man in to wreck the unit. Or perhaps bribed one of the technicians. South Asian was perennially trying to get the Space Force contract.

They used the model for the investigation run. The technicians tore it down and placed it on the table. Crayley tried to get to the control panel to run the tape through, hoping he could jab the erase button as soon as the tape was through and the model built, but Fenwick Greene was there ahead of him.