anyway....

"Well, try. I'll arrange a tour for him as best I can, but if he doesn't come, I'll be much happier. Let me know as soon as possible. Fine. Good-by."

He scribbled a memo and carried it out to his secretary. "Copy of this to all department heads, right away. Phone the commissary and have them get all the decorations taken down in the dining room. Tell them to lay in some steaks for tomorrow. Phone Harry Sparling in Public Relations—alert him V.V.I.P. tomorrow, extra-special tour including all our movies on the subject. I'm going over to the Fuels Department."

Dr. Ferber, head of Fuels, met Dr. Brinton at the door of his lab.

"I just got your memo," he said. "Is that budget-butcher really coming down here?"

Dr. Brinton nodded his head gently. "I'm afraid so. I came over to see what kind of show we can put on for him."

"We have some samples to run on the indoor motors. There are a couple of loads left for the acceleration sled. And I suppose if we work all night we could get a sergeant-major ready, but if he's on an economy drive that might be too elaborate. Just a view of everybody pouring stuff from one test-tube to another might be best."

"Do the samples and run the sled once," Dr. Brinton said. "That should provide enough fire and noise. The rest of it will have to be fast talk. I think I'll go home to bed."

Dr. Brinton considered himself a methodical man. He had bacon and eggs every morning for breakfast. He always took a vitamin pill with his afternoon coffee. And he was used to exactly eight hours sleep. It was this last habit that caused him to wake up that night at midnight; he had gone to bed at four that afternoon and habit is a hard thing to break. At first he thought it was morning, but a glance at his watch hanging on its illuminated pedestal corrected that.

He grunted, rolled over, and waited for sleep to overtake him again. Nothing happened. He turned and stared at the ceiling for a while. Still nothing; he had not felt so wide awake for a long time. Then he was struck by one of the flashes of inspiration that had made him famous—he would raid the refrigerator.

Downstairs, he found that his son Eric had anticipated him by two minutes, and was busy setting the table with cheese, pickles, ice cream, peanut butter, and everything else necessary to keep a sixteen-year-old boy operating at peak efficiency. A pile of books on the table indicated that he had just finished his homework. Dr. Brinton was pleased that his son had worked so late, but the choice of food made him shudder. He rummaged in the refrigerator himself, found a cold pork chop that Eric had somehow overlooked, and bore it to the table in triumph.

"We were dealt a blow today," he said, between mouthfuls.

"Oh?" said Eric, on guard in case it was about his school work.

"Received word that Senator MacNeill is coming here tomorrow. No, today—it's after midnight."

"Oh." It was an "oh" of relief. A senator couldn't be nearly as troublesome as a teacher.

"Don't say 'oh' like that. He'll probably close the Station tight and we'll all be out of work. You don't realize, it, but money has been getting harder and harder to cadge for this place. We're practically running only the Fuels department now."

He got up, threw the bone from his pork chop into a garbage pail, washed his hands at the sink, and sat down again.

He continued, "Wait till he finds out about those four reactor rockets that are cooling off on the Moon, waiting for us to get there. I can hear him scream, 'Five million dollars each! Each full of precious equipment, to say nothing of invaluable fissionable material!' And then this place gets shut down."

Eric had a suggestion. "Give him the old routine about how we have to get men to the Moon or the Russians will do it first and use all the equipment we've sent there without even thanking us."

"Umm," said