his father, considering. He shook his head finally. "His answer to that is why send good money after bad. No. I just hope he feels better after a steak dinner. Either that or the wings fall off his plane." He smiled wistfully at the thought. "Oh, well," he said, "let's go to bed."

They went their separate ways, but only Eric went to bed. His father entered the library, sat down, got his pipe going, and began to reread How to Win Friends and Influence People.

The next day saw Dr. Brinton contemplate suicide, homicide, and voting Republican, though not necessarily in that order. The Senator had viewed their most inspiring onward-and-upward movies and merely asked how much they cost to make. He had eaten a huge steak at the commissary, and then inspected the garbage cans for waste. His visits to various departments had been marred by his lack of interest in anything except the number of men employed by each and their average salaries, though he did comment that they all looked hung-over. In the Fuels Department, he had walked out on the demonstrations, interrupting some actual experiments that were going on outside the test room.

Dr. Brinton was now riding in the back of a jeep, explaining to the Senator that nuclear rockets were not too efficient, and the shielding necessary to make them safe for men weighed more than their payload. The Senator noted down the word "inefficient."

A loudspeaker on a pole a little farther down the road interrupted the explanation. "Twenty-five, twenty-five, twenty-five," it shouted. "Five-nine, eighteen. Five-nine, eighteen. Seventy-three, ten-eight." It began to repeat the message.

The driver, who had slowed while they listened to the message, turned the jeep around and sped them back the other way.

"What in Heaven's name was that?" asked the Senator, who was busy hanging on.

"Twenty-five means emergency," shouted Dr. Brinton. "Five and nine is fire and explosion in the Fuels Department, which is eighteen. Seventy-three is my call number and ten-eight means they want me to get there in a hurry."

For the first time, the Senator looked impressed. Then he grew angry again when his hat blew off and the driver wouldn't stop to go back and get it. The jeep took a shortcut across the concrete fence, and left tire marks in the grass in front of the Fuels Department. Dr. Brinton jumped out and ran into the building, leaving the Senator to argue with the driver about going back for the hat.

The lab outside the test room was dusty and littered with broken glass. Two technicians were receiving first aid for minor cuts, but everyone else seemed to be in an almost holiday mood.

Dr. Ferber saw Dr. Brinton standing in the doorway and came over to him immediately.

"That telephone operator gets too excited," he said. "There's no fire, and I think it was an implosion, not an explosion. Wrecked our new pressure catalyzer. Harrison's gone to hospital and the two you see are hurt, but none of it's very serious. I suppose Butcher Boy is going to put this down in his little notebook, too."

"If you are referring to me," said the Senator's voice behind them, "I most certainly am going to make a note of it. And I suggest you both start advertising for other jobs."

Brinton had been indulging in a pleasant little fantasy in which he had cut Senator MacNeill up into twenty-eight pieces, placed them in aluminum cans, and made them radioactive in the Station pile. He was smiling at the newsreel cameras, about to fire the first Senator-powered spaceship in the history of mankind, when his alarm clock, which had maliciously been waiting for just such an opportunity, spoiled his dream by waking him up.

That was how the next day started. It continued in the same vein when, in a fit of petulance, he strode into his clothes closet and kicked the alarm control box,