“All right, let him go, Chow. I’ll take over,” Tom said. He warned his prisoner, “An atomic research station is a dangerous place to go wandering around, Mirza.
Don’t try it again.”
“Reckon you’d better keep an eye on that boss o’ his, too,” Chow warned. “I never did trust a critter that don’t appreciate good vittles!”
Tom grinned and started back to his office. Mirza accompanied him silently.
In the meantime, Flambo’s temper seemed to have cooled down.
“Your answer to my offer, then, is a flat refusal?” he asked Tom.
“I’m afraid it will have to be, sir.”
“Then there is no further point in my remain—
48 TRIPHIBIAN ATOMICAR
ing here.” Flambo turned and snapped an order to his secretary in what sounded like Arabic.
Tom, politely but firmly, insisted on accompanying them to their rented car.
Then he watched until the guard at the gate flagged them through.
“Guess I may as well get back to work, now that I’m here,” Tom thought.
Twenty minutes later he was pouring a batch of molten metal from a miniature electronic furnace into a keg. The white-hot mass was the new alloy, Lunite, with a 0.007 percentage of the stable isotope. Tom was wearing protective dark goggles and asbestalon gloves and apron.
Suddenly, as he finished pouring, Tom’s ears caught a hissing, crackling noise behind him. He turned and gave a gasp of fear. His workbench was a mass of flames-which were shooting perilously close to a shelf full of flammable chemicals!
Tom pushed an alarm bell and grabbed up a fire extinguisher. Luckily he was able to douse the flames even before help arrived.
Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122