He straightened out a matter with the chief metallurgist, gave the accounting office an okay on some overtime of the week before, assured Associated Press that the “dress rehearsal” was worth full coverage, and gleefully extended an invitation to the Los Angeles Associated Civic Clubs to go through the ship-next week.
That done, he took Corley’s dictaphone and began a memorandum to his business manager on how to close the project in case (a) the trip was successful, (b) the ship crashed. He planned to mark it to be transcribed the following day. —
A call from Dr. Corley interrupted him. “Jim? I can’t find Ward.”
“Tried the men’s wash rooms?”
“No-but I will.”
“He can’t be far away. Anything wrong in his department?”
“No, but I need him.”
“Well, maybe he’s finished his tests and gone to his quarters to catch some sleep.”
“There’s no answer from his quarters.”
“Phone could be off the hook. I’ll send someone to dig him out.”
“Do that.”
While he was arranging this, Herbert Styles, public relations chief for the project, came in. The press agent slumped down in a chair and looked mournful.
“Howdy, Herb.”
“Howdy. Say, Mr. Barnes, let’s you and me go back to Barnes Aircraft and quit this crazy dump.”
“What’s biting you, Herb?”
“Well, maybe you can make some sense out of what’s going on. They tell me to get everybody in here by three A.M. — A.P., U.P., INS, radio chains, television trucks, and stuff. Then you lock the joint up like a schoolhouse on Sunday. And all this for a practice drill, a dry run. Who’s crazy? Me or you?”
Barnes had known Styles a long time. “It’s not a drill, Herb.”
“Of course not.” Styles ground out a cigarette. “Now how do we play it?”
“Herb, I’m in a squeeze. We’re going to take off-at three fifty-three tomorrow morning. If word gets out before then, they’ll find some way to stop us.”
“Who’s ‘they’? And why?”
“The Atomic Energy Commission for one-for jumping off with an untested power-pile ship.”
Styles whistled. “Bucking the Commission, eh? Oh, brother! But why not test it?”
Barnes explained, concluding with, ” — so we can’t test it. I’m busted, Herb.”
“Isn’t everybody?”
“That isn’t all.. Call it a hunch, or anything you like. If we don’t take off now, we never will-even if I had the dinero to test in the South Pacific. We’ve had more than our share of bad luck on this project-and I don’t believe in luck.”
“Meaning?”
“There are people who want this enterprise to fail. Some are crackpots; some are jealous. Others — ”
“Others,” Styles finished for him, “don’t like the United States getting space travel first any better than they liked us getting the atom bomb first.”
“Check.”
“So what do you want to guard against? A time bomb in the ship? Sabotage of the controls? Or the Federal marshal with a squad of soldiers to back him up?”
“I don’t know!” — Styles stared at nothing.
“Boss — ”
“Yeh?”
“Item: pretty soon you’ve got to admit publicly that it’s a real takeoff, for you’ve got to evacuate this valley.
The sheriff and state police won’t play games just for a drill.”
“But — ”
“Item: by now it is after office hours on the east coast. You’re fairly safe from the Commission until morning. Item: any sabotage will be done on the spur of the moment, provided it isn’t already built into the ship.”
“Too late to worry about anything built into the ship.”
“Just the same, if I were you, I would go over her with a toothpick. Any last minute stuff will be done with a wrench, behind a control panel or such-what they used to call ‘target of opportunity.”
“Hard to stop.”
“Not too hard. There isn’t anything that can be done to that ship down at its base, right? Well, if my neck depended on that heap, I wouldn’t let anybody up inside. it from now on, except those going along. Not anybody, not even if he carried a certificate of Simon-pure onehundred-percentism from the D.A.R. I’d watch what went in and I’d stow things with my own little pattypaws.”