I haven’t won a roll from you in six weeks. What did you start to say,
Gus?”
“I was just going to say that there ought to be a better way to get energy
out of — ”
But they were joined again, this time by something very seductive in an
evening gown that appeared to have been sprayed on her lush figure. She was
young, perhaps nineteen or twenty. “You boys lonely?” she asked as she
flowed into a chair.
“Nice of you to ask but were not,” Erickson denied with patient politeness.
He jerked a thumb at a solitary figure seated across the room. “Go talk to
Hanningan;
he’s not busy.”
She followed his gesture with her eyes, and answered with faint scorn:
“Him? He’s no use. He’s been like that for three weeks — hasn’t spoken to a
soul. If you ask me, I’d say that he was cracking up.”
“That so?” he observed noncommittally. “Here” — he fished out a five-dollar
bill and handed it to her — “buy yourself a drink. Maybe we’ll look you up
later.”
“Thanks, boys.” The money disappeared under her clothing, and she stood up.
“Just ask for Edith.”
“Hannigan does look bad,” Harper considered, noting the brooding stare and
apathetic attitude, “and he has been awfully standoffish lately, for him.
Do you suppose we’re obliged to report him?”
“Don’t let it worry you,” advised Erickson. “There’s a spotter on the job
now. Look.” Harper followed his companion’s eyes and recognized Dr. Mott of
the psychological staff. He was leaning against the far end of the bar, and
nursing a tall glass, which gave him protective coloration. But his stance
was such that his field of vision included not only Hannigan, but Erickson
and Harper as well.
“Yeah, and he’s studying us as well,” Harper added. “Damn it to hell, why
does it make my back hair rise just to lay eyes on one of them?”
The question was rhetorical; Erickson ignored it. “Let’s get out of here,”
he suggested, “and have dinner somewhere else.”
“O.K.”
DeLancey himself waited on them as they left. “Going so soon, gentlemen?”
he asked, in a voice that implied that their departure would leave him no
reason to stay open. “Beautiful lobster thermidor tonight. If you do not
like it, you need not pay.” He smiled brightly.
“Not sea food, Lance,” Harper told him, “not tonight. Tell me — why do you
stick around here when you know that the bomb is bound to get you in the
long run? Aren’t you afraid of it?”
The tavern keeper’s eyebrows shot up. “Afraid of the bomb? But it is my
friend!”
“Makes you money, eh?”
“Oh, I do not mean that.” He leaned toward them confidentially. “Five years
ago I come here to make some money quickly for my family before my cancer
of the stomach, it kills me. At the clinic, with the wonderful new radiants
you gentlemen make with the aid of the bomb, I am cured — I live again. No,
I am not afraid of the bomb; it is my good friend.”
“Suppose it blows up?”
“When the good Lord needs me, He will take me.” He crossed himself quickly.
As they turned away, Erickson commented in a low voice to Harper, “There’s
your answer, Cal — if all us engineers had his faith, the bomb wouldn’t get
us down.”
Harper was unconvinced. “I don’t know,” he mused. “I don’t think it’s
faith; I think it’s lack of imagination — and knowledge.”
Notwithstanding King’s confidence, Lentz did not show up until the next
day. The superintendent was subconsciously a little surprised at his
visitor’s appearance. He had pictured a master psychologist as wearing
flowing hair, an imperial, and having piercing black eyes. But this man was
not very tall, was heavy in his framework, and fat — almost gross. He might
have been a butcher. Little, piggy, faded-blue eyes peered merrily out from
beneath shaggy blond brows. There was no hair anywhere else on the enormous
skull, and the apelike jaw was smooth and pink. He was dressed in mussed
pajamas of unbleached linen. A long cigarette holder jutted permanently
from one corner of a wide mouth widened still more by a smile which