The sea was now the source of metals, and each nation's Domes were vital. And the security-restrictions that had started with atomics, early in the century, were now something tremendous ...

THE FAINT phosphorescence of the water fell away, flowing slowly at first, then with increasing speed, past the red markers on the wall of the lock-chamber. The level dropped ever more rapidly under the steady pressure of the incoming air, till at last there was nothing but a lingering circlet of moisture around the drain. Then that, too, disappeared into thick air. Literally thick ... air at water-pressure, fifty fathoms down.

Lev Sloane waited without impatience, while the pressure in the chamber diminished. When the safe-signal chimed at last, inside the heavy glass of his helmet, he began to remove the bulky parts of his suit, but still with no haste.

Earnestly, he wished he had been able to find some real trouble in the plant. One time in ten, they had a genuine technical problem he could tackle . . . and solve. But four hours out in the seaside plant this afternoon, inspecting, testing, and examining, had turned up nothing but neglect — whether wilful or wanton, he did not know.

Sloane made his way from the wall-lock, through the soft illumination of spiralling corridors to the bathyvator-lock on the top level, avoiding the exec office by some forty extra feet of ramp. Haywood, the production-boss in Dome Baker, was a man of many certainties; when things got bad enough in his bailiwick to need a trouble-shooter from Research, he expected something definite in the way of diagnosis. And Lev had no answer to give him.

Stupidity or sabotage? How can you tell?

Such little things, always...corrosion, exposure, outworn parts. Such little things, always quickly remedied, seldom repeated just the same way. But every time they called him, there was something new; and each call meant production was down again. A drop of seawater in an oil-bearing motor, and the quota for the whole dome was unfilled. A carload of metal...ten carloads...sometimes a hundred, that never reached the factories. Incredible carelessness? Or criminal intent?

On a written report he could file the single word, "Neglect," and let the front-office worry over what lay behind it. But if he talked to Haywood, here on the job, he knew from experience what would happen.

A surmise, a gesture, an inflection, the very breath of a suspicion of sabotage, and you lost six months' work testifying at hearings. A word, a number, a name remembered, an offhand hint of carelessness in such-and-such a sector, and some poor slob of a junior assistant's helper lost his job to show that Something was Being Done.

Lev wanted no part of such decisions. He was an engineer, not a politico, or a smooth-faced personnel man. He avoided even friendly conversation with the bathyvator-operator, determined that this time they would get nothing from him but the bare facts of his technical inspection. He stood in gloomy silence at the wide-vision port, as they emerged from the clear glow inside the dome, to the eerie translucence of the water outside; then up and up, through darkening strata, till penetrating streaks of sun began to reach them. They broke surface, and the autumn sunlight sparkled on blue waters with a surprisingly normal brilliance.

The operator looped a line across three feet of gently choppy water, and made fast to the bobbing platform of the small bright green convertible that waited nervously, all alone in the vast ocean where Lev had left it hours ago. Sloane hopped across; as he closed the door of the coupe behind him, he made a conscious effort to dismiss the nagging indecisions of the day's work.

While the engine warmed, he lit a cigarette and inhaled gratefully. Smoking was not so much forbidden as frowned upon in the manufactured oxygen down below; but it was impossible in a divers' suit. He left the cigarette between his lips, gunned the motor, and swooped off the ocean-bed in a fine spray of disdain. Tonight, in his own apartment, he would write his neat, precise report—and let them make of it what they would. It was no problem of his now.

The small plane nosed eagerly into the sky; Lev Sloane sat back in contentment, as the warmth of the sun beat through the clean clear plastic against his face.

DUSK FELL on the city while be ate a leisurely and satisfying dinner. When he emerged from the restaurant, the orange incadescence of newly-lit sodium-lamps was reflected and repeated everywhere from glass shopfronts, in lucite lampposts, and on the shimmering plastenamel bodies of the slow-moving stream of cars. Another fifteen minutes, and the warming sodium vapors would shed a kindly yellow radiance on the wid4 thoroughfare. Meanwhile, Lev turned off to the sidestreets, where old-style white lamps cast a feebler light at greater intervals.

He walked abstracted, in a mood of his own making, with the good meal behind him, his pleasant apartment ahead, and only the damned report still tickling the back of his mind. The streets were darker and narrower now, and that pleased him. Factories and warehouses, instead of tenements. Until he chose, of his own accord, to turn back to the main highway, he was alone in the city night, and the endless complexities of society were powerless to disturb him.

Then, out of nowhere, were pounding feet, and a hoarse voice cursing breathlessly. A shadow darted almost under his arm, and vanished in the dimness of a warehouse-entryway, and the heavy running footsteps thudded to a halt in the street behind.

"Which way'd he go?"

Lev turned around to face a short, thick man whose blunt features were concealed behind equal parts of stubble and grime. One sleeve of his shapeless sweater hung flat at his side, tucked loosely into baggy trousers; the good arm was knotted with muscles, visible even in the dim street light. And something—a brick?—was clenched in the stubby fist.

"Well, you seen him! Which way'd he go?" the angry one demanded.

"I'm not sure," Sloane said coolly. "Into some doorway, or around the corner; I didn't really. see."

"Never catch 'em now," the man muttered. "Damn kids snatching alla time! I tell you they can smell metal, every one of 'em. They give me eight stores to watch; I can't be everyplace, and them kids'll know the one room's got some brass pipe in it, ten minutes after they bring the stuff in. Never get the brat now!" But his eyes kept searching, following every gleam of light into the doorways and hiding-places along the street.

Lev was beginning to understand. "It's a shame," he agreed automatically. "There ought to be some way to put a stop to it."

"I'll put a stop to it if he pokes his head out," the thick man said grimly. "Damn kids! And then I get the blame. Just leave me get my hands on 'em once," he swore violently. "You won't find 'em hanging around my place again." He looked sharply at Lev. "You sure you didn't see 'em? That's metal he snatched now, don't forget."

To his surprise, Lev found himself shaking his head in a vigorous negative. It was his duty to assist the watchman; he knew it. This was his first brush with an incident of the sort, but he'd read about it and heard about it for months.

SINCE THE beginning of this last drive for recovery of underground pipe, juvenile theft had come out of the psychologists' counsel-rooms, and into the trial-judge's courts. Correction was good enough procedure when young delinquents were harming only other individuals. But more stringent punishment was indicated when they started snatching urgently-needed salvage metal.

It had to be stopped. Lev opened his mouth, and tried to shut away the mental image of a terrified youngster pressed into the darkness of the doorway, sweating out the seconds. Sentiment and sympathy had no place in continental security.

"Damn kids!" the watchman muttered with disgust, and turned to go before Lev could get the words out of his mouth to betray the thief. But the turn was hardly started when the thick man wheeled back, and something—a brick—flew from his fist to where the echo of a sigh had come from the blackness within a shadow.

There was one shrill yelp of anguish, and an indrawn breath that was not quite a sob. Then something clanged to the ground with the unmistakable resonance of metal on concrete; a wiry form darted out of the doorway, scurried across the sidewalk, and became invisible again in the shadows along the opposite wall.

The thick-set man dashed after the vanishing noise of scurrying feet, and Sloane turned back the way he had come. He didn't want to wait till the watchman returned, didn't want to know whether the boy was caught. There was relief in him because his own inexcusable defection had been cancelled out; there was, too, a peculiarly strong distaste for the thickset man, and an absurd worrisome feeling about the young culprit.

Just a few inches of copper pipe ... easy enough for any youngster to run off with and easy for him to sell, too. Five inches of slender tubing grasped in a boy's hand; it meant more money than his father could make in a month. But even the fabulous prices on the metal-market didn't come close to the actual cost of unearthing the stuff from the depths of old cellars and tunnels far beneath the city. And financial investment was the smallest part of it; every inch of the stuff could be measured just as easily in terms of peace or war. Enough metal meant Continental security; not enough spelled certain defeat in an inevitable war.

APARTMENT 18-Q, the room-and Lev Sloane had rented when he first came to the city eight years earlier—and occupied steadily since—was in no way unusual. To the last fractional part of a square inch, its wall-space, floor space, and wall-fixtures were similar to those of four hundred and sixty-one other single units in the same building. But within those limitations, Sloane's place was most uniquely and thoughtfully his own. Every piece of furniture, each small convenience, the placement and relation of all the constituent parts of the room, bore the stamp of careful planning and equally careful use. The room-and was designed, specifically and functionally, to care for the physical and psychological needs of Lev Sloane.

Everything in it was intimately familiar to him; the surfaces were molded by his touch; the inner workings of all the mechanical objects had long since lost their secrets to him.

Still, as he opened the door this evening, the near-sense of danger and the unknown was sharply with him. The incident on the street had left him oddly exhilarated, more alive than usual. He wondered if it was the fleeting knowledge of guilt that had so affected him, and dismissed the notion with a smile. He could remember clearly enough how this same tingling awareness had come over him on his first visits to the Domes.

Adventure! he mocked himself, and had to remember once more that, to another person, his visit to the Dome today, his excursion through the processing plant outside the Dome on the sea-floor, would be vastly romantic and exciting. Fair enough, then, that an encounter with a street-urchin and a grimy watchman should perk up his own dulled perceptions.

He closed the door behind him, rather enjoying, now that he understood it, the dramatic sense of imminent menace.

From across the room, a voice spoke: "You will please, Senhor, make no unusual noises or movements. Turn on the light."

Dazed, half-convinced that this was no reality at all, Lev flicked the switch. In the corner armchair, a lean figure sat relaxed; the gun drooping from the stranger's hand seemed almost deadly for the casual ease with which it was hold. Sloane had no slightest doubt that the owner of that gun could aim and fire, before he, himself, could complete any move to battle or escape.

"Who are you?" he asked, still too incredulous to be very frightened or angry.

"A friend." The lean man smiled, and exceptionally white teeth flashed in his dark face. "Or perhaps I should say—a messenger." It was not quite an accent, but American was not the man's native tongue.

Lev began to understand that this was really happening. Once you accepted the reality of it, the rest was not hard to understand. "A messenger from Latamer?" he asked.

"Please. I do not like the name. I am, yes, a Latin-American by birth. My country does not concern you. I come as a messenger of certain South-am Continental Interests... I am sure you have no desire to know their names as yet."

"That's where you're wrong," Lev said flatly. "But I don't imagine you're going to tell me. And you might as well save your breath, where your message is concerned. There are no Latamer messages that could be of interest to me."

The dark man in the chair smiled again and shrugged. "You are vehement, Mr. Sloane," he commented idly. "I wonder why."

"Because I don't like people who break into my apartment. Because I don't like Latamers much to start with. Because I don't like you, and I expect I wouldn't like your...interests much either."

"More vehemence! Well..." He unfolded his length from the comfortable chair, and walked over to Lev, the gun still hanging limply from his wrist. "You will turn around, please? I dislike holding this lethal weapon while I talk. I would like to ascertain that you are not armed before I put it away."

SLOANE turned, and let himself be patted cautiously all over. When he turned back, his visitor had already slipped the gun into a pocket. "All right," Lev told him. "Now get out. I don't want to hear whatever you came to say. Get out."

"You are so brave! But I'm afraid you overact. The role does not call for such heroics. Now listen sensibly, will you, dear fellow? Sit down; make yourself comfortable. This is your home, you know. I wish to say a few words; then, if you do not like it..." He shrugged. "I will go. If you like it, we will talk more. I think perhaps you will like it."

"I'm prejudiced," Lev said stiffly. "I don't like Latamers, and I don't like people who hold guns on me...it is my home, as you noticed."

"I am sorry for the gun. It was a necessary precaution, nothing more. It was not as a threat to you I carried it; we have no desire to harm you. But if I had not had it..." Again he shrugged, and smiled. "Think how it would be for me if you had been so heroic when you first came in."

Lev almost smiled back. The man was right in a way; Sloane was dramatizing this thing more than was necessary. But, it suddenly occurred to him, so was his visitor. A secret agent should hardly look or act so much like one. Life, apparently, was determined to imitate art today...if you could call the movies art.

"All right," he said. "Go ahead and talk. Get it out. What's your . . . message?" He sat down on the edge of the couch, waiting.

"Ah, that's better." The dark man went back to his armchair. "I understand, Mr. Sloane, you are senior engineer for the Solute Metals work in this Continent?"

"I work for the SMRC," Sloane said. "I'm an engineer. What about it?"

"I am told also that you have been heard to voice certain sentiments of—ah—let me say a somewhat advanced nature?"

"Like what?"

"Concerning the exchange of scientific information."

Sloane stiffened. "I am," he said very carefully, "in favor of a somewhat more liberal policy in regard to information exchange."

"Ah, yes. Then we are in agreement. I have come only to discuss with you the means of effecting such an exchange."

"You're getting ahead of yourself," Lev put in drily. "I'm not so sure we agree about anything. My position on exchange is that of the Science Party—no more or less. I favor free exchange of non-classified matter with friendly governments, and limited exchange of classified matter...with friendly governments."

"It is so short-sighted," the dark man said sadly. "How do you know, Lev Sloane, who will be your friend tomorrow? No, I have a better notion. You can exchange now, freely, and ... perhaps you would, have some use for some small quantities of cash?"

"Get out!" Lev stood up and paced the floor to where the other man sat. "Get your filthy proposition out of here before I wring your neck!"

The gun was out again, a scant two feet from Lev's belly, and this time it was pointing.

"Back up!" the man snapped. Sloane backed. There was no civilized mockery in the threat now.

"We overestimated you," the visitor sighed; "we thought you had intelligence." He was out of the chair now, moving toward the door. "You would be wisest," he warned, "to make no move for ten minutes after I am gone. If you should be hurt, remember you were warned." The gun never wavered as he sidled up to the door, opened it, and slipped through it.

AS IT CLICKED shut, Lev leaped for the phone. He snapped on the audio and video simultaneously, and spun the dial around for the operator. As it made contact at the end of the long sweep, heat flashed through his arm, followed by a single wave of unbearable pain. Then nothing, till he heard the loud report, perhaps a fraction of a second later, but it seemed like hours.

It was hours—five of them—before the reporters, the emergency medics, and the security-cops were all gone. With his testimony taken, his arm bandaged, and the various misspellings of his name carefully noted, Lev studied his bruised face in the bathroom mirror and chuckled. He wondered whether the spy, Ortega, had known how much noise that gadget made. If it didn't sound so much like gunfire, the fellow might have got scotfree. As it was, every plain cop and security-man within three blocks was headed toward the apartment the instant it happened, and anyone in the way was inevitably held and searched. Ortega's graceful gun betrayed him, even before Sloane told his story.

Lev looked from the mirror to the clock: two a.m., and there was still that godforsaken report to do. He settled himself at his desk, and, using the damaged arm to hold the paper down, began filling in the proper little squares as concisely as possible.

He made just one conception. The last little box said, as it always did: "To what do you ascribe the trouble?"

When he left the Dome that afternoon he had the answer all figured out, in a single word: "Negligence." But things had been happening since then. Spies, sneak-thieves, sabotage...no, he had no proof of that.

"Damned if I know," he printed in neat block letters. Then, before he could change his mind, be sealed the printed form and dropped it down the mailing chute.

THERE WAS a little personal mail for Lev when he woke up; he could see it from his bed, a few sealed sheets waiting in the receiving-half of the chute, fluttering and floating on the updraft. It would only be bills and circulars. He punched for coffee and toast on the bedside Batchelor's Friend before picking the letters from the column of air.

Political circulars: keep us strong; vote for Gabble. Don't sell us out; vote for Gubble. Down with everybody except us; vote for Gobble.

Bills: Collections, Inc. reminded him that his monthly payment on his convertible would be due in only two weeks. Apartment rent due. Phone bill—he'd take that to work with him; some of his calls had been business and he'd have to put vouchers through on them.

And—an old-fashioned envelope addressed by old-fashioned typewriter. Return address (1347 Ave. Y, Wash., D.C.: he didn't know it) and delivery address were written out instead of code-punched. It must have been manually delivered, by a cursing mailman, instead of routed automatically by the switching system. He clumsily tore the envelope open and felt a pang go through him as his eyes fell on the signature at the bottom of the single-sheet letter.

Paul Barrios. He hadn't known he was still alive.

The Bachelor's Friend said in his own voice: "Toast and coffee ready. Get them while they're hot." Automatically he took the steaming cup from it and sipped, delaying on the letter. He felt a little ashamed of himself. Barrios. Ninety-plus at least. Fifty years ago the classic paper, A Theory of Ion under Radiation Applied to the Differential Precipitation of Solute Metals in Sea-Water.

And the old boy had meant applied.

To a dazed and metal-starved world he innocently showed his graphite tanks with sea-water circulating through them under the radiance of the simple little Barrios Tubes. He showed the world metals plating out onto the graphite from the sea-water. Vary the frequency of the Barrios Radiation and you vary the metal recovered...it was the fantastic year that the Nobel Prizes in Physics, Chemistry and World Peace had gone to one man: Barrios.

Lev Sloane blinked and turned to the letter:

My Dear Sloane:

If you will forgive a rather old-fashioned and sentimental gesture, I want to wish you a happy birthday. Doubtless this is proof—if any were needed!—that I am growing senile, which is by definition largely a tendency to live in the past. I woke lip the other morning with a vague conviction that I had done somebody a grave injustice, and it was twenty-four hours before I remembered when. Just fifteen years ago! It was that unhappy occasion which you may recall, when you stood for your doctor's oral before me at Columbia, and made some astoundingly inaccurate remarks, appropos of Solute Metal Recovery and I made loose regrettably cutting remarks about Ph.D. candidates who were better suited to street-cleaning and the allied arts than to S.M.R. And I recalled, too, the pleasanter sequel when I learned that you had been celebrating your birthday the night before, and were unable to do yourself justice, re-examined you and had the pleasure of pronouncing you among the ten ablest S.M.R. men I had ever turned out. That verdict, my dear Sloane, still stands. I am pleased to see your name in the papers every so often as a mainstay of the S.M.P.C. technical branch, and to know that thereby you are playing a major part in the program that, God willing, will bring abundance and peace to our poor old world.

Sincerely yours,

Paul Barrios S.M.R. Professor Emeritus

Columbia University

He felt a lump in his throat. Poor old genius emeritus, passed by as the younger men turned his science into engineering, as specialization multiplied until he couldn't grasp what was going on in the field he had pioneered. Writing nostalgic letters, on slight excuse—to be doing something with the brain that once had been the mightiest creative tool on Earth...

His own voice said from the Batchelor's Friend: "Hey, you lazy bum, let's get this show on the road! Time to go to work. Hardnose Hennessey isn't going to like this." Sloane didn't feel funny. He switched off the voice-circuit and dressed slowly, favoring the bandaged arm.

SLOANE paused for a moment at the foot of a flight of marble steps, sighed and trudged up them, passed between the great Ionic columns of the Solute Metals Recovery Commission building, and on into the bustling lobby. He might have hunted up the small entrance where top-level administrators and authentically handicapped employees could get an elevator-ride, but it would have taken an argument.

The lobby clock said 9:03; Hard-nose Hennessey—G. Mason Hennessey, Chief of Personnel, S.M.R.C. Grade 23—was not going to like it. Lev Sloane, Ph.D., Process Senior Engineer, S.M.R.C. Grade 18, decided that Hennessey could lump it; he had bruises and a bandage to show.

In his office he took a little kidding from the junior engineers and secretaries over his adventure; they showed him a bored little paragraph in the morning's newsroll. "Happens every day," he grunted, and disappeared into his private cubicle. Target for today was to block out an advisory for the Commission members themselves, a frank statement in broad terms understandable to the lay mind on the status of recovery processes.

He jotted down in shorthand: Are processes satisfactory? Get figures metal output, graph vs. time. Get Central Intelligence estimates equivalent figures for Latamer, Africa, Europe, Sino-Russ. Brief Summary, three main extraction processes. Why three? Explain dome oxy-cycle. Status of extraction-process research; get figures from Research and Development, especially estimate of availability of halogen-reduction process. (This secret; observe security procedure.) Qualified opinion on—

His phone lit up with the face of Hardnose Hennessey's very beautiful secretary, a young lady whose face and voice were one degree Kelvin above absolute zero as far as anybody below S,'M.R.C. Grade 20 was concerned. "Mr. Sloane," she said, "Dr. Hennessey wishes to see you at your convenience." Blink, and the screen went off.

Mister Sloane! Doctor Hennessey! Hardnose was an honorary L.H.D. of some jerkwater Kansas college, and unblushingly used the title to the limit in his professional and social life. Sloane swore tiredly and then got up to go. "At your convenience" from a 23 to an 18 meant now. It couldn't be just coming in late; if the rest of the office knew about last night, so did Hardnose. That report, maybe, with the foolishly irritable answer on it? Kind of quick for that...

He expected the chilly secretary to tell him: "Please wait; Dr. Hennessey will be free shortly." Instead, she told him; "Go right in, Mr. Sloan, please." And—incredibly—she smiled at him.

Suspiciously, the engineer pushed open the plastic door of Hennessey's large, softly carpeted office.

"Come in, doctor!" boomed the Chief of Personnel. "I have a distinguished visitor whom I want you to meet."

She was distinguished indeed. In her early thirties. Tall, dark-skinned, with rather everted lips but the classic brow and nose of an Arab and straight—or straightened?—black, glossy hair. Her plain dress was prudishly high at the neck and low at the hem. That and the small silver triangle pendant on her bosom meant she was a practicing Ma'dite. He had met very few of them and hoped his manners would be adequate.

"Miss Vanderpoel—Dr. Vanderpoel, I should say—may I present Dr. Sloane, one of our most valued technical men."

SLOANE smiled politely and extended his hand. She ignored it. Murmuring "Salaam aleikum," she touched brow, lip and heart and inclined her head. The engineer reddened and did the same, clumsily. She looked at him evenly and said, with a faint Dutch accent: "That is not necessary, Dr. Sloane. I am not an exchange-student, who eagerly gives up his own nation's ways; but neither do I tacitly impose my own nation's ways on my host. You may greet me in the future with what polite words you please, but you should not say the words of peace unless you mean them."

"Uh," said Hennessey, "Dr. Sloane is the fellow who acquitted himself so well with, that Latamer agent. I trust you—"

"You told me all that, Mr. Hennessey," she said without inflection. "I will question him."

Hennessey hastily answered Sloane's inquiring glance. The engineer had never seen him so flustered. "Dr. Vanderpoel is a V.I.P., Sloane. She is, of course, an African, and her visit is part of an experimental program to exchange S.M.R. data between her government and ours. I thought you might be the best person to take her on a tour of one of our domes. She, ah, she wants to be sure—" He hesitated.

"I want to be quite sure," said the woman's precise voice, "that my guide is a qualified technical-man—"

"Yes, of course," Hennessey boomed heartily. "And I'm sure Dr. Sloane will satisfy you. He's rated one of the best in the country—academically, of course." You could hardly even call it a sneer, that faint deprecation as he qualified his praise. "Studied with Barrios himself, and I understand the Old Man gave him an extra-high recommendation when he came to us. Do you still see him, Sloane?"

"I...heard from him today," Lev said with difficulty, and promptly took the edge off the boast by adding: "I haven't seen him for years." It was somehow offensive to have Barrios' name dragged in for display-purposes this way, after reading that letter this morning. Hardnose Hennessey probably didn't even know just what it was Paul Barrios had done.

"You know," Hennessey rattled on cheerfully, "the Old Man always favored more exchange of information. That's another reason I picked Dr. Sloane to guide you. I hear he's on the same bandwagon himself."

Sloane didn't need any help to catch the veiled threat in the smiling words. Show her the, dome, Hennessey was saying. Keep her happy. But keep your political notions out of it.

"That is, I am sure, of great interest to you and Dr. Sloane," the lady V.I.P. said icily. "My interest, as I started to say earlier, is in obtaining a qualified technical-man to guide me —not a more-or-less-disguised public-relations person who will use my limited time trying to influence me, rather than give me information. I should like to have some time to talk to Dr. Sloane now . . . alone, if you please, Mr. Hennessey."

LEV WAS emphatically not looking forward to the rest of this business, but whatever came afterwards couldn't spoil this moment for him: he had the unadulterated pleasure of watching Hardnose Hennessey retreat, awkwardly, from his own office, under the frigid stare of a visiting V.I.P.

"Sit down, Dr. Sloane," she said as soon as the 'public-relations person' was gone. "And I hope you can be more informative than Mr. Hennessey."

"I'll try," he said drily. "If it's engineering you want to know about, I'll tell you all I can. You realize there are some questions I may have to refuse to answer, without instructions from a higher level than Hennessey."

"Your loyalty to your country is not under question, Doctor; that is one of the primary reasons why you were selected. I am not so foolish as to believe it impossible that the North American S.M.R.C. harbors some persons who may be agents of either Latin America or the Asia Union. Your adventure of last night—as reported by the newsrolls and verified by the African embassy—indicates as clearly as possible that you are not one of those persons. Now if we can get down to facts . . . ?"

"I'll be glad to," he said stiffly. "I'm not much on political talk myself."

"Good." And she launched into a full hour of questions and answers covering every phase of dome operation. He had to remind her regularly: "I'm a processes-man, Miss Vanderpoel; that's outside my field," when she wanted to know about safety-measures and working-conditions. Again, she found herself saying with a frequency that seemed to surprise her: "I do not understand that, Doctor; perhaps you can amplify and explain it when I see it."

When, finally, she sat back in silence, and the interview was concluded, Lev was, almost beginning to like her. She certainly knew the field, and she had a rare talent for admitting her gaps of knowledge where they existed.

"I think I shall be more than satisfied with your guidance, Dr. Sloane," she said, and though imperiousness was apparently a basic part of her, there was less of it in this statement than at any time before. It returned in full force as she asked: "Is there some way to call that person back?"

Lev studied the blank-faced intercom on Hennessey's desk, and decided against the assumption of the prerogative. He went to the door, and addressed the request personally to the glamorous ice-maiden of a secretary.

"She's trying to find him," Lev told Miss Vanderpoel.

The V.I.P. sighed impatiently. "I hoped we could start the tour immediately," she said.

Sloane restrained a smile; he suspected the lady would not appreciate his amusement at her naivete. He hunted for an acceptably-polite way to explain to her that Domes could not possibly be entered that easily, that the law of the land required certain safeguards concerning visitors, no matter how important they were

But she obviously wasn't going to listen. She took from a pocket in her dress a brown book with a silver triangle and a word in Arabic stamped on the cover, and began to read. Sayings of the Ma'di, he supposed—the African Bible. All right, let Hardnose tell her; Sloane wandered back to the outer office, and amused himself till Hennessey showed up—unexpectedly soon—by conducting an experiment to determine exactly how much ogling it took to make the beautiful secretary nervous.

"Miss Vanderpoel wants a Dome tour arranged immediately," Lev said, dead-pan when Hennessey rushed in.

"We're ready immediately," Hardnose said with considerable self-satisfaction. "I got ahead of her that time. State pitched in, and cleared her in record time; here's a pass for her." He handed Sloane a stainless-steel tag with Miss Vanderpoel's picture and thumbprint photographed onto it. Plastic protected it, and Sloane knew there was an invisible pattern of magnetized dots in the steel as well—though the trick was supposed to be ultra-secret.

They went back to the private office, and Hennessey glowed under Miss Vanderpoel's faint show of approval.

"I think Dome Baker would be the best bet," Sloane suggested, "I know it better than the others, and it's not far." Hennessy nodded.

"Where is it?" the woman asked.

"Just ten miles off the Jersey coast," Lev told her, "I can drive you there myself in about an hour and we can have lunch in the Dome—if you wish."

"Very well." She gave the African salutation to Hennessy in parting, and they went down to pick up Sloane's car.

WALKING with him down the marble corridor she asked crisply: "What metals are extracted at your Dome Baker, Mr. Sloane?"

"Mostly iron—which makes it typical of the North American S.M.R.C. Iron's ninety percent of our output, of course. We buy our vanadium, chrome, tungsten—and so on for steelmaking—from Europe. Naturally, we have mothballed Domes set up to turn them out in case Sino-Russia jumps Europe and shuts off our supply." He wondered if she'd comment on the politics of that. She didn't, and her face was unreadable.

"Another interesting point at Baker," he went on, nettled; "the first Barrios cell ever made is still in use there."

"Oh?" She was clearly not impressed. "I am under the impression that the Barrios cell has been much improved since the first model." It was a sneer.

"Naturally. It's a tribute to a great man."

"His work is done," she said briefly.

"You're very casual," Lev said with a hint of anger. "Paul Barrios was—is—a genius. You people owe him as much as we do."

Frostily, without breaking her stride, she said: "Dr. Sloane, it doesn't be come a person with your load of ancestral blood-guilt to reproach me for a casual attitude toward one of your geniuses. The iron that Barrios found a new way to isolate was first given to man by my equatorial ancestors."

There was a warning of passion in her voice as she went on, and Sloane found it reassuring; she was human after all. "Your north-temperate ancestors," she said, "were most notably casual—to use your word—in wiping out several of my equatorial ancestors' cultures." They were passing between the ionic columns of the. S.M. R.C. Building. "And I notice that you have—casually—adopted architectural devices invented by my ancestors. Of course you call them 'Egyptian', pretending that Egypt was not a part of Africa and did, not continuously exchange, culturally and genetically, with all its peoples."

"My car's in the parking-lot here," he said, and pointedly dropped the conversation; he wouldn't argue ethnology with her.

He drove his convertible to the S.M.R.C. flying field, underwent a fast overwater-readiness check and took off. Beside him, Miss Vanderpoel read her Sayings of the as they droned northeast to the coast. In a quarter-hour she dozed off, with the book in her lap held open by her slender hands.

Sloane craned a little for a look at it. The graceful lines of Arabic meant nothing to him, but the condition of the book did. It was thoroughly thumbed and worn, from beginning to end—testimony that the woman was a serious believer in the Ma'di supposed to have lived, preached, worked wonders and died a century ago. He stole a glance at her face and thought with satisfaction: no wonder she believes—identification.

Her face had about the same blend of features attributed to the Ma'di in the hearsay, traditional portraits that even he had seen. Her face—the Ma'di's traditional face—were epitomes of the Ma'di's preaching: Africa united, proud and forward-looking. Probably that cold, bad-tempered reply to his reproach had been in the best Ma'dite tradition. Certainly she'd had a good point: it was a fake and a swindle to make the traditional assumption that the achievements of Egypt owed nothing to the peoples of the desert, mountain, rainforest and grasslands.

He wondered whether the Ma'di had been essential to the unification and industrialization of Africa, or whether he'd been a side-show to an inevitable technical-economic process. About one hundred million believers thought the former—fiercely enough to make the great of the world profoundly glad that Ma'dism was by nature non-exportable, and by decree of its founder non-aggressive. Not even the tactless, backward, ferociously godless SinoRussians claimed that Ma'dism was meddling with their internal affairs, a complaint they thundered regularly against every other major religion on Earth, and used often as pretext for a purge of unreliables.

SLOANE had to shake her gently awake as he homed on the radar beacon. She blinked and put away her book. "I should apologize," she said. "My time in this country is limited, and I have been using it to the full."

"No apology necessary," he assured her, and then was busy with landing, mooring and the transfer to the bathyvator. The bathyvator man, who had been unshaved and sloppily-dressed yesterday, now wore sparkingly clean coveralls and a couple of razor-nicks on his jaw.

"You've been advised about Miss Vanderpoel?" Sloane asked.

"Yes, sir. If I could just see her pass, we'll go right down."

She produced it and the man said: "Thank you, ma'am." Down they went, and the Security-guards at the bottom end were equally deferential. Hennessey must have scared the daylights out of them, Sloane thought.

As they stepped out of the guardroom—and from under the gun-slits, to Sloane's relief, as usual—Haywood bustled up to them. "A great pleasure, Miss Vanderpoel," he burbled. "I'll be happy to show you around my Dome—no eye like the master's eye, eh? No offense, Sloane."

The woman said: "It is precisely to avoid the possibility of your showing me around your Dome that Dr. Sloane has accompanied me—if I may say so without offense. I should like some lunch and then freedom to inspect, with Dr. Sloane as my guide."

Haywood managed to take it as a joke. "Topside gets all the gravy," he laughed painfully. "Sloane not only lives in a house and smokes when he wants to, but gets himself a good-looking girl to tour the Dome with."

Miss Vanderpoel looked at him as though he were a chimpanzee who had just asked for her hand in marriage. "My time is very limited," she said. "If we may have something to eat—?"

SHORTLY afterwards, they were seated alone in the minute cafeteria. The unsquashable Haywood was talking proudly: "We serve nine hundred meals a day here—in shifts of course. I pride myself on the highest safety-rating of any Dome in operation—by the S.M.P.C., of course. I suppose, though, we can't hold a candle to your African Domes." Sloane winced at his clumsy gallantry, but Miss Vanderpoel was merely puzzled, "Hold a candle?" she asked. "I do not understand the relevance." She was eating quickly and delicately.

"It means we aren't as good as the African Domes," Haywood explained largely. She said nothing, and he went on: "We're one thousand percent safe. That bulkhead you're leaning back against—half an inch of steel and plastic; on the other side seawater at unimaginable pressure, but you're safe as if you were in your mother's arms. Three warning-circuits slam W.T. doors compartmenting the Dome seconds after leakage occurs. Everywhere, instantly, available, are safety-suits."

"Where are the safety-suits in here, Mr. Haywood?" she asked.

He looked embarrassed. "It isn't S.M.P.C. Dome policy to provide them for diningrooms," he said. "Wouldn't do any good, I'm afraid. Imagine the place, jammed with seventy-five people and a plate giving way. Thirty seconds to get into a safety-suit—if a man's kept up his drill the way he ought to. I'm very much afraid there'd be a panic and all lives lost, suits or not."

`We have suits in the public rooms of our Domes," Miss Vanderpoel said.

Sloane read in her face and words the contempt for dithering and hysteria, and the converse ideal of dignity and calm power. Haywood sensed a little of it and looked dubious. "Of course it's not a major point," he said. "Africa and North America are lucky enough to have stable subsea coastal ground. I'm damned if I'd go down into a Sino-Russ Dome in the Pacific, right smack on the Circle of Fire. And, of course, you never know with the censorship and lies what the Latamers are up to; but I hear they have some tom-fool business about Dome personnel making their wills and being posthumously decorated before they go downside. That smells like a terribly bad accident-rate to me. Of course you can get away with it if morale is high enough. Or, to be honest, your people are fanatics like the Latamer kids. But it's a hell of a way to get production, isn't it, Sloane?"

"It is, if true. On the other hand, I was in several European Domes—the Adriatic Dome, the Tyrrhenian, the Cycladic and the Cnossos. They take safety seriously there. All personnel wear suits all the time. Three-day tours of duty only. Shut-down every month for inspection."

"Hell, they can afford it," said Haywood, annoyed. "They turn out a few kilograms of tungsten or vanadium a day. Here we're in production. What I think—"

They never found out what he thought.

WITH A NOISE that was half the roar of a seige-gun and half the shriek of a tortured animal, a section of the wall ripped loose and a solid, glassy column reaching from the wall smashed Haywood where he sat. Sloane was utterly paralyzed, hardly recognizing the stuff as water, for a split-second. Haywood was almost headless, and something had happened to the woman—she was floating limply awash in a foot of water fed by the roaring column.

He ducked under it, shuddering, seized her as an alarm-bell began to bong, and raced, splashing, for the door of the cafeteria, threading his way through the tables and chairs. He was a yard from it, with the woman in his arms when it slammed murderously shut. Three warning-circuits slam W. T. doors...

How long did he have—thirty seconds? The water was rising one foot in two seconds; his ear drums thudded inward as the air compressed, driven up by the water. It isn't S.M.P.C. policy to provide them for dining-rooms . . .

Sloane wrenched at the dogs, which had automatically turned as the door slammed, one-handed, with the woman on his bad arm. There were seven dogs, and the water was to his knees. He pounded with his fist at one, chest-high, and felt it sullenly turn. With the water at his waist, he pounded open a second and a third, cursing weakly, and the fourth and fifth, at the top of the W.T. door. He took a deep, sobbing breath of the thick air and hauled himself down by the doorframe into the icy water, with his arm still cramped around the woman. He didn't remember how he turned the two remaining dogs; the next thing he knew, was that he was being swirled into the corridor adjoining the cafeteria, and was swimming one-handed for the red-painted breakaway panels where there were two safety suits.

Thirty seconds to get into a safety suit—if a man's kept up his drill the way he ought to...

"Gobble the whobble mumble."

"Slump the anesthumbsia stroom."

"Buzz pulse and huspiration 'Duffle."

"Quark the anode on the patient's wrist."

"Yes, doctor."

"Pulse and respiration normal."

"That does it. You can take him from here."

Sloane opened his eyes and tried to focus. Faces swam above him; one of them said: "How're you feeling; fella?"

"Rotten. What happened?" he croaked. "I remember swimming for the safety-suit panels..."

"Believe it or not, you made it."

"Dr. Vanderpoel too?"

"That's right. She's alive and you're a hero. They found the two of you bobbing up against the ceiling of the corridor compartment. Uh, Haywood didn't make it."

"I saw. When the plate blew... where am I?"

"Roosevelt Memorial-Hospital, D.C. Want to tell us about the break-in for our records?"

HIS EYES were working better, and sensation was returning to his body. He saw three sympathetic-looking men in three chairs by his bedside; he was rolled over toward them a little, propped up with pillows along his hack. He tried to move and was restrained by things that cut into his limbs and belly.

"What is this?" he asked, panicky. "Am I in a cast? Is my back all right?" They laughed and one of them said: "No, no; you're all right. Should've told you; we gave you metrazol and globulin for shock. There's no metrazol-reaction history on you, but some people get the jerks from it."

"You mean I'm about to have convulsions so you tied me down? That was a dirty damned trick."

"Probably not, since the stuff's been in you for an hour now. But there's still a faint chance, so if you don't mind we really ought to keep the restrainers on a little longer. With them, nothing can happen. Without them—well, there's always the chance of fractured spinal discs before we got you under control."

Sloane shuddered and said: "Leave 'em on."

"Sensible man! Now, about the accident—from the beginning."

He told them about the accident, from the beginning. They asked him to tell it again from the beginning, in case anything else occurred to him. They pointed out that he might have unconsciously noticed some detail, or heard some noise that would have a bearing on the cause of the accident. He told it again, conscientiously filling in every scrap he remembered. Fine, they told him. This time they'd take it down in shorthand. If he'd just begin once more

"What the hell is this?" he demanded, enraged. ."You people are the damndest doctors I ever ran into."

One of them said, suddenly cold: "We're not doctors, Sloane; we're F. B.I. agents. Ortega has squealed."

"Start talking, Sloane."

"The sooner the better if you know what's good for you."

"Ortega turned you in; why protect the other rats?"

"It's a dirty business, but it'll count for you if you cooperate."

"This is your chance to make up for some of the dirt you've done your country."

"Start talking, Sloane."

"You're crazy!" he shrilled at them; "what am I supposed to say?"

"He's ready to tell us about it. Turn on the tape."

"Tape's on. Go ahead, Sloane."

"Start with the first Latamer approach to you."

"Let me the hell alone, you damned fools!" he yelled. "I never heard of anything as idiotic as this!" Nor had he. And it was frightening, like the thought of a six-foot idiot who had conceived a dislike for you...

"He thinks we're bluffing. Get the tape on."

"Tape's on. Listen, Sloane."

HE HEARD a mechanically-reproduced voice, the almost-accented voice of Ortega, the theatrical Latamer agent. "—I make this confession of my own free will for the following reason: I understand that North American jurisprudence sometimes recognizes such cooperation as this with the authorities, as grounds for reduction of sentence. I have been asked to specify, however, that no person has promised that this will occur in my case, and this is true. Also, I have been asked to say that I have not been subjected to physical indignities or psychological duress other than what any reasonable person understands is normal and inevitable in police practice; this also is true.

"On September 17th I was advised by anonymous letter, bearing the correct code-designation, that I was to contact Mr. Lev Sloane, since he was sympathetic to our Latin-American cause. I waited for him that evening, letting myself in by an omnikey. We talked agreeably and I found him a most enthusiastic friend of my government and its principals.

"In discussing how we might further our common end, Mr. Sloane suggested that he could be raised to a more effective position for sabotage in the S.M.R.C. if he were to distinguish himself for courage and patriotism. Bluntly, he suggested that I permit him to 'capture and expose' me. I demurred at this, but he persuaded me that my term would be only a short one, since he would not allege in court that I had done, or offered to do, any substantive damage to the American power. His glibness won me over, but I am now informed that I face a prison-term of twenty-five years on conviction, and therefore I am impelled to make this confession."

The voice stopped.

Sloane told them: "I have nothing to say about that, except that it's a pack of lies."

One of the F.B.I. men was looking over his head and grumbling: "I never did trust the damn things; where there's smoke there's fire."

Another of the agents suddenly thrust an object at him, yelling: "Have you ever seen this before?" It was an oxy-torch, pocket size.

"I haven't had an oxy-torch in my hand for ten years," he said flatly. "Maybe that's a torch I used ten years ago, so I can't answer the question positively."

"Wise guy," one of them muttered. The one looking over his head seemed glum and disappointed.

"Why did you cut open the Dome bulkhead?" the third demanded.

He laughed incredulously.

"It isn't funny, Sloane. This torch was found in the cafeteria. One man died and three hundred could have died—"

"What do you men think you are doing?" a cool, angry voice demanded. Dr. Vanderpoel.

"We're questioning a suspected enemy agent, Miss. And from that bandage on your head, you'd better get back where you belong."

"Dr. Sloane saved my life and this is completely idiotic. Disconnect that lie-detector at once. Do you hear me?"

"I hear you all right, Miss, but I don't take orders from you."

"Call National 5-11783 immediately and appraise them of this situation," she snapped.

"How do you know that number?" asked an agent, astounded and suspicious.

"Never mind; call it."

One of them left silently and Sloane saw the woman come into his limited field of vision. She wore a bandage like a skull cap. "Salaam aleikunt," she said to him. "I thank the One God, and his servant the Ma'di, that nothing worse has happened to you than questioning by these buffoons."

"You're all right?" he asked, trying to move.

"You will be free soon. Yes, thank you. A slight concussion from a fragment of the wall's plastic paneling. I was conscious intermittently throughout and can testify to your selflessness and courage. Do not worry about these people. Police are the same the world over. They are paid to do this sort of thing."

"Look, Miss—" one of the G-men growled.

"Watch it, Renshaw!" warned a voice from the door. "Miss Vanderpoel, the chief says I should apologize to you, and we should release Sloane. I apologize; Renshaw, get him out of the polygraph."

The agent who had phoned looked down malignantly at Sloane as Renshaw unbuckled the fake restrainers which had camouflaged a lie-detector's input pads. "Sloane," he said, "I've been ordered to release you as not responsible for the dome break-in on Miss Vanderpoel's say-so. On this other thing from Ortega, it's dubious enough for us to leave you at large; without the Dome incident—which Miss Vanderpoel covers us on—there's no corroboration. Yet. I'm warning you now not to leave town. If you try, the D.C. police will pick you up for spitting on the sidewalk. .As soon as you pay your fine they'll pick you up again for loitering. And so on. Come on, men."

THEY FILED disgustedly out with their polygraph as Sloane grinned and stretched his cramped limbs. The woman grabbed his bedside signal and pushed it ferociously. A thoroughly cowed nurse popped in, squeaking: "Yes, Miss Vanderpoel? What can I do for you?"

"Release-forms at once, please. And Dr. Sloane's clothes."

"Yes, Miss Vanderpoel!"

"Who are you, anyway?" he asked her when the nurse had gone.

She gave him an unexpected smile that was almost impish. "As Mr. Hennessey said, A Very Important Person."

"I'll let it go at that, doctor. But why are you so certain that I'm innocent of all this?"

"A simple matter of intercontinental relations," she said, gravely again. "The present world alignment is Sino-Russia and Latin America versus Europe and United Africa. The role of North America is to maintain the balance of power by throwing its support to the weaker of the two alliances. Because of Sino-Russia's immense manpower-reserves, and Latin America's plentiful supply of fanatics and raw-materials, North America judges that the Europe-Africa alliance is the weaker and so supports it.

"The great dream of the Sino-Russian and Latin American alliance is to win over Africa. They bombard us daily with propaganda—stupid propaganda, stressing the fact that the Chinese are yellow-skinned and many Latin-Americans brown-skinned. As if that were more important than cultural heritages!

"Failing in this positive appeal, they have evidently resorted to a negative attempt to split Africa from North America." She paused, broodingly. "My death, with the responsibility apparently North American, might have done it. I believe that the Dome accident was no accident, but an attempted murder by the Latin American and Sino-Russian alliance. I believe that you have been branded a Latin American agent because of your heroic rescue of me. In their propaganda they will represent it as a—Very Important Person—saved from death at the hands of the North Americans by a heroic agent of Latin America and Sino-Russia."

"Then you are in danger now!"

"I am," she said. "I have been in deadly danger since my incognito was penetrated by the Latin American spy-net in this country. I did not realize it had been broken until the Dome gave way."

The scared nurse came in with forms and Sloane's Clothes, with the water wrinkles pressed out.

"I've already signed mine," she said. "Put your name here, dress and we can walk out."

He studied the form and its grim disclaimer of responsibility by the hospital. He signed it and asked: "I don't see the reasoning behind this ..."

She moved a bedside chair two yards away, turned its back to him and sat in it. As he dressed, she told him: "I must get out of this place immediately. It would be too easy—there are poisons and surgical instruments in a hospital. I dare not go to our African Embassy; it is insufficiently-staffed, and not constructed to afford me safety. And above all, I dare not place my self under the protection of any North American officials. No matter how well I were guarded, there might be a mishap—and hours later there would be anti-North American riots and manifestos from Capetown to Alexandria. I trusted too much in my incognito. Perhaps—" For just a moment she showed a touch of indecision. "—I have been told I have a certain air of authority that might have betrayed me?"

"That might possibly be it," he agreed seriously. "I'm dressed now." She rose and said: "Will you take me to the—the unlikeliest place you know? A place where nobody would dream of you appearing, but a place where there will be no complications or fuss about entry. No—don't tell me what it is, please."

"They must surely be watching the hospital. Won't we be followed—or shot down in the street?"

"Yes," she said. "That is why we shall leave by ambulance."

SHE HAD arranged it, too. Waiting on the roof was a nervous driver who demanded of Sloane: "Ya sure this is okay, Jack? I tried to say no, but—" He glanced at the woman and shrugged helplessly.

Twenty minutes later, the ambulance hooted as it hovered above the 1200 block of avenue W and landed when traffic stopped at the intersections. Miss Vanderpoel tottered out, leaning heavily on Sloane's arm. There were ah's of sympathy from the crowd and the ambulance popped up into the air again on grasshopper legs.

When they rounded the corner, Miss Vanderpoel straightened and her walk became brisk. 1347 Avenue Y was a two-story brick home of faded elegance. Bare spots and improvisations of plastic where there had been brass bell-pulls, name-plates, graceful iron railings, foot scraper and other forgotten accessories dated it badly.

The old man opened the door himself, squinting into the afternoon light. "I'm afraid I can't make out your faces," he said in a voice that had grown thin and frail, but still had music in it. "You're—you're—?"

"Lev Sloane, Professor," said the engineer. "And a friend."

"Why, Sloane! How pleasant—please come in, and you, too—"

"Miss Vanderpoel."

"—Miss Vanderpoel, of course. How pleasant!" His stooped figure went before them down a dim entrance hall. "It's turning into quite a day for me. There are two other gentlemen here—but perhaps you knew?"

Lev stopped in mid-stride, slightly off-balance, and the girl stopped at the same instant.

"Who?" Sloane demanded.

"Why ... a Mr. Haines, and a Mr. Adanis. Do you know them? They were asking about you...?"

"Professor," Lev said rapidly and quietly. "I meant to explain this more gradually, but I'm afraid I've imposed on you. Miss Vanderpoel here is in some danger. I brought her here hoping to...to hide her. Is there any way...?"

"Company Professor?" A door opened into the hallway, and a competent-looking man stepped out, with a gun in his hand.

"Sir!" The old man turned on the intruder furiously. "Put that thing down. Have you forgotten you're a guest in my house? Put it down, sir, and be so kind as to leave immediately."

"Happy to, Prof. In a few minutes. I think we've got what we were looking for. In here, everybody." It was a square, low-ceilinged living room, with casement windows that opened on a brick-walled backyard flower garden. A fire twinkled in a fabulous brass grate, and there was an equally fabulous stand of wrought-iron fire tools beside it. Lev Sloane remembered those: North America's gift to its savior, made from the first iron processed out of the first dome.

THE GUN directed them to a slip-covered sofa where Lev had spent uncounted afternoons in the distant schoolday past, warming himself in front of the fire in the iron grate... and afire himself with the knowledge that old Barrios was giving him. The Professor ignored the pointing gun. Trembling with indignation, he collapsed into a club chair by a smoking stand where a wax taper burned in a holder. Adams' partner—Haines—helped himself to a cigar from the humidor on the stand, and puffed it alight at the taper, grinning.

At a threatening jerk from the man with the gun, Sloane sat down on the sofa. Slowly and regally, the girl settled herself next to him, smoothing her skirt as she sat, as if not crushing it were her only concern. Never in their brief acquaintance had Sloane seen her quite so imperious as now.

"Okay, now let's get the formalities over with," Adams said genially. "You, miss ...you go by the name of Huyler Ngomo?"

"No," she said steadily. "My name is Vanderpoel...Miss Vanderpoel."

"That one's good enough," Adams said. "Be hard to make any mistake. Not many girls around that look just like you. We've got orders to take you back with us. I hope you're not going to make any trouble."

"I haven't decided yet," she said indifferently.

"Well, make your mind up. We ain't got much time," Haines put in.

"Would it be too much to inquire whose orders you are following?" Dr. Barrios said from his chair.

"Security," Adams said, smiling.

"Your identification?" the girl demanded.

"Right here." The man patted his gun with his free hand.

"How did you know where to find us?" Lev asked suddenly.

"We didn't; we were hoping. Mostly we came to see if the Professor knew anything that would help. Now if the young lady will just come along, we won't have any trouble at all."

"You think we should leave them?" Adams put in, looking worried.

"Nobody said anything about two guys. We want the girl."

"Sure, but...okay, it's your neck as much as mine." Adams subsided, but he wasn't satisfied,

Old Barrios had gathered his poise again. "May I ask for what purpose you desire to have the lady's company?"

"Sure, you can ask," Haines said boredly. "Ready, Miss Vanderpoel?"

She stood up. "Yes," she said wearily. Sloane could see her hand moving through the wool fabric of her dress pocket, fingering the worn brown book, the "Meditations." Suddenly it was too much; there was a time not to be cautious.

"I'll tell you what for, Dr. Barrios; to kill her."

THE WORDS hung on the air. Then the Professor too stood up, and with the most ordinary manner crossed his room to the telephone.

"That's enough, Prof." Adams clicked off the safety of his gun audibly; Barrios was not so old that the sound was meaningless to him. He mopped and turned to face them; his Mender shoulders sagging with defeat. A moment ago," he said thinly, "you were joking about my riches. I am rich, you know. I was a great man once. What do you want? Name your price for the lady's ransom." He slumped into the chair by the smoking stand.

"Everything you've got," Adams said promptly. "And then it wouldn't be enough. The Chief wouldn't like it if we came back without the lady."

"Do you know who I am?" the old man asked.

"Sure," Haines answered. "Everybody knows, even me. Barrios, SMRC. Mister SMRC, you might say. Ain't that right?"

"Yes," said Barrios sadly. "I have here—" His hand dipped into his breast pocket. The gun made a sudden alarmed jerk in his direction and then subsided as Barrios drew out a flimsy sheet of pink paper, folded. "I have here the fruit of my last fifteen years of work. The world thought I was a dodderer whom the parade has passed by. But summarized on this sheet is a practical method of multiplying the output of S.M.P. Domes ten times. Think about it a minute and see if you still think it's not enough to pay for a girl's life."

"That changes the picture," Adams admitted grimly, reaching out his hand. "Hand it over." And then he gasped. Barrios had darted the paper toward the candleflame, twitching it back with a wisp of smoke curling from one corner. Adams stared for a moment at the curl of smoke, and then his eyes swung back on Sloane and Miss Vanderpoel.

"Why didn't you sell this thing long ago?" he demanded suspiciously.

Barrios sighed. "I long ago lost ambition; I long ago lost my illusion that men would use metal for anything but making war. Ten times more metal, ten times as much death and agony. I would have given it to the world if I thought it was any use. But now there is a reason. It's yours... for the lady's life."

Adams was watching Sloane and the woman. His friend was staring at Barrios. He muttered: "He was a big shot—"

"You are hesitating," said the triple Nobelist, with a touch of the old resonance in his voice. "Very well. The world does not know how to use it and you do not want it. Let it burn!"

He crumpled the paper in his hand and tossed it at the fire that twinkled in the grate.

"Get it, Chuck!" shrieked the replica, diving for the grate, and so did Adams, clawing at the coals.

Sloane landed on the small of Adams' back with both feet. The other killer snatched up Adams' dropped gun and rolled over, spraying bullets at full-automatic until a priceless wrought-iron fire poker smashed his hand. Miss Vanderpoel said to him as he screamed: "Lie there unless you want it in the head next." She twirled the poker.

"Lord," said Sloane, white-faced. "I killed him." He rolled Adams over, shrinking from the touch, and found the ball of flimsy pink paper crushed under his chest, only charred at the edges.

"We saved it, Professor!" he said triumphantly turning to the club chair. But Barrios was slumped far down with blood throbbing from his chest. He was making a curious chuckling noise and Sloane bent low to hear.

"Glad you came," he said, slowly but distinctly. "I was bored." Then he died. Sloane thrust the crumpled ball of paper into his pocket and turned to the gunman.

"You killed him," he said.

The man groaned and clutched his mashed hand.

"Who's your boss, fella?" Sloane said grimly. "I want to know who sends people like you out to kill people like us—and him."

The man groaned louder.

"I won't ask you twice," Sloane said. He took the wrought-iron tongs and thrust them into the heart of the fire. Miss Vanderpoel's face writhed, but she didn't speak.

FIVE MINUTES and three seconds later Haines was screaming: "I don't know his name! He's a tall fat guy who works for the Gov'ment! He meets me in the Dupont Circle Bar! He'll get me killed if he knows about this! He'll send his greasers with their knives! I sear I don't know his name!"

Sloane said thoughtfully: "Lots of tall, fat men work for the Government. I can think of one who was in a position to break your incognito. I can think of one whom I told about getting a letter from Professor Barrios. I can think of one who's in a position to seed Latin-American sympathizers through the entire S.M.P.C. and botch things as thoroughly as they've been botched."

He thrust the cooling tongs back into the fire, and the man screamed again at the thought..

"No more!" said Miss Vanderpoel, compulsively.

"Perhaps not...does you boss swear a lot? Blue-eyed? Sandy hair with a widow's peak in front that he combs over a bald crown? Big square front teeth? Like grey suits? Extra-big chronometer wrist-watch?"

He didn't need the tongs again. The man answered the right questions right and the catch questions right.

"Call that National number," he told her. "We have enough for a pick-up order on Hennessey."

She went to the ball and he heard the murmur of her voice at the phone.

Only when she came back did he remember the crumpled ball of paper in his pocket. He smoothed it open and found that it was a past-due laundry bill.

It was a lovely ceremony on the lawn of the African Embassy in the crisp fall air. The African Home Secretary for Science, Leila 'al-Mekhtub Waziri Huyler-Ngomo (after the Learner spy roundup she had been able to shed her ineffectual incognito) was a favorite target of the press photographers. She pinned the African Diamond Star, First Class, on Dr. Lev Sloane for courageous and selfless service to United Africa and made a little speech. Dr. Sloane spoke also, briefly, and concluded with the African salutation salaam aleikum, touching his brow, lips and breast with a graceful inclination of his head. The African guests were obviously moved by his sincerity, and the North American guests were obviously somewhat alarmed. Some of them murmured uneasily about Sloane's recent practice of dipping into the Sayings of the Ma'di at odd moments.

A lawn buffet followed, with couscous, Barbary sheep, antelope kebabs, plantain, scrambled ostrich eggs—two of them—curries in the style of the Durban Hindus and a rijstafel in the style of the Afrikanders.

Sloane had tasted the rijstafel, and hidden behind a transplanted jujube bush when he saw the Home Secretary for Science coming that way.

He saw her draw near and was about to come out when she too, simultaneously saw someone near and imperiously hailed him: "Mr. Kalamba! Come here if you please!"

Mr. Kalamba, tall, young and worried-looking, did so.

"Salaam," he said nervously.

"Mr. Kalamba, I'm very displeased with you. Strictly you are not under my direction, but you are science attache to the embassy and I feel that this gives me a right to speak. Frankly, it has become notorious that you are running around with young North American persons."

Mr. Kalamba mumbled something. "Tommyrot, my dear boy! You know perfectly well that I don't refer to legitimate contacts in the way of embassy business. I refer to your drinking beer and eating hamburgers with youngsters from the Commerce department, and Agriculture, and such."

"They're good chaps," muttered Mr. Kalamba.

"I dare say, but we must draw the line. Answer this question truthfully: would you want your sister to marry one?"

Lev Sloane didn't wait for Mr. Kalamba's answer.