"How did everything go?" Dorothy asked when he came in.
It was a mechanical question and he answered it mechanically, "Okay. Everything went as usual."
He didn't want to look at her. She had grown plump since they had married eight years ago, and by not looking at her he could somehow pretend she was still slim and attractive.
She was lying on a couch, wearing a housecoat, and didn't look up from the magazine in front of her. "Supper's on the table," she said.
For eight years he'd had flat, uninspiring meals, meals that kept one from starving and no more. His complaints had met with more hostility than he cared to cope with, and always, meekly he had retired from the scene of battle wishing he had submitted and thus avoided the tongue-lashing before which he felt so helpless.
Once more in the surroundings that bred it, a familiar, distasteful helplessness rose to envelop Sam Meecham. It came across him as a feeling of despair and bewilderment, and he wondered sickly if he would ever escape this.
Yes, he told himself, clenching his fists determinedly. But he would have to bide his time. Slowly, not really tasting it, he ate the cold, uninviting meal set on the table.
Securing the engine was the least of his worries—at least from a commercial standpoint. The factory was turning out atomic engines at almost production-line rates, and civilians could easily get them for private use—so long as they operated them at low speeds and within the atmosphere of Earth.
That last thought drew a long secret laugh from Sam Meecham. At low speeds. The government considered anything above a 50 CT as high speed. And here he was with a secret that could enable him to travel at—who knows what speeds? He could give it to the government later, but right now he had his own use for it.
Dorothy would prove an obstacle, however. She always was an obstacle, and there was no reason to assume she wouldn't be one now. And he was right about that. The following payday, when he took his check and splurged it on an atomic engine, Dorothy was madder than a Uranium pile approaching critical mass.