“You’ve got something there, Doc,” he admitted then. “We can really go to town on that. Now, how about notes, or stuff from your old place, or people who may have smelled a rat?”
“I’m perfectly clean. None of my boys know anything important, and none ever will. I assemble all apparatus myself, from standard parts, and disassemble it myself. I’ve been around, Graves.”
“Well, we can’t be too sure.” The fat man’s eyes were piercing and cold. “Leakers don’t live very long. We don’t want you to die, at least not until we get in production here.”
“Nor then, if you know when you’re well off,” the scientist countered, cynically. “I’m a fellow of the College of Radiation, and it took me five years to learn this technique. None of your hatchetmen could ever learn it. Remember that, my friend.”
“So?”
“So don’t get off on the wrong foot and don’t get any funny ideas. I know how to run things like this and I’ve got the manpower and equipment to do it. If I come in I’m running it, not you. Take it or leave it.”
The fat man pondered for minutes, then decided. “I’ll take it. You’re in, Doc. You can have a cave—two hundred seventeen is empty—and we’ll go up and get things started right now.”
* * * * *
Less than a year later, the same two men sat in Graves’ office. They waited while a red light upon a peculiarly complicated deskboard faded through pink into pure white.
“All clear. This way, Doc.” Graves pushed a yellow button on his desk and a section of blank wall slid aside.