“I’d shut down two seventeen—and the whole hush-hush end—until we can get our records straight and our death-rate down to the old ten-year average. That’s the only way we can be really safe.”
“Shut down! The way they’re pushing us for production? Don’t be an idiot—the chief would toss us both down the chute.”
“Oh, I don’t mean without permission. Talk him into it. It’d be best for everybody, over the long pull, believe me.”
“Not a chance. He’d blow his stack. If we can’t dope out something better than that, we go on as is.”
“The next-best thing would be to use some new form of death to clean up our books.”
“Wonderful!” Graves snorted contemptuously. “What would we add to what we’ve got now—bubonic plague?”
“A loose atomic vortex.”
“Wh-o-o-o-sh!” The fat man deflated, then came back up, gasping for air. “Man, you’re completely nuts! There’s only one on the planet, and it’s . . . or do you mean . . . but nobody ever touched one of those things off deliberately . . . can it be done?”
“Yes. It isn’t simple, but we of the College of Radiation know how—theoretically—the transformation can be made to occur. It has never been done because it has been impossible to extinguish the things; but now Neal Cloud is putting them out. The fact that the idea is new makes it all the better.”
“I’ll say so. Neat . . . very neat.” Graves’ agile and cunning brain figuratively licked its chops. “Certain of our employees will presumably have been upon an outing in the upper end of the valley when this terrible accident takes place?”