Doug Norris felt like singing in his wonderful relief, as he and Kincaid went down through the now deserted Project building to the supply room. In fact, he started to raise his voice in a ribald ballad about a Proxy's adventure with a lady automaton.
"You mus' have had a trifle too much Scotch, Doug," Kincaid reproved him, with owlish dignity. "Such levity isn't becoming to two scientists about to make the mos' wonderful invention of the century."
They got one of the heavy leaden cylinders used for transport of uranium and filled it carefully with powdered bismuth. Then, in Kincaid's car, they drove happily toward the big Power Station.
The guards at the barrier gate knew them both, for it was nothing new for Proxy Project men to bring uranium over to the Station. They let them through, and the car eased along the straight cement road.
The huge, windowless buildings that housed the massive uranium piles were a mile beyond. But no one went near those tremendous atomic piles. Everything in them had to be handled by remote control by the few technicians in Headquarters Building who kept them operating.
"Mart, isn't it queer nobody ever thought of usin' bismuth instead of uranium, before now?" Norris asked, out of his roseate glow.
"Scientists too c'nservative, that's the trouble," Kincaid answered wisely. His voice soared. "We're about to launch a new epoch! No more uranium shortage to worry 'bout! No more politicians botherin' the Project!"
"And I'll be able to fix up old M-Fifty and run him myself again," added Doug Norris. He choked up once more. "When I think of that Proxy that was like a brother to me, lyin' down in that lonely fissure with the Raddies gloatin' over him—"
"Don't think about it, Doug," begged Kincaid, with tender sympathy. "Soon's we get these atomic piles changed around, we'll go back and get good old M-Fifty up again and fix him good as new."