Stan examined the tabulated sheets again. The offending machine was in building nine thirty-two. Number forty-one.
He walked over to the parking lot and climbed on the skip-about he had bought on his first pay day. The machine purred into life as he touched a button and he raised the platform a few inches off the ground, then spun about, to glide across the field toward block nine.
Fabricator number forty-one was a multiple. A single programming head actuated eight spinaret assemblies, which could deliver completed module assemblies into carriers in an almost continuous stream. It was idling.
Stan visualized the flow chart of the machine as he approached. Then he paused. The operator was sitting at the programming punch, carefully going over a long streamer of tape. Stan frowned and looked at his watch. By this time, the tapes should be ready and the machine in full operation. But this man was obviously still setting up.
He continued to watch as the operator laboriously compared the tape with a blueprint before him. There was something familiar in the sharp, hungry-looking features. The fellow turned to look closely at the print and Stan nodded.
"Now I remember," he told himself. "Sornal. Wondered what happened to him. Never saw him after the first day up in Opertal."
Sornal came to the end of the tape, then scrabbled about and found the beginning. He commenced rechecking against the print. Stan shook his head in annoyance.
"How many times is he going to have to check that thing?" he asked himself. He walked toward the man.
"Got trouble?"