"I'll be right here at my desk when the screen lights up," he said. "Don't worry too much. I'll handle my end of it with very careful timing...."
Fifteen minutes later my tractor rumbled to a halt for the second time, directly in front of the Wendel plant.
Like the Endicott plant, it faced a big square and there were no pedestrians in sight on the side we parked on.
"This time I'm going with you," Lynton said, very firmly.
So he was going with me! All right, it was an obligation I owed him, and I couldn't pull rank on him, because he was a civilian and it wouldn't have done the least bit of good. Moreover, he'd gotten over being dazzled by the silver bird, if it had ever really dazzled him, which I doubted. He was a too tough-fibered, independent, non-authority conscious kind of guy. You find them in every rugged, pioneering society—guys who will stand up in a public meeting and tell a governmental big shot that the speech he's just delivered has a phony ring to it and he'd be well advised to try again.
I descended from the tractor a little more cautiously this time, keeping my eye on the ground-floor windows of the plant and wondering how long it would take me to cross from the car to the building's wide main entrance and if the steel-mesh blinds on the windows might not be a cover-up for nuclear weapons pointed straight in our direction.
But actually, despite the uneasiness which we both felt, we crossed from the tractor to the plant without hurrying and with our shoulders held straight.
There were two guards in Wendel private police uniforms with nuclear hand-guns clamped to their hips standing just inside the entrance and the instant we came into view their hands darted to the holstered weapons and their eyes took on a steely glint.
Then—both guards did a swift double take. They didn't stiffen to attention the way the guards at the gate of the nuclear fortress had done, but something happened to their faces which made them seem to be wearing frozen masks. Only their eyes remained alive, alert, the steely glint replaced by a look of stunned incredulity.