Jason Charless climbed into Number 1142 and eventually took off following the pack. More hours passed, then once more the flying bomb glided in for a landing.
Cautiously, he removed the hatch and looked out. Again it was cold, and he shuddered while he looked around. The guided missiles were lined up according to numerical order with the exception of 1142, which came in later and was therefore at the end of the line. In the distance he saw a large building, but not one human. Warily he stole along the row of rocket bombs until he was near the building.
He watched for some time. Behind the building was a fleet of cargo aircraft and behind that another long row of guided missiles. "Hell," he said. "I didn't know we had that many!"
For an hour he watched, lying on his belly beneath the curve of Guided Missile Number One, and in all of that time he saw no one. Motion caught his attention to the South; he looked to see a small fleet of cargo ships gliding to the quay, their screws efficiently coursing through ice floes. Chilled to the bone with cold, Jason Charless continued to watch as the ships tied up, extended gangplanks, and started to unload a stream of polished equipment.
He shook his head in bewilderment; for the electrical equipment was being handled by a crew of efficient machinery with apparently no one to drive it. Not a soul.
The machines carried the equipment to the building and inside. Charless followed the fourth batch and once inside, he stopped in amazement.
The inside of the building was alive with all sizes of machinery. They were scurrying around in precision pattern of work, whirling floor-studs tight, running cables, and welding busbars. Some of the equipment seemed familiar; at least the huge rectangular waveguide belonged to the logic computer that Harry Vinson was working on. He had seen that a year ago. But the stuff that was arriving now was different, somehow.
He looked closer and saw the unmistakable signs of foreign manufacture.
And there was a clue—a faint clue but none the less a bit of evidence. On the back of a metal case was scrawled a name. It was the sort of thing that a person will do on a bit of their own work.