For all I know, he reflected, they might take me away! Everything I remember about today can't really have happened. If it did, I wish it hadn't!
He recalled that he had been phoned at home to hop a jet for London that morning. He had found the laboratory which had made the model of the light Smith was interested in, and been on his way back without time for lunch. Now that the jets were so fast, meals were no longer served on them, and he had had to grab a sandwich upon returning. Then there had been those poor fried eggs. That was all—no wonder he was feeling hungry again!
I should have missed the return jet, he thought bitterly. I didn't know where I was well off! Why did I have to walk in there? I might have had the sense to go look in Bob's office first.
He decided that Pauline, now chatting with Simonetta, looked refreshed and relaxed. Perhaps he ought to do the same.
The idea, upon reflection, continued to appear attractive. Westervelt rose and walked out past the switchboard. Beryl was too busy to see him. He made his way quietly to the rest room, which he found empty. He was rather relieved to have avoided everyone.
At one side of the room was a door leading to a shower. The appointments of Department 99 were at least as complete as those of any modern business office of the day. Westervelt stepped into a tiny anteroom furnished with a skimpy stool, several hooks on the wall, and a built-in towel supplier.
Prudently, he set the temperature for a hot shower on the dial outside the shower compartment, and punched the button that turned on the water.
Just in case all the trouble has affected the hot water supply, he thought.
As he undressed, he was reassured by the sight of steam inside the stall. Another thought struck him. He locked the outer door. He did not care for the possibility of having Lydman imagine that he was trapped in here. It would be just his luck to be "assisted" out into the corridor, naked and dripping, at the precise moment it was full of staff members on their way to the laboratory.
He slid back the partly opaqued plastic doors and stepped with a sigh of pleasure under the hot stream. Ten minutes of it relaxed him to the point of feeling almost at peace with the world once more.