I recalled the data. Elaine had been here for about three minutes but at Phoenix and Hanford only about one minute apiece. Was I a stabilizing influence? No, I reasoned, it couldn't be me. It must be WAGS. It's an odd 40-Bev job. Maybe its magnetic field had a partially polarizing effect upon the anti-nucleonic factor.
"Please call the Pentagon, General—and, General, if—I mean when—we get Elaine back, would you consider me as a prospective son-in-law?"
"You get her back, Bob, and ask her the big question. If she says yes, well, fine! You look okay to me!"
"Thanks, General."
"Call me Mike," he said. "Out!"
It's a good thing Mike Schoener's a four-star general; if he'd been a second lieutenant, his daughter would have bounced around the then infinitely sadder earth to the end of her years, pursued by the vagrant day-dreams of a hundred bug-eyed physicists until gobbled benzedrine and tranquilizers took their toll of said dreaming BEP's.
As it was, it was afternoon here at Racine when Mike Schoener called back and told me to stand by for the activation of UNACMEA/WAGS.
I stood in the console room for half an hour while the monitor screens went on one by one until the five banks of them on the one wall were all aglow. The controller at UNACME in New York gave me the go-sign then and I said shakily, "This is Doctor Robert Mitchell at UNACMEA/WAGS, Wisconsin, U.S.A. A strange phenomenon occurred here at 0822 hours today."
I paused, disconcerted by background voices translating my words into dozens of foreign tongues; then, steeling myself, I went on, concluding with the question, "Is Miss Schoener present at this moment in any one of your installations?"